Even though by the end of the series The Practice had become almost unbearably sentimental, with Dylan McDermott and Lara Flynn Boyle sharing the wobbly-lip honours as one case after another pitted them against one another, now it has finished we are one drama series down, perhaps never to be replaced.
There is nothing wrong with the replacement, the excellent BBC series Trouble At The Top (World, 10pm), but it marks one more nail in the coffin of balanced programming.
The way things are going, ATV World is going to resemble the bastard child of an odd coupling between Discovery channel and ESPN. For us, the audience, this means a healthy but restricted diet of documentaries and sport.
Trouble At The Top does come about as close as documentaries can to drama. The premise is to follow ordinary businessmen and women as they struggle to make their mark. This evening's central character is the charismatic Derek Jones, a documentary producer's dream, who apparently considered a career in the church as a teenager before plumping for business.
As things have turned out, his managerial skills depend on many of the same qualities that would have made him a great preacher: faith and oratory. He has been given a self-styled mission to turn around a humble spectacles manufacturer called Swan Optical into a leader in the British sunglasses market.
His co-directors Malcolm and Roy are present at every turn, both pasty, panicked middle-aged men who sense, but cannot explain, that Derek's personal conviction may not be enough to work the required miracle.
