CORONATION STREET ITV1, 7.30pm

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR WIFE Channel 4, 8.30pm

DAVID Platt is the wormy weasel of Weatherfield, the most despicable character currently operating anywhere in Soapland. Any mention of soap in connection with poor daft Gail Platt's manipulative teenage son is kind of ironic: smirking, permanently grubby David always looks as though he'd benefit hugely from being cuffed round the head with a bar of carbolic.

An oily cross between Uriah Heep, Fagin and every member of McFly, David is currently in a contest with Coronation Street's whispering mindbender, bullying builder Charlie Stubbs. Let's hope last night's sneaky attack by David on Charlie's van leads to a prolonged bout of woe for both of them.

It all adds up to a perfect TV formula.

Two baddies you love to hate, plus a bit of a comic sub-plot in twittering old sweetie-wife Norris annoying Les Battersby, a man who makes Homer Simpson look like Fred Astaire, in colloquial Hungarian: Coronation Street remains in a league of its own.

Will Your Money or Your Wife end up being a show you hate to miss or one you love to avoid? The initial prognosis for its long-term survival does not look good. Your Money orYourWife is meant to be an educational, improving reality show: two parts How Clean Is Your House? to one part House Doctor.

Take a fiscally-active modern British couple, one of whom has amassed vast debts the other knows nothing about. Dismay and shock the financially responsible half of the partnership with a revelation of looming bankruptcy.

Then, over a period of four weeks, teach the spendthrift partner how to claw back the deficit. Restore amour!

Last night's couple were vapid 22-year-old model Kerri - GBP41,000 gaily flushed down the shunky on designer handbags, unwearable shoes and a pair of convertibles - and her way-too-tolerant partner, James, who resembled David Beckham after a year on pork pies.

The duo's guide? Debt-busting City analyst Cesarina Holm-Kander, a woman whose high-powered, scary name wasn't matched by the one thing this kind of show needs if it's to work: a scary, hectoring manner from its central screen dominatrix.

In what was a reasonable start, however, Cesarina delivered her initial lecture with her hair scraped back into a severe bun. In contrast, James's hair was teased six inches above his head and then skewed slightly to one side in a curious new variant on the old-school Bobby Charlton comb-over.

This hair-standing-on-end style should have emphasised how startled and/or enraged James was on receiving the shock news about Kerri's fiscal fecklessness. Sadly for the show's prospects, James didn't seem especially bothered one way or the other.

Ditto Kerri, whose responses to most things varied between blank, quite jolly under the circumstances, really, and totally uncomprehending. Kerri was at her happiest when sent out into an urban street to hand random passers-by GBP20 notes. This was to demonstrate to a smiling Kerri how her profligacy with credit cards was costing her GBP1500 in interest every year. However, as the GBP500 plainly wasn't Kerri's, it's hard to see how this lesson struck home.

Kerri smiled less when required to sell some of her GBP900 handbags on eBay. She refused. She also refused to sell her GBP34,000 BMW.

Cesarina, whose hair was by now down after having been as hot-tonged into submission as Kerri's, was insufficiently annoyed by this refusal to take her advice. Some bits of TV hocus pocus involving a tracking device and computer-monitoring of Kerri's access to her bank petered out inconclusively. Kerri's debt was still reduced by GBP9845 inside four weeks by selling the convertible.

I estimate Channel 4 owes me about a grand for wasting 30 minutes of my life with this drivel.