IF the Princess of Wales leaves one legacy it will be the apparently bottomless pit of half-baked documentaries that have been made about her. There are two more tonight on World masquerading under the umbrella title Charles vs Diana (World, 9.35 and 10.40pm). The first is Diana: Portrait Of A Princess and the second is Royals: Dynasty Or Disaster? Portrait Of A Princess promises exclusive footage from the Princess' year in self-imposed exile. The documentary was made with her approval and is part of the counter-attack following the David Dimbleby interview with her husband. There is testimony from those 'who knew her well'. The greatest testimony, and this is the rub, comes from an anonymous key source, which might make the cynics wonder exactly how much we can believe.
Andrew Morton is wheeled out for another interview, and presumably to collect another cheque. He is the author of the bestseller Diana: Her True Story. His new books, Diana: Her New Life, has just been published in Britain.
Portrait Of A Princess is more of the same; more in-depth interviews, more remarkable footage and more astonishing, dramatic revelations about the truth behind the headlines.
And do not expect anything new in Dynasty Or Disaster. This has already been broadcast in Hong Kong. Avid Royal-watchers will have seen it all before. IF you watch one programme this evening it should be In The Wild (World, 8.35pm). This is part of a series that World began to show during the summer. Well-known people, English actor Bob Hoskins in this case, get to go looking for the animals they have most often dreamed of seeing in the wild. Hoskins does tigers. You may remember Timothy Dalton doing wolves (he looks like one) and Sir Anthony Hopkins doing lions.
Saving the tiger is an emotive issue to Hoskins. 'It's because we will lose so much more than just a beautiful animal. We will lose the meaning to so many cultures.' Hoskins' commitment to wildlife is strong. He has his own nature reserve in Britain and a long-held fascination for big cats. The programme begins with Hoskins the fire-eater in the circus - one of the many odd jobs he held before getting his break.
One of Hoskins' destinations is a tiger reserve in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he camps in the jungle and meets the mahouts, the elephant drivers who train their animals to stand their ground against charging tigers. Finally Hoskins comes face to face with a tiger himself. 'It's stare stopped me dead in my tracks. Perhaps the tiger is there to remind us we are not the most powerful creature on earth.' THE Viper in Viper (Pearl, 9.30pm) is a car, with the brains of a super-computer, the brawn of a tank and the speed of a jet fighter. Viper was made as a pilot film for a television series that never got out of first gear. James McCaffrey and Dorian Harewood star.
