Linda Herrick: The late grates

Telly insomniacs face a dilemma. Do they trawl around the channels in search of something that will amuse and stimulate, and therefore keep them awake, or do they look for a programme so dull it will tip them into the land of nod? I believe I have found the latter in The Invisibles (Mondays, TV One, 11pm). On the face of it, quite promising, made by the BBC, with a respectable cast led by Anthony Head (who valiantly played the Prime Minister in Little Britain) and Warren Clarke, the famously grouchy detective of Dalziel and Pascoe.

But it is so formulaic. They play long-retired safe-crackers Maurice and Syd, two parts of a once-famous trio of crims known as The Invisibles because, after a series of high-profile heists, they disappeared - to the Costa del Crime.

Now, feeling decrepit (in actual fact Clarke is 61, Head a sprightly 55), they have inexplicably retired to a Devon fishing village. Because this alleged drama has to be about something, they "keep getting pulled back in", as Al Pacino once lamented, forced by highly dubious events to go back to their burgling old ways.

That these two (the third guy has died) were ever regarded as whizzes in the crime world is asking too much of the viewer as Syd in particular is a prize bungler, an irritating device probably intended as humorous. Maurice - Mo for short - is the only engaging character in a production as ultra-slow and laboured as the young thicko (Dean Lennox Kelly) who runs the local pub.

What a coincidence! He turns out to be the son of the third wheel in The Invisibles and so joins the team.

But mission accomplished. It sent me off to bed, to dream.

On yet another restless night, I flicked to The Chase (Wednesdays, TV One, 11pm), also a British series featuring a bevy of vaguely familiar third-tier actor faces. This one is about a family of Yorkshire vets but All Creatures Great and Small it ain't. After about two minutes, I feared I was in another branch of Emmerdale, and found shut-eye.

If there is any late-night series thats going to give you the heebie-jeebies, it's the latest series of Nip/Tuck (Mondays, TV2, 10.30pm), long past its expiry date. Christian, who has breast cancer, is vomiting one minute and shagging anyone who'll let him the next. Sean, pretending to be crippled after a knife attack by that mad woman who used to be in Cagney & Lacey, is doing the same with a very young student. Revolting.

The appearance this week of comedian Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show) as a white woman trying to be a black rapper who wanted an op to give her a "Beyonce ass", was desperately unfunny.

Nor was the scene where a woman stood in the lobby and cut off her breast with an electric carving knife because she thought she was going to get cancer. How depraved and brutal this series has become. The stuff of nightmares, as it turned out.