Tonight's episode of Millennium (Pearl, 10.30pm) is called The Beginning and the End. If only it was, but unfortunately this is only the beginning of a new series starring glum old Frank and his visions. It starts where we left off last time, with cuddly little daughter Jordan safe in her father's arms, but lovely wife Catherine stuffed in the boot of yet another psychopath's car.
Poor Frank. The one thing above all others that he is afraid of is that the evil of the age will encroach on his happy little family in the form of a nutter with a sick plan.
In fact, the only reason we have Catherine and Jordan as characters is to serve exactly that purpose, to make Frank's agonies personal.
Those fears are much easier to relate to than a general dread of strangers with alarming ambitions to maim other strangers.
Millennium doesn't just tune into these fears, it fans the flames. And that is what is most distasteful about the whole series. Unless you happen to be a sect member who believes the end of the sinful world is nigh, the chances are you will agree that the really scary things about the end of the millennium are world recession, unemployment, global warming, and even, at a paranoid push, the plots of wealthy Saudi dissidents. Not the bogeyman creeping in and stealing your wife and kids.
There are plenty of very talented, hard-working people in the Hong Kong service industries, but apparently not enough of them, otherwise the tourist association wouldn't have to hire film stars to appear in TV spots asking us to be nice to other people.