RT� broadcast what was somewhat disquietingly described as "a social experiment". Spanning four evenings, N�os Gaela�. . . More Irish set four immigrants the challenge of learning Irish over a short period of time. Each participant tackled the challenge with great enthusiasm and, in so far as you could judge, with success. The challenge for the show, on the other hand, was to keep its allotted four nights interesting - learning a language, after all, hardly makes for compelling television, although, I have to admit, seeing one of the contestants walking along a Donegal clifftop lost in thought with a discman in her ears did have me on the edge of my seat for a few seconds.

So by episode two, they were already setting the participants ridiculous new challenges - Taiwo, a Nigerian, was having to get to grips with hurling; Vivian, from China, was made cook a traditional Irish meal; Lucia, a Galician, was sent off Irish dancing; and a Bangladeshi, Raj, was made learn the tin whistle.

The programme risibly tried to argue at this point that the tasks were set in pursuit of something hugely important ("What can we learn when we look at ourselves through others' eyes?"). Presenter Bob Kelly got so tied up in heavyhanded explanations ("Sometimes it's not that easy to be Irish;

despite all their attempts, my prot�g�s will have to try harder") that he was in danger of looking like he was auditioning to be Michael McDowell's naturalisation enforcer. You felt like saying, just relax, let the material do the work.

The participants were good fun, and lovely company, and I would much rather have heard more of what they had to say and drawn my own conclusions about language and culture and Ireland past and future than to watch them jump through hoops just to satisfy some half-baked, made-up-as-itwent-along concept.

A terrible bum note was struck too when Taiwo, who in episode three had to cry off due to a family emergency, was not mentioned at all in the final episode, which just seemed downright rude. It's not that the show deliberately set out to be naff or even offensive - its heart was in the right place; it's just its head was all over the place.

You needed your head in good working order for the first episode of The Trap, a new documentary series about the nature of freedom in the modern world. The programme's thesis, in an ill-serving nutshell, is that no matter how much freedom you think you have, it's all a canard. Writer and presenter Adam Curtis convincingly argues that everyone distrusts the other, that we only ever want to further our own interests and that the power games we play out in the home are also the games played out and promoted by the powers that be in order to keep society in a kind of deadening but always forward-moving equilibrium. Or something like that.

There's also loads of interesting footage of massive computers, comb-over hairstyles and brown suits, and a cool soundtrack that sounds like it was composed by the guy who did the music for Knight Rider. It's shaping up to be a great series.

You'd think the last thing the world needs right now is another medical drama. Then again, the Alan Partridge argument could just as easily be applied: there are so many of them because people like them; let's make more of them.

To be fair, 3lbs seems to have something new to offer - in concept if not in essence (aren't they all, at the end of the day, about who's getting their end away with who? ) - in that it's set in a brain clinic and all the medics are neurologists. It's also got Stanley Tucci in it, who's good in anything I've seen him in and is good in this.

He starts out being a heartless beast but it turns out that you and his idealistic young colleague had him wrong all along: he's just very dry-humoured. This has bombed in the US by the way, but don't let that put you off.

Definitely the last thing the world needs is another programme with dinosaurs brought to life with CGI effects. Not after the definitive, the T-Rex, of such programmes, Horizon: My Pet Dinosaur, which was brave enough to ask a bunch of palaeontologists, 'If you had to have a dinosaur as a pet, which one would it be?' All being long-bearded, counterculture, University of Southern California types, though, they were happy to take part in the programme's fun concept. I'd love to have seen it push its luck a bit further. 'Which dinosaur's bones would be the best ones to smoke?'

Reviewed N�os Gaela�. . .

More Irish Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday, RT� One The Trap Sunday, BBC2 3lbs Sunday, BBC1 Horizon: My Pet Dinosaur Tuesday, BBC2