Having offended the evolutionists and the evangelists, I am now probably going to offend some of the owners of the seven million dogs in Britain by confessing that I'm not mad keen on dogs. As a child I was nervous of them, and I still am.

Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs (ITV1) made me slightly more nervous about dogs, not less. He said that "genetically speaking, the dog sleeping on your sofa is more than 99 per cent wolf". He went to see some wolves and even nuzzled up to one of them but they still looked dangerous, although Martin's reaction to wolves was "Really beautiful!" And when he watched a man's Jack Russell dogs killing rats, the owner revealed that one of them had eaten his daughter's pet gerbil: "It's the nature of the dog."

Martin Clunes stressed that we shouldn't anthropomorphise dogs but, when he introduced us to his black Labrador, he called him "My boy: the son I never had." Nonetheless the programme included some interesting observations - for example: "Pedigrees are actually a recent invention; very few dogs can be traced back more than five generations." Clunes suggested that dogs are "the most diverse species on the planet", because they have been genetically modified by man. Why worry about GM foods and GM crops when there are GM dogs?

I suspect that Hugo Blick is a genetically-modified version of Alan Bennett. He keeps writing monologues for television - just like Bennett's, except that they aren't always as good. He co-wrote the superb Marion & Geoff with Rob Brydon but he also wrote Up in Town, some less successful monologues for Joanna Lumley (for whom he also wrote the rambling "sitcom" Sensitive Skin). His latest project is The Last Word Monologues (BBC1), a three-part series starring respectively Sheila Hancock, Rhys Ifans and Bob Hoskins. The plots were mostly predictable, and Hugo directed his own scripts, so he is to blame for the restless switches of scene and character which vitiated the first two episodes. In the second, Rhys Ifans (as a Welsh farmer) started by apparently talking to a webcam for a dating agency but then he moved to a field and a barn, so it didn't hold together. However, the programmes made viewers keep their brains switched on.

The new six-part serial Mutual Friends (BBC1) is an example of brain-switched-off telly. It traces what happens to Carl's two friends, Patrick and Martin, when Carl commits suicide. Carl had been having an affair with Martin's wife, Jen, which results in much bad feeling and causes Martin to get help from Patrick, who is an irresponsible philanderer. The story is basically about some not-very-nice people behaving not-very-nicely towards one another: hardly a laugh-aloud situation, especially when some events are quite unbelievable.

Such lightweight drama may be acceptable as undemanding entertainment but whatever happened to TV plays that got you thinking? For example, in 1994 there was Donna Franceschild's Takin' Over the Asylum, a six-part drama which BBC4 is currently repeating. Its cast included Ken Stott and David Tennant, and it made some good points about sanity and insanity. I urge you to catch future episodes.

d=3,3,1Thankfully, thoughtful drama is not entirely dead. This week brought us My Zinc Bed (BBC2), adapted by David Hare from his stage play. It was wordy but literate and thought-provoking: a love triangle with a difference (two of the three protagonists were vulnerable to alcoholism). Jonathan Pryce starred as Victor, a manipulative businessman whose wife Elsa (played by Uma Thurman) is an alcoholic. The triangle is completed by Paul (Paddy Considine) who is employed by Victor and falls in love with Elsa. Alison Graham in the Radio Times dismissed it as "yawningly talky and boring" but there is room on television for intelligent drama which isn't about policemen or hospitals and doesn't rely on stereotypes. Ideas and human interactions can be just as dramatic as frenzied activity.