QUEEN VICTORIA’S CHILDREN, BBC2, 7.30pm, SATURDAY 5 MARCH

SHOULD one be cold and aloof with one’s children in order to maintain one’s regal image? It’s hardly becoming of a Queen, especially one who ruled two-thirds of the globe, to have paint on her face, sticky hands, a harassed expression, and pockets full of hankies and dummies. These days the Royals are sickeningly keen to show pictures of themselves crouching playfully on the lawn with their already redundant children but such larks would not have been permitted in haughty Victoria’s day.

As this documentary, subtitled “A Domestic Tyrant”, shows, Queen Victoria was not a warm and cosy mother, which is strange because her era was the one in which domesticity and motherhood was sanctified. The middle-class mother was labelled “The Angel In The House” and the monarch, with her brood of children, was supposed to be the epitome of fine British womanhood, a mother to whom every other woman could look for inspiration.

But we see she was a control freak and a bully, dictating whom her daughters may marry and forbidding any kind of freedom.

STAG, BBC2, 9pm, SATURDAY 5 MARCH

THE killings continue in tonight’s episode which certainly has more horror and gore than last week’s.

The bedraggled group, the groom still in his fluffy pink stag costume, are held at gunpoint by the gamekeeper – the “tartan psycho”. With his shotgun aimed at their frightened faces he demands to know what they’ve done with his dog. They protest their innocence. Is this what prompted his rampage? A missing mutt? (Although it is a spaniel we’re talking about and I can easily imagine becoming a “tartan psycho” myself if anyone harmed one of those madly adorable little dudes.)

Under pressure, the group start to splinter with Cosmo betraying his friends to the gamekeeper. They’re bankers, they earn more in an hour than you do in a year, he says, “I’m just a TV exec! Kill them!”

The gamekeeper leaves to search for his dog, ordering the party to stay put but they immediately barricade themselves in and then crack open his old bottle of single malt. We mustn’t annoy him, pleads little Ian. “That ship might have sailed,” he’s told.

When he returns they panic and fling forks at him. “What the actual f*ck?” he says in what is certainly not a Scottish accent. Someone new has wandered into the chaos.

THIRTEEN, BBC2, 10pm, SUNDAY 6 MARCH

“I’M Natascha Kampusch!” That’s what the girl said when she finally escaped the Austrian cellar she had been held in for eight years.

This new series begins in the same fashion: a young girl escapes the house where she’s been held captive for thirteen years and runs to a phone box where she punches 999 and shouts, “I’m Ivy Moxam.”

But that’s not quite enough. The police are suspicious of her, not immediately believing she is the famous missing girl. “Pickup of white female,” reports the cold copper who comes to her rescue. “She’s still claiming to be missing person Ivy Moxam.” Soon the detectives watch her from the interview room, debating if she’s a trickster, and they won’t reunite her with her family till they can prove her identity.

Poor Ivy, looking rather like a traumatised Kate Bush, can hardly believe the cold treatment and that she’s supposedly “alleging” to be Ivy.

Describe the house, they challenge her. How many rooms? “I only saw one. The cellar,” she replies.

When she is finally reunited with her family even her own sister doubts her identity and soon the police find evidence which seems to contradict her story.

DOCTOR THORNE, STV, 9pm, SUNDAY 6 MARCH

DOWNTON Abbey is hardly cold and here’s STV with a new flouncy period drama in its Sunday night slot.

Starring Ian McShane and a wonderfully icy Rebecca Front, and adapted by Downton’s Julian Fellowes, Doctor Thorne is based on an Anthony Trollope novel. I haven’t read any Trollope but know he was dazzlingly prolific, churning out 47 novels after a day’s work at the Post Office.

And I wonder if his novels were known for their humour or light-heartedness as this isn’t a period drama which takes itself too seriously. Men are scoundrels and women are scheming and heartless and calculating, strapped into impossible corsets and draped in roses and feathers.

It opens with McShane’s character challenging Doctor Thorne to a fight as he has sullied his sister’s honour. “I did not know your sister and honour were acquainted,” Thorne remarks. He is punched to the ground and killed.

Twenty years later, the illegitimate child of the deceased Thorne has been raised as a lady by Thorne’s compassionate brother but her questionable birth threatens her chances of a happy marriage, particularly when her prospective mother-in-law is the imperious Lady Arabella (Rebecca Front) who demands her son marry into money.

REVIEW OF THE WEEK

I WINCED when Sky sent me a preview copy of Dogs Might Fly (Sunday, Sky1) because, let’s admit it, the title is ridiculous and the accompanying blurb even more so: “Jamie Theakston presents a programme in which 12 unwanted and abandoned dogs from across the UK take part in an experiment to find out if they can be taught how to fly a single-engine aircraft.”

