Jane Austen's six major novels have been adapted for television so often that this particular seam appears to be virtually exhausted. So why not take a look at the author herself and ask why the writer never got married, even though her heroines spent most of their time yearning for weddings? Although it has already been partly anticipated by last year's film, Becoming Jane, this was the theme of Miss Austen Regrets (BBC1) and it provided a tantalising subject, although the question was not answered conclusively.

Was Jane Austen too independent or proud to marry just to save her family from the poverty they endured? Did she consider all the available men to be unworthy of marriage? Or was she simply too cynical and uncompromising, since she was portrayed by Olivia Williams as often rigid and almost callously sardonic? When asked "the true reason why I never chose a husband", she replied with habitual irony: "I never found one worth giving up flirting for." In some ways, Jane appeared as blinkered as her heroine Emma, since she gave bad advice to her niece Fanny (well played as a wide-eyed innocent by Imogen Poots) and managed to conceal from herself her true feelings about such men as the Rev Brook Bridges (played sympathetically by Hugh Bonneville).

The dramatisation assumed that we knew all about Jane and her family, so the background was never filled in properly, and it was frequently difficult to know who each character was. Jane herself was more slender and willowy than she appears in a famous contemporary portrait. Nevertheless, the story kept one's attention for 90 minutes and the acting was impeccable, with manners and even language generally in keeping with the period (although the phrase "Leave her be" was uttered some years before the OED's first citation).

Jane Austen's world was slow-moving and mannered, but her novels showed that it could be seething with drama. By contrast, The Invisibles (BBC1) tries to give an appearance of drama by showing all kinds of hectic activity. Yet it is so full of clichés and so carelessly written that it carries no conviction at all. It stars Anthony Head and Warren Clarke as two former criminals getting together to do "one last job", which (of course) turns into several last jobs.

The plot is as old as the hills and writer William Ivory makes it no more credible by his careless attention to detail. For example, Anthony Head plays an experienced safe-cracker and lock-picker, but Warren Clarke's only talent is to disable burglar alarms and bump into furniture. Why, also, when they escape from a police car chasing them, do the police not look for their car? The series is clearly trying to replicate New Tricks's theme of likeable oldies but these characters are neither likeable nor plausible. The title on my preview tape of the first episode was Desperados (sic) and there is a certain air of desperation about this programme.

d=3,3,1Dom Joly is probably best-known for series like Trigger Happy TV, which played silly tricks on people, supposedly for our amusement. Now he's back with Dom Joly's Complainers (Five), which at least "tries to annoy the people who annoy us". Some of his stunts are still daft and pointless - such as pretending that an estate agent's shop is a restaurant. But it was refreshing to watch him having a go at First Great Western: "the most complained-about rail company in the UK." And he did us a favour by keeping a cold-caller on the telephone while Dom pretended to be torturing somebody.

Dr Pamela Connolly is so self-satisfied - and such a rotten psychoanalyst - that it was good to see her taken down a peg by rock star Gene Simmons in Shrink Rap (More4). He rejected most of her foolish, simplistic diagnoses, and I especially liked the implied put-down when he told her: "Everything is sexual . . . I'm sure your shrink will tell you the same thing."