Intrigue in the lives of lovers and men

A Thing Called Love, BBC1

City of Men, BBC4

LOVE is nothing but trouble. It’s the key to happiness but it causes great misery. It makes everything clear and everything complicated. It lifts you up and dumps you down, and whispers in your ear before kicking you in the teeth.

It’s a right old mess and it forms the backdrop of most drama and literature and movies. **A Thing Called Love immersed itself in the ruddy stuff, with long, musing soliloquies, soft strings and the whole rose-between-grinding-teeth number. And it’s set in proletarian Nottingham.

Here, the lovers are lads and burdz. The central character, Gary, is a romantic idealist, and indeed a painter and decorator, who thinks too much for his own - and anyone else’s - good ("lovers and madmen have such seething brains," as Shakespeare said).

His burd, Mel, enviously watches all her pals pairing off into marriage, and they all - gals and guys - seem part of one big extended social group that only really happens in Tellyland (or on islands).

The lads all play footer together, while the women make fondues and do the whole where’s-this-relationship-going number (altogether, lads: "Yeah yeah").

Gary believes in getting things right, in taking his time. "For all the fish there are in the sea," he says, "there’ll only be one whose kiss you take into eternity." See what I mean? He’s nothing but trouble.

After showering their immaculately honed bodies together (let’s face it, if you’d landed a part that involved showering, you’d be down the gym every day for weeks before filming, too), three of the lads go clubbing. One is married, one has just got engaged, and one is Gary. They meet three gals. Back to their place. Bang, bang, phut. The phut, of course, being Gary. He doesn’t want to cheat on Mel. His erstwhile date is aghast: "Not getting a shag on a Saturday night! It’s just: I look forward to it all week. Well, you never know what might come of it, do you?" She turns out be rather sad and thoughtful. Gary gives her a chaste kiss, which turns into a snog, which turns into the Chattanooga hoo-choo.

Gary’s guilt next day is dreadful. He takes it out on his mates: punching, apologising, lecturing. But then he goes and ruins his own planned engagement because the one-night bonk has plugged him into something. He tells his tearful intended "It weren’t sex, Mel. It were more where it took me in me head. It made me realise how things could be. Should be, you know. It wasn’t sex, Mel. It were breathing." Hmm, I wondered what the noise was.

At the same time, his chiding of Robbie for cheating on Paula leads to that engagement being cancelled too. So the good guy is mucking things up for everyone. The idealist is causing more misery than the shaggers. A novel idea, but not the point. For we were led to believe that, in the end, it would turn out right for Gary and those he had "saved".

Intriguing stuff, and the characters were sufficiently interesting for folk to tune in next week. *A Thing Called Love combined gritty realism with unlikely scenarios. Car mechanics don’t really have serious discussions with each other about love. They just don’t, OK?

And times have changed. Burdz don’t all work with animals or in factories making nylons. They run industries, and nut people in the face. They treat men the way that men used to treat them, in love as in everything else. Or did the feminist revolution (now counter-revolution) fail in Nottingham?

But I’m quibbling. I accept the unlikely community and the beautiful bodies and faces of all involved. I accept the fact that it was set in Nottingham. Indeed, I applaud it. England north of Watford is a real place, and more like Scotland than Sussex.

Rio, too, is a real place. Too real for comfort. **City of Men, a spin-off series from the acclaimed film, *City of God, depicts the Brazilian city’s slums with integrity and humanity.

It follows the lives of Laranjinha and Acerola, two 13-year-old boys struggling through life and school among streets controlled by drug gangs. Here, guns are an obsession, and trainers a sign of status. God is everywhere, guys call each other "brother", rats slither about in open sewers, and people get shot every other day. It makes Nottingham look like paradise.

But where there’s life there’s hope, and all that. There’s even the possibility that love and loyalty may find a way here, too. Then the trouble will really begin.