Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along comes Flood (ITV1). Like all ITV drama, it was sponsored by Sainsbury's "Taste the Difference" but I couldn't taste any difference from most of the disaster movies ever made. It was as full of stars as the night sky but even such experienced actors as David Suchet, Tom Courtenay (pictured), Joanne Whalley and Robert Carlyle would have problems uttering lines like "Evacuation procedures have been activated".

For four hours, we watched people floundering about in water and often surviving against all odds, without even their hair or clothes dripping to suggest the ordeal they had endured. As the Thames Barrier failed to withstand the flood, there were innumerable scenes of people being swept along by floods of water, which were more realistic than the computer-generated images that looked just like . . . well, computer-generated images.

As in all such films, nearly everyone involved had family problems, although (naturally) the flood sorted out most of them and reunited estranged families and lovers. Tom Courtenay's character had a PLAN to stop the flood (incidentally, a plan of stupefying lunacy) and he bravely gave up his life to carry it out. Meanwhile, his son (played by Robert Carlyle) realised he should never have left his Canadian wife. Well, it was a co-production between Britain and Canada - although South Africa also seemed to be involved somehow.

So many familiar faces! And then came Midnight Man (ITV1), a new drama series starring that over-familiar boyo James Nesbitt. ITV's Drama Commissioner seems to excel at choosing dud dramas and filling them with well-worn actors instead of looking for new talent. Nesbitt appears as a journalist who has a phobia about daylight, so he only goes out at night to steal people's rubbish. Sometimes he doesn't even take the rubbish bags home but (unwisely) searches through them in the street. Like the characters in Flood, he has family problems (he is separated from his wife and daughter) but he manages to uncover nasty goings-on involving the British secret services. The first episode was as full of holes as a piece of Belgian lace.

There is plenty of real drama in music competitions, as we were reminded by BBC Young Musician of the Year - 30th Anniversary (BBC2). We saw a cellist's string break and a violinist's chin-rest fall off (three times) in this documentary about a contest which has become "part of the cultural landscape". It all started when no Brits reached the finals of the Leeds Piano Competition in 1975. Humphrey Burton and a colleague in the BBC's Music Department decided that something must be done to raise the standard and profile of young British musicians, and the first BBC contest was televised in 1978.

The first winner was a trombonist - Michael Hext - and he was among the interviewees in this interesting survey of the event's 30 years. The contest has been criticised for putting young people under pressure, but Charles Hazlewood made the point that "the grim reality of a competition" is probably unavoidable for any would-be classical soloist. And it has given opportunities to such musicians as Emma Johnson, Nicola Benedetti, Nicholas Daniel and Adrian Spillett. Adrian was the first winner in the percussion section, which was (shamefully) not introduced until 1994. The programme showed that there have been some embarrassments - like Humphrey Burton interviewing a tuba player and saying "You're sitting nursing this enormous instrument between your legs."

In its early days, Young Musician of the Year was on a terrestrial BBC channel, where viewers might come across it and discover music new to them. Now the semi-finals are shunted into the ghetto of BBC4, where instrumentalists from each of the five sections have competed this week. You can see the five winners playing concertos this Sunday in the "Grand Final" on BBC2. Why "Grand"? Presumably so that you don't think it's the Little Final or the Insignificant Final.