Ultimate Force ITV1

Apply Immediately BBC2

How To Be a Prince BBC1

Camilla: The Uncrowned Queen C5

J K Rowling: The Interview BBC2

'The first series of Ultimate Force is now available to buy on video or special edition DVD,' said the continuity announcer at the end of the first episode of the second series of same. You don't want to meet the kind of person who might be tempted to purchase a boxed set of Ultimate Force DVDs: never mind special edition, think special needs.

But it's presumably good news for the nation's Ross Kemp fans (who they?) and lovers of the kind of old-fashioned lunkhead drama which involves a lot of shooting and shouting ('We're in the shite, over, do you read me? Copy that, bravo two zero X-Ray, Gamma-Ray, Air Force One Catch 22. Yes That's right, S.H.I.T.E, sir. Oh God, Sergeant Bird's a goner, sir, better send in the clowns sharpish... '), all delivered with a light, dramatic undertow of glossy homophobia, xenophobia, racism and sexism in which the token female necessarily cops it in the final frame (that'll teach you, young lady, for calling yourself a captain and trying to be ballsy in the face of a bloke with a shooter the size of a missile launcher). All of which probably isn't, let's face it, Observer readers' cup of Earl Grey, not that that's enough to stop me.

Kemp, you will recall, was once Grant Mitchell, Walford's tortured gangsta-publican and brother of Phil. He was an evil meathead but apparently we loved him so much that ITV thought it worth offering him one of those briefly fashionable golden-handcuff deals.

Still, a few years have now passed and having realised that Kemp is marginally less versatile an actor than, say, Amanda Burton, there is the feeling that ITV might have called time on his glittering solo career even as they let him go out in the blaze of glory that is the Wednesday Night Blokes Slot (but only when there isn't any football).

In short, on Wednesdays, when Lunkhead's missus goes out to an Ann Summers party followed by some Chippendale-stalking with her mates, Ultimate Force provides an hour's worth of something easily digestible for Lunk to consume pizza and beer in front of while gently grunting and scratching his pit bull.

Kemp is the absurdly-named Henno (no-I-don't-know-what-it's-short-for-either) Garvie, a sergeant in the SAS who wears camouflage make-up that makes him look like an angry mint humbug. Given he spent most of the episode on a grubby old tub of a boat, the only way he stood any chance of blending into the background would be to have worn Tin Man fancy dress. Nonetheless, even makeup cannot disguise the fact that Kemp is metamorphosing into Buzz Lightyear, but without the irony and charming self-deprecation. He has three facial expressions: Very Angry, Slightly Less Angry and Merely Contemplating The Possibility of Anger, plus three attractively co-ordinating vocal inflections: Bark, Barking and Aggressive Whispering. If he ever smiles it looks as though he's passing a particularly uncomfortable stool.

The plot hinged around Garvie's unit of Special Forces Lunks (and Lunkette) attempting to storm a suspicious boat moored suspiciously in Southampton and full of suspicious foreigners speaking heavily accented Esperanto. Unfortunately his unit laid waste to most of them before it was revealed that they were in fact undercover French Special Forces attempting to infiltrate a so-called gang of 'Turkish Organised', which, it was pointed out, would probably improve Anglo-French relations no end.

'Even we aren't allowed to just go and shoot anybody,' Garvie observed while he raised a glass to his fallen comrades in the friendly SAS local, the Frog and AK47. Eyebrows were raised at this point, though you'd think they'd be good enough to warn you about the downside of indiscriminate violence when you joined the Special Forces.

Lots of people, Lunks presumably, moan that there's not enough butch stuff on telly - too many makeovers and not enough mass murders - so it was brave of BBC2's career-trading show, Apply Immediately, to try and bridge the yawning chasm by helping a former Welsh dairy farmer on his way to his dream job as an interior decorator: tractors for Lunk to look at and soft furnishings for the missus to coo over.

Which would have been fine if it hadn't been almost painfully unwatchable. Poor Neil Snape was the fall-guy in a story that was perhaps meant to be gently comedic but, for all that it had a happy ending, was actually quite cruel. Unlike Faking It, which at least helps participants to transform themselves into classical conductors, drag queens and club DJs, Apply Immediately just opens a few doors and lets them get on with it. Watching sweet, naive, ruddy-complexioned Neil (teeth like prehistoric standing stones, smart casual shirt and slacks) in a meeting with Zandra Rhodes to discuss design ideas for the café in her fashion museum, you wanted to punch the producers

When it came to his deadline, Neil sensibly did a runner from this pink-haired Camilla Parker Bowles-alike and her fancy foppish friends.

Neil had once visited the Ideal Home Exhibition, enjoyed looking at his mother's interiors magazines and had installed a nice new kitchen and bathroom in his cottage, but it was transparently obvious that if asked to tell the difference between Luis Barragán and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen Neil would have been forced to take the Fifth.

Neil spent half his life savings on a set of new teeth which made him look like a gay farmer and the other half living in B&Bs while he toured the country looking for work. Eventually the BBC took pity and introduced him to an upmarket kitchen-creator of infinite kindness who persuaded Neil that while design might not be quite his thing, cabinet-making just could be. The good news is that Neil ended up with a job doing something he was really good at (which, I guess, is more than many of us manage: I, for example, am merely killing time as a TV critic before being invited by the US Navy to retrain as a Top Gun while Ross Kemp's dream is to play an ugly sister in panto at Weston-Sniper-Mare), but the bad news is that within the first 60 seconds of the programme you knew that Neil had simply been sent to amuse us with his yellow brick road journey from the farmyard to the big bad city and, if he was lucky, back to the kitchen department of his local B&Q. I'm glad he did so much better than that, but it didn't stop it being painful to watch.

Apparently the heir to the throne's heir turned 21 yesterday which, given that it clashed with a certain major international publishing event, might be the last time Wills is ever outshone by Harry. Every channel has done its bit for William but the BBC, in How to Be A Prince, at least tried to have fun with the tired old royal documentary genre by comparing his upbringing with princes past, even as it employed Penny Junor to remind us, yet again, about the time William slipped some tissues under the bathroom door and told a weeping Princess of Wales to 'please stop crying, mummy'.

I think I've heard this story - usually from Junor - as often as I've seen Ross Kemp knitting his brow. One day, perhaps, I shall bounce my small son on my knee and tell him about the beautiful fairytale princess who couldn't stop crying and the sad little boy who would be king and the ugly witch who had made her cry in the first place. Though these days Camilla Parker Bowles's rehabilitation is so advanced she can be described by the editor of Harpers and Queen, during Five's Camilla: The Uncrowned Queen, as 'petite and pretty'.

On Thursday a feverish nation watched Paxman ask J K Rowling (petite and pretty) the big questions we all wanted answering: Are you richer than the Queen? (No.) Do you feel guilty about being incredibly rich? (Yes.) Isn't the Harry Potter merchandise slightly out of control? (Possibly, but you should have seen some of the other stuff they wanted to make...)

Everybody in the world will have read the book by this morning, so given there's no point in mulling over possible plot developments let's concentrate on J K herself (richer today to the tune of roughly 30 million big ones): drily funny, charmingly self-deprecating, completely at ease with Paxo and with the glossy sheen and very high maintenance hair of an incredibly rich person. When told that Order of the Phoenix is longer than the New Testament she observed: 'The Christian fundamentalists will probably accuse me of being more verbose than God.' Long may the Ultimate Force be with her.