Hotel Babylon

Watching this new series of fivestar shenanigans is like drowning, slowly, in a vat of Asti Spumante. It's delicious and cool and frothy, but a little voice at the back of your head keeps telling you that it can't really be doing you any good. And all those bubbles do get up your nose after a while.

Tonight Honor Blackman has a ball camping it up outrageously as a batty movie siren while Tony Robinson takes a break from peering into muddy holes on C4 to play a man who once stole a gangster's wife. And as Anna goes into labour tonight, you might want to compare her childbirth scene with that of Maria's over on Corrie. Anna sailed through her pregnancy in pencil skirts and killer heels and the birth is no less glamourous.

But the series might be about to lose a little of its glitz as actress Emma Pierson and her baby check out tonight - once the identity of the baby's father has finally been revealed. You will be relieved to hear that it's not guest star Michael Winner.

Last night's TV: Hotel Babylon

Hotel Babylon, in a puff of vapid nothingness, is back on our screens. But what's this I see rising above St Paul's Cathedral? A plume of dark smoke? An attack on London? Is there a new seriousness to Hotel Babylon? Are they taking on the big issues, like terrorism? Hey, but guess what a terror attack on London is a good excuse for? A party!

Abi Titmuss 'Hotel Babylon' Interview

Former nurse and glamour girl Abi Titmuss has become a nun. No, the Celebrity Love Island and lads' mag favourite hasn't given up flashing the flesh for a life of celibacy and solitude, but she can be found donning a habit on this week's episode of Hotel Babylon.

Hotel Babylon, BBC1's celebrity-sprinkled, glorified soap, is back for a third series. So far, this stilted comedy drama about preposterous shenanigans in a five-star hotel has proved remarkably popular. The programme may be in for a struggle, though, now that it has lost its best star, the sexy Tamzin Outhwaite. Max Beesley, her erstwhile henchman, now promoted to hotel manager, has never exactly oozed leading-man charisma, and he failed to electrify in last night's opener.

Still, there was something sneakily enjoyable about the episode, which pivoted on the unlikely possibility that vain receptionist Anna (Emma Pierson) cared about fair-trade garment manufacture. Although it was the incidental trivia rather than the plotline that provided the amusement. "Sorry I'm late, I had an early morning dental appointment," said head of housekeeping Jackie (Natalie Mendoza), as she tumbled in, dishevelled, to a meeting. "Oh you poor thing, did you get drilled?" fired back Anna.

Perhaps Hotel Babylon's secret is that it offers a parallel universe where we can laugh at people who behave with a shamelessness we secretly rather envy.

For trashy fun, 'Hotel Babylon' is worth checking into

A review of Hotel Babylon from America.

Hotel Babylon (BBC1, not Scotland) was so terrible it made my teeth ache, until I sensed something familiar in the undigested nuggets of unnecessary information, non sequiturs and general bumpiness. It was Crossroads with knobs on.