Tonight's television highlights...

9pm, ITV: Footballers' Wives

Amber Gates heads for Italy to stand by her man, Conrad, currently braving a Mediterranean jail hell with two of his closest Earl's Park team mates.

The three stars have been 'fitted up' on 'roasting' allegations involving non-consenting birds in a pizzeria and grill near the home ground of Conrad's former club, Juventus.

At the airport, Amber emerges from First Class and courageously runs the gauntlet of paparazzi the tears coursing down behind her Versace shades (a present from darling Donatella).

Those same tears are tumbling on to Amber's vintage Westwood corset and are threatening to wreak havoc with the electrics of her limited-edition Gucci palm pilot. Will Amber's distress obliterate her crucial record of the private telephone number she was given for a crack lawyer, Conrad's only hope of being granted early bail?

Will it also wipe out the mobile number Amber needs if she is ever to contact the only personal shopper who can get her a Hermes Birkin bag?

10.30pm, BBC2: Number Ten

The Beeb launches its much-heralded new Westminster drama series with a flourish. Episode One opens with Fleet Street tabloids gloating over the latest allegations surrounding Prime Minister Francis Bland, his wife Aimee, and their tea lady Karen Carling. The hacks are avidly chasing the story that Karen's embittered ex-boyfriend, Paul Fester, is bringing out a book which he says could topple the troubled premier.

Fester claims that in between retouching Aimee's Color Endure highlights (covering 90 per cent of all greys) and organising cut-price Ryanair flights for the Blands' Tuscan mini-breaks, Karen has been applying embrocation to Francis's persistent aching back during private massage sessions in the Downing Street boudoir. Can Bland survive the storm? Perhaps. Number Ten's spin doctors are going into overdrive to point out that Fester is a known liar and convicted fraudster. They stress that Bland needs regular applications of Fiery Jack to help relieve the arthritis, a hangover from his nights sleeping rough - before he made it into politics - and that Aimee was well aware of what was happening under her Westminster roof.

She was in the next room at the time, waiting for Karen's expertly-applied French manicure to dry so was in no state to do the massaging herself. But the papers know Karen is a big fan of Botox. What will they make of her motives when they discover the First Lady's new trout pout?

Channel Five, 9pm: Suicidal Species on Self-Destruct! Live! with Anneka Rice!

Game show in which amateur naturalists compete to save animals seemingly hell-bent on bringing about their own extinction.

The controversial series continues despite furious criticism from twitchers who phoned in when last week's opening episode failed to secure the survival of the rare Weeping Warbler. The team closest to saving the bird for future generations took a wrong turn in their wired-up four by four, and ran out of petrol on a B-road in Woking. By the time the competing team arrived at the correct location, they found only feathers - the depressed bird had thrown itself into the path of a passing tom cat.

Tonight's competitors must use only map co-ordinates and a series of rhyming clues in their rival bids to track down the last surviving pair of Languishing Lemmings and counsel them before the endangered mammals can leap to oblivion from an undisclosed clifftop location near Brid.

Updated: 11:10 Wednesday, March 10, 2004