Chancers BBC1, 10.35pm Seven Days That Shook EastEnders C4. 9.00pm

The great, the good, and the grisly have had a fine old time with Chancers. If righteous indignation happens to be your hobby, this was the series for you. Drugs, drink, neds, bad words, and a TV crew: all the ills of the world from the comfort of your armchair. Some people have not stopped to think once, far less twice, before popping their tops.

What did this six-parter purport to show? To begin with, 21 young men of the sort for whom sharp shocks and the neighbourhood watch were invented. These were lives at the end of the line before the first important stop. The Airborne Initiative and its Borders camp were their last chance. It was this or prison. As TV goes, you would have to call that an interesting choice.

These were not pleasant young men. Between them they might have mustered a crayon sketch for a brain and no-one pretended otherwise. Yet, because the series did not attempt to conceal the nature of its subjects, what is known as an ''outcry'' duly went up. People saw what they wanted to see.

They missed two things. First, a careful, even delicate, film by Julian Kean. Secondly, they missed the real, preposterously difficult work of the Airborne Initiative: not merely to rehabilitate; not simply to teach lessons; but to show these young hoodlums how they might acquire consciences. Think about it: where would you start?

Last night, nine survivors reached the end of the road. With the effortless facility that has marked their lives, they almost cocked it up on the

50km ''Big Trip'' across rough country. Yet lost, cursing, on the dodge and off the wall, they somehow met the challenge. ''That's what we're here fur,'' said one, unconvincingly, ''to overcome aw oor f****** problems

n' that.''

The series ended with the news that only a handful among the group that began the course have, in fact, done any such thing. At ''graduation'', Alan Rutherford, chair of the Airborne trust, said: ''We now believe that we've got a formula that works.'' It didn't work for Brian, though, who is now back in prison. It didn't work for Zander, currently on remand. But what's the criterion for success? Twenty-one upright citizens or one chancer redeemed? This was journalism to a purpose.

It's more, encyclopaedic volumes more, than you could say about Seven Days in the Life of EastEnders. Let's call it parasite television. First, the BBC launches a soap that seems destined to fail. Then the Sun takes ''a strategic decision'' - I'm not kidding - to throw its resources behind the thing. Then the Beeb begins to feed the tabloid maw, starting with a

judicious leak revealing

that Leslie Grantham has been a convicted killer in

''real life''. Drug hells and suicides among the cast follow. Then C4 makes a cheap, pointless, lip-smacking documentary about the whole sorry mess.

Put it this way: I know who I would dispatch to the Airborne Initiative.