Coronation Street ITV1, 7.30pm and 8.30pm
Criminal Justice, BBC1, 9pm

As the late Fred Elliott, Coronation Street's own Foghorn Leghorn, might have put it: "Ah seh we allus knew daft Liz shouldn't 'ave wed gormless Vernon Tomlin, ah seh we allus knew."

Daft Liz's tearful confession that she should never have married the erstwhile Rhythm Rascal and full-time waster has long been a-comin'.

Ooh, Liz chuck, you should never have enlisted the irresistible power of Tamla Motown to stop Vernon fleeing Weatherfield!

Eeh, yon heartstring-tugging sixties soul compilation tape the silly mare made for cheeky-chappy cabbie Lloyd to play while driving the mutton-chopped mook to the airport. If only she'd sought to halt Vernon with Runrig or Deacon Blue!

But that's classic soaplife: folk never change, they never learn. And by gum, now Becky the feckless slattern is behind t'bar at t'Rovers, I reckon I can hear Fred's words echoing from beyond t'grave.

What's that, dead Fred? "No good will come of Becky being a barmaid, ah seh, ah seh no good will come."

A world of no-good enveloped hapless young Ben Coulter as Criminal Justice began its five-night run. Ben's chance error was hooking up with a sultry, smouldering, sloe-eyed temptress who was mad, bad and dangerous to know.

A devil-may-care siren, she persuaded Ben to take her on a nocturnal seaside thrill ride: an ocean of crazed impulsive pleasure opened at Ben's feet and he dived into its welcoming blackness head first.

Ben's roster of sins started slowly: joining the girl in a couple of ice-creams and then gleefully running off from Mr Whippy's van without paying. Next, he was necking the pill she offered, glugging vodka shots and being egged on to join a nutsoid knife-play session that culminated in Ben stabbing the girl in the upturned palm of her hand.

Contrarily, this jolt of pain got the girl's motor running, sparking instant wild sex, after which Ben fell asleep, awaking to find the girl - whose name he'd never learnt - lying dead in bed, stabbed through the heart.

Thereafter, as Ben Coulter stumbled blindly into the grinding clockwork mechanisms of the justice system, painfully-thin actor Ben Whishaw succeeded in imbuing his character with little-waif-lost misery, emphasised by the all-in-one police forensics white paper suit he was given to wear: it resembled a Babygro.

You remain pretty sure Ben's innocent, despite the fact that his every action since finding the girl's dead body points to his guilt. She was called Melanie, it emerged. Her death remains as much a mystery as her behaviour in life.

Ben's police nemesis, Det Supt Harry Box, is an intriguing puzzle, too. Rheumily played by Bill Paterson, Box is a fair-minded maverick old school 'tec who trusts his nose for a wrong 'un. Until now.

What's really on trial in Criminal Justice is the law's bored pantomime process, as summarised by Ben's cynical, world-weary, yet perversely caring legal-aid solicitor, Ralph Stone.

Shabby-looking Stone stifled his client's urge to be honest by advising he proffer "No comment" to everything.

"They come up with their stories,"

he counselled. "We come up with ours. The best story wins. I don't want to be stuck with the truth I need to be flexible. Winning is everything.

Forget the truth. Shut up until you know enough not to."

If you know what's good for you, you'll shut up and glue yourself to Criminal Justice till Friday's denouement.