Friend, confidant - and Ally

William Gallagher picks the most notable new TV shows this week

by the BBC's William Gallagher

TV critics across the country have turned detective this week, partly because they need to play a crazy hunch and partly because they've unexpectedly got the time.

Ally star Calista Flockhart waits to see when Robert Downey Jr will show up

The reason for the idle hands is that perhaps the biggest new show this week is the return of Ally McBeal to Channel 4 - but it's already been on digital channel E4.

Terrestrial TV still originates most new programmes but Ally has joined the clique of key American ones that are shown first on digital.

American shows have been crucial to satellite and digital right from the early days of Sky 1 and despite its homegrown shows it is US TV that E4 is known for.

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E4 is still not the ratings success that perhaps it should be, but it has spent enough to be a thorn in Sky 1's side and it has managed to get itself a high profile in the media.

So much so that when this week it launches the original Star Trek (Monday July 30 1400 and 1800 BST) E4 is getting a lot of coverage and almost no one is raising a timid hand to point out that BBC2 was screening it last month.

You cannot have it both ways and Ally (Channel 4, Wednesday 1 August, 2100 BST) feels like a digital hand me down - even if this is actually a good season of the show and even though it if it lacks some of the show's early spark it briefly adds Robert Downey Jr as a new love interest for Ally.

He is very good but there is a story that Ally star Calista Flockhart fainted when yet another episode had to be rewritten at the last second because of his awkward drug offence court cases clashed.

So another reason for catching him on Ally this week is that you will not be able to next year.

Similarly you are unlikely to be able to see more of Hawkins (BBC1, Saturday July 28, 2100 BST) next year, either, though it was meant to be the pilot for a new BBC series.

Criminal

Robert Lindsay stars in Hawkins as a crimefighting lecturer

Robert Lindsay stars as a crimefighting university lecturer - it is David Lodge all over again - with an incredible website that links in to the criminal underworld.

Professor Hawkins types where no police national computer dare type and he helps people who for the best of slim TV drama reasons cannot go to the authorities.

You will laugh when you see characters trying to act impressed over his so very ordinary website but the show is actually right that you can be a detective and investigate cases over the web.

For this is the show that has made TV critics scratch their heads and part of the answer is to be found on the internet.

Is ditching 30 minutes of the show and postponing it by a year necessarily a bad sign?

Hawkins is a new show, but it was meant to be shown about a year ago and was postponed so late in the day that critics had already watched the tape.

It was so late, and so long ago, that critics got the tapes back in this week and had a confused few minutes wondering why they could mouth the dialogue along with the characters.

Unwilling to sit through 90 minutes again, and with the BBC being fairly quiet about the show - it has had little publicity - critics filled the time in by investigating what happened.

And it happens that there is a TV equipment company whose website claims to have worked on a longer version that was meant to be a pilot for a series - and there is a French site that talks about Hawkins being two episodes of up to 60 minutes each.

BBC News Online has more information, revealing that this was originally going to be called Hawk and due out around the same time as Fish.

So what do you think, inspector, is ditching 30 minutes of the show, postponing the transmission by a year, changing the name and tucking it quietly into the summer schedule necessarily a bad sign?