Sarah Jane, Ratty and Mole

New Year's Day is usually a good time to contemplate the health of the televisual ecosystem, if only because the previous night's overindulgence can be pretty much guaranteed to leave one (a) uninclined to do anything more than slump in front of the telly and (b) in a more than usually critical mood.

This particular New Year's Day had several lowlights, beginning at midnight with the presence of Nick Knowles and Natasha Kaplinsky's makeup (whether there was an actual Natasha Kaplinsky behind all those layers of chemicals and fats was anyone's guess) and carrying on through a cycle of business-as-usual repeats including Bargain Hunt and Diagnosis Murder. Luckily for my over-toxined brain, however, there were two real treats amid all the dross.

When looking for green shoots in television land, one of the first and best places to look is children's TV. Children's TV in the UK spends most of its time being unloved and underfunded. When things are bad in telly land, children's TV is among the first things that suffers: the Beeb's kids' sitcoms become more and more overlit and heavily-laughter tracked, it's dramas get wobblier and wobblier sets. ITV confines itself to one really good show (My Parents Are Aliens) and a lot of cartoons and tries to persuade Ofcom to let it give up children's programming altogether. The best things on kids TV are put out on Channel 5 at some ungodly hour in the morning and turn out to have been made by Oliver Postgate in the 60s and 70s. This has been the picture for the last few years.

Yesterday, two signs of hope appeared. One was a magnificently produced (and largely foreign- funded) Wind in the Willows - a genuine family treat, beautifully cast (there can be no water-rattier Ratty than Mark Gatiss or more badgerly Badger than Bob Hoskins, not to mention a fine turn from Lee Ingleby as Mole and Matt Lucas having a whale of a time as Toad), fabulously directed (I suspect the art director had had a very good look at Arthur Rackham's fabulous illustrations for the book as well as the better known, but rather more twee, EH Sphepherd versions) and elegantly written. The writing deserves particular mention. In a world of dumbing down, this was clever stuff, fully acknowledging Kenneth Grahame's now (rightly) archaic class attitudes while at the same time still allowing us to judge Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad as characters rather than mere archetypes of certain locations in the Edwardian social order. Much of the dialogue was untouched and, apart from a dodgy "if you catch my drift", the altered/new dialogue fitted in fabulously. The whole thing was genuinely funny, excellently paced and looked fantastic. You can't ask for much more.

Despite there not being much more to ask for, the BBC somehow managed to deliver it in the form of "The Sarah Jane Adventures". Now, Sarah Jane Smith is the first Dr Who assistant I can properly remember and, as such, will always have a special place in my heart but what Russell T Davies has done with her is a minor work of genius. Sarah Jane is lonely, conscious of the years passing, conscious that her relationship with one (alien) man has at the same time filled her life with wonder and cut her adrift from simple, human love, friendship and fulfilment. It's an awfully long time since children's drama has seen such a sophisticated character at its centre. The child characters who surround her - one smart, one sassy, one innocent-but-at-the-same-time superhuman - are nicely chosen (although I do quibble a bit with the fact that the sassy child is black ... the sassy child always seems to be black in any modern kids' drama/comedy, just for reasons of variety rather than political correctness it would be great to make the smart kid black and the "yeah, whatever, shattap, in your face" one white) and the decision to use the feature episode to give youth advertising and junk food culture a good kicking is more than fine with me. Again the script fizzed with good lines and was excellently paced, with just the right mix of scares and jokes and the prospect of some intriguing relationships between the characters. I can give no higher praise than to say watching such a genuinely good programme reminded me why I gave up a good job to be a writer and, with any luck, gave me the perfect New Year reminder to start putting fingers to keyboard and words to screen.