Well, how silly! TV is full of tiresome talent shows where dafties try to become singers and now we’re going to propel poor little dogs into similar indignities? Let them snooze and chew and roll on the carpet but don’t force them into a TV competition to see which of them “has what it takes” to become a pilot. Besides which, it’s bloody obvious dogs can’t be pilots so let that be an end to the nonsense. I looked down at my own wee pup who’s still trying to come to terms with being buckled into the back seat of the car, never mind a cockpit. No.

But then I watched the show and within minutes I was loving it. The whole idea of dogs putting on goggles and leather jackets and calling one another Biggles as they head for the horizon is a silly gimmick, of course, but it’s just there as the basis for a very entertaining and enlightening series about dog behaviour and how we treat our furry pals.

The episode began in a dog home. A team of animal experts were touring various animal shelters in order to select candidates for “flight school” and dogs of the right size and temperament were released from their kennels and put through a series of playful tests to see if they could handle confined spaces, heights and turbulence. As the wannabe pilots frolicked in the fields, the show made the important point that, although these were rescue dogs (and many were “brindle Staffies” - the ones with almost no chance of finding a new owner), they were all keen, friendly and energetic and so it was practically an advert for your local dog home. Take a stroll down to the pound, it seemed to say, and check out these little pilot dugs! Look how good and clever they are! They’re not nippy, sad or smelly. They’re just dogs who’ve been cruelly treated, or whose owners have passed away, and they’re just dying for tickles and playtime! I assume dog homes across the country were besieged with enquiries after this show went out.

So behind the silly title of this show was some real substance. Dogs are good and clever - even the maligned Staffies who are so often trained by heartless fools to be aggressive “status dogs”. One trainer reminded us that the Staffordshire terrier used to be known as the “Nanny Dog” as it is so good and protective with children. Shame on those who take these good animals and breed them to fight and snarl.

Soon the canine candidates were chosen and they all went off to “flight school” in a convoy of cars – with their wee heads poking out of the windows, naturally, to catch the breeze. Out of the twelve chosen dogs, one of them will hopefully learn to fly a plane, and we can rest assured that they will all be going to new “forever homes” when they finish training.

This series shows us what dogs can be if trained and treated well. Hey – they might even fly!

When the drama Murder (Thursday, BBC2) was first broadcast in 2013 it won a BAFTA for Best Single Drama and two Scottish BAFTAs for Television Drama and for its writer, Robert Jones. Now it has returned with three new stand-alone episodes.

The first was shown on Thursday and was set in Peebles, a pretty little town which most writers of hard-hitting crime drama would understandably overlook, because what horrors could occur in such a beautiful setting? With those nicely tended river banks where the dogs play, and with its cute shops selling fudge, chocolate buttons and ice cream?

A body is hauled from the Tweed but the victim didn’t die by drowning; he was stabbed in the chest.

This series takes the opposite approach to other crime dramas such as Happy Valley, which feature various subplots. Murder disdains the idea of subplot and instead sticks rigidly to one murder case. Instead of having additional story strands branching out which supplement the story and enhance the main characters, the idea here is to zoom in on one case and, in place of subplots, have different viewpoints. We have one murder, one dead body on a slab, but everyone touched by the case reacts differently and has different suspicions, theories and grievances.

Closing in on one case and never flinching from it provides a strange level of intensity and forces the viewer to act as the jury. A lesser drama might paint a very obvious “baddie” for us to boo at, but this unique format is far too clever and subtle and it treats the viewer like a grown-up.

But TV couldn’t maintain this stream of good, funny, intense and enlightened programming. Someone had to rock the boat and, funnily enough, the boat-rocking was done by a cruise ship. The Cruise (STV, Thursday) is a new documentary series set on board a gigantic luxury ship, the Regal Princess. Having been in Venice recently where these hideous stark-white monstrosities barge into the delicate city to leer over her rooftops and gradually damage and degrade the place, the cruise ship seems to represent nothing but tastelessness and excess.

The cameras follow the staff and passengers of the ship as she heads across the Baltic from Copenhagen to St Petersburg. I accept I was already biased against these “floating palaces” but all my prejudices were confirmed. Indeed they were summed-up perfectly by the award of a “frequent floaters” crown to the company’s most-travelled passengers.

I wonder if a horror film has been set on a cruise ship? I can only think of dramas like Titanic or The Poseidon Adventure but it seems the ideal location for a gory, appalling zombie flick. Look out for those Frequent Floaters! They’re gonna destroy Venice!