Her dark eyes disquietingly direct in their gaze follow Harold everywhere with

Her dark eyes, disquietingly direct in their gaze, follow Harold everywhere with an expression that is a mix of the hungrily adoring and the beadily monitoring. Passing over a fragile ornament with the detached, experimental manner of a cat prodding a butterfly to see it twitch, or wolfing down her supper with the speedy stealth of a scavenger, Hamilton convinces you that here is a girl who has been driven to the edge. She makes you feel, too, that, in her relentless probing of Harold, Hannah is the girl who can remake or break him.Tim Piggott-Smith is also very fine, by turns defensively waggish and avuncular, aggressively protective of his sad little status quo, and disarmingly expansive about the nihilism in his temperament which caused the crash and which now buttresses him in his belief that, though we can talk of things going to the bad, it makes no sense to speak of right and wrong. From the perspective of his quietly devastating climactic revelation, the understated tremors of sexual possibility that have rippled through the atmosphere take on a poignantly ironic aspect.

If the ending hints that what we have seen has all been in Harold's mind, then you can only conclude that he is wasting himself on those humorous columns.n Box-office: 0181-940 3633Paul Taylor. The Governor (ITV), Lynda La Plante's new series, will stand or fall on the performance of Janet McTeer and, after the introductory episode, I have to say that things look a little unsteady. The problem is the strange lumpiness of her characterisation, a baffling combination of imperturbable poise and sheer panic. She has a peculiar tendency to widen her eyes suddenly, without apparent cause.

Actually, it's difficult to think of a circumstance that could account for this expression, but if you imagine someone smuggling live minks in their underwear and being given a playful nip just as they say "Nothing to declare" you will come close. You would be unlikely to entrust her with your house keys, let alone the running of one of Her Majesty's most troubled and violent prisons. Arriving at her new posting, recently the arena for a bloody riot, Helen Hewitt suspects that the "suicide" of a sex-offender may not be all that it seems. Between toughing it out with her sceptical deputy ("Bloody university high-flyer!"), barking orders for replumbing the men's toilet (budget considerations obviously not a problem) and subduing another riot by power of voice alone, Hewitt also manages to penetrate the cover-up, landing the embarrassing details on her superior's desk. To be fair, there are times here where McTeer's darting changes of tone begin to make sense - particularly when her macho front for the warders crumbles in moments of privacy.