Great expectations for the new year: Television

<i>The Independent's</i> television critic, Robert Hanks, chooses the five programmes he is most looking forward to

No doubt the White Queen, who could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, wouldn't have had much trouble finding six things to look forward to on television in 2001. But when the networks have seen fit to commission new series of Monarch of the Glen and Small Potatoes, how can we cling to any hope about what other plans they have?

No doubt the White Queen, who could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast, wouldn't have had much trouble finding six things to look forward to on television in 2001. But when the networks have seen fit to commission new series of Monarch of the Glen and Small Potatoes, how can we cling to any hope about what other plans they have?

Still, some projects offer serious grounds for optimism. One of these is Channel 4's latest high-profile import from the States, The West Wing, a serious(ish), realistic(ish) drama about wheeling, dealing and spin-doctoring in the White House. The show won a fridgeful of Emmys last year, and has earned column-acres of adulation and scorn - the latter mainly from Republicans who were not won over by the authoritative performance by Martin Sheen of a Democrat president called Josiah Bartlet.

The most attractive-looking home-grown drama, and not just because it has already aroused the wrath of The Daily Telegraph, is Rebel Heart (BBC1), which is set in the aftermath of the 1916 Dublin Easter Rising. It is written by Ronan Bennett, who set off the controversy when he said that he wouldn't necessarily have turned in the Omagh bombers; but in his writing - which includes the novel The Catastrophist and the screenplay for the film Face - he's shown an aversion to seeing moral issues in pure black and white, which is perhaps more to the point. Excellent cast. And title music has been specially written and performed by the Corrs: oh, good.

The latest BBC classic adaptation is Love in a Cold Climate (BBC1), taken from one of Nancy Mitford's satirically inclined romances set among impossibly rich and grand English families between the wars. Comparisons with Brideshead Revisited are inevitable, especially given the presence of Anthony Andrews in the cast; but Mitford, being posher than Waugh, was less inclined to take the upper-classes seriously.

Back in the real world, there is the usual slew of police documentaries, flies on the wall, role reversals and - a growing trend - several self-help series.

The first-ever National Holocaust Day prompts a number of self-consciously serious programmes. Channel 4 offers a six-part German series called The Holocaust, produced "under the guidance of" Simon Wiesenthal - a fact that should guarantee seriousness and attention to the historical record.

Picasso's Women (C4) sounds especially enticing - the sex angle may seem like a slightly cheesy way of approaching the most influential artist of the last century, but, in this case, we have John Richardson, Picasso's biographer, in charge. Still, looking at most of what the channels have in store - the return of Crossroads, new gardening programmes, National Lottery Jet Set - the one essential looks to be "On The Edge" (BBC1): a season devoted to depression.