You the Jury: Fiona Chesterton and Keith Bunker

C4's Dickens's Secret Lover

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Fiona Chesterton and Keith Bunker discuss the latest TV shows.

At first sight, this week's selection of programmes for review didn't look too promising: yet another Second World War nostalgia wallow, a docu-drama on Charles Dickens, and a programme fronted by a comedian with lots of film clips. The viewing, however, was more rewarding than the billing.

For me, the most successful overall is Last of the Dambusters: Revealed. You might think it's impossible to find anything new to say about the Second World War but this documentary, which looks again at the famous Dambusters raid where RAF bombers used the new "bouncing bomb" to disrupt the water supply to Nazi armaments factories, managed it. It is a story lovingly told, taking veteran pilot George Johnson back to the scene with some good CGI graphics and archive footage. Stephen Fry's mellifluous narration undoubtedly adds to the appeal for the intended audience.

Running as part of what Channel 4 is calling its Victorian Passions season is Dickens' Secret Lover. This is a tale of 19th-century sexual hypocrisy, featuring Charles Dickens and a young actress he falls in love with called Nellie. With its interesting subject matter, this doc has the potential to be a great watch - but unfortunately the director chooses to rely on somewhat unconvincing dramatised representations of the affair (despite top notch casting with David Haig playing Dickens, and Charles Dance playing himself as narrator/presenter). For me, it just didn't quite work.

The surprise watch of the three is Rich Hall's How the West was Lost. I feared the worst when I saw the title - but there is much to enjoy, and something to make you think (to recall BBC4's founding marketing slogan) in this 90-minute trawl through Hollywood westerns. The producers have an ambitious aim - to try to place the sweeping narratives of those cowboy classics (from Buffalo Bill to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven) in the context of 20th century American history.

Sometimes the connections are unconvincing, but overall it is a pretty good watch. Hall is an entertaining host, the landscapes of Nevada are bewitching (well I think it's Nevada but with BBC4 budgets you couldn't be sure). At a feature film length though it became too much of a marathon for me - but perhaps not for the real western aficionado.
Fiona Chesterton is director, TV at Skillset

Blokes know stuff. Granted, it's rarely useful stuff, but it's stuff nonetheless. They know things about the stories of Bill Cody and dime novels, Barnes Wallis and the bouncing bomb - all of which renders most of the opening period of Five documentary Last of the Dambusters: Revealed redundant for most of the audience that it was presumably aimed at.

Perhaps someone should invent a special Sky+ for blokes which records these kinds of documentaries on a delay and automatically winds through the first quarter.

Last of the Dambusters does what it said on the tin - well, almost. George Johnson, as it turns out, isn't the last of the dambusters. He's one of "only a very few". Johnson goes back to Germany to remember the famed bombing raids he took part in but sadly he doesn't show much emotion as is often the way with heroes such as George, which is a bugger for television.

Directing, filming and editing this doc - as Cy Chadwick did - deserves a medal in my book.

I struggle with docu-dramas such as Dickens' Secret Lover, particularly when there's too much drama and not enough doc. Basically, the man who your modern day TV talking head calls "a cross between Father Christmas, Prince Albert and God" - no hype there then - had a "passionate and tragic affair" (is there any other kind?). Dickens and his lover first gaze longingly into each other's eyes when she trips coming off stage. He catches her and says "call me Charles". The question that springs to my mind is how do the programme-makers know?

Once Rich Hall's epic doc How the West Was Lost gets going, it rewards your patience with gorgeous and thoughtful photography and Hall's gobsmacking pieces to camera, delivered with an intensity which is enough to make you wee your chaps.

At stages it sends out confusing signals. Is it an essay on the western, a thesis on Bush politics, a history lesson on the pioneers? Mostly it is an essay on the western, which means most of the time it was a beautifully shot and scripted essay on a well-worn subject. The gold in the programme lies with Hall - his comedy and his politics.

"The western is like America. It endures, it just doesn't prevail any more."
Keith Bunker is joint managing director at Bite Yer Legs