The West Wing Nine, 8.30pm
Mightily impressed with the frenetic energy of the opening episode of E.R. , I have watched very few others unless duty has called. All those medics gossiping about the piddling problems of their colleagues tend to make one reach for the sick bag, but as an exercise in crowd control the opener was magnificent. Overworked doctors, surgery on the run, severed hands, plus a society dame willing to pay $180 to have a hangnail treated by a handsome doctor. A building had collapsed. The hospital was jammed with the injured, but the indelible image is of a ruffian in a black and red uniform striding past an open surgery door and scowling inside. One blip and a great TV moment was gone. The West Wing has similar energy but is very different. The title refers to the business end of the White House, though the heavily drilled passing parade soon irritates. But here are good stories and they offer a towering performance by Martin Sheen as President Josiah Bartlet. So, Bartlet's a Democrat from New Hampshire (where all the presidential hopefuls trek in the February snows), but judged by the delicious first two hours, this series strives to be apolitical. The Oval Office is too small and too accessible, while according to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, a White House correspondent for seven years, the lobby is made to look huge it is not and the Roosevelt Room has no glass on the doors. But Blitzer gave the nod to PROTUS, the acronym for the President of the United States. Just wait for the injured PROTUS to appear and rejoice in his dressing-down of a delegation of do-gooders. Is it really like this? The West Wing is the creation of Aaron Sorkin, who covered the same territory in The American President but obviously has more to say. The cast wavers between the sensational John Spencer as Leo McGarry, Chief of Staff; just watch him give the Vice-President a serve to Allison Janney, superbly cool as C.J. Cregg, the press secretary, down to the Rob Lowe, wretchedly miscast as Sam Seaborn, the deputy communications director, who seems to be politically agile but personally stupid. Niggles aside, this is a satisfying start to the most intelligent series from America since The Sopranos. Why has it taken 16 months to get here?

THE truth about the American presidency is no doubt stranger than this fiction. Well, we know that's true, don't we ... we have the DNA testing to prove it. At no stage in the multi-Emmy winning West Wing (Nine, 8.30pm) do we see the leader of the free world come within metres of either a White House intern or a cigar. Combinations involving the two are never attempted. By the end of this two hour first episode the president has held no key briefings while simultaneously evacuating his bowels.

Nor does he arrange for surreptitious meetings with famous actresses for brisk sex. He does not appear to record phone calls, or authorise any activity that could remotely be described as criminal. The words ``evil empire'' never pass his lips. Josiah Bartlett, the President of the United States inhabited by Martin Sheen, is clearly a work of the imagination. Yet when he first walks in the room, when he sorts as issue, when he cuts to the quick of a building crisis and offers the tough course to a humane solution, we sense the character combination of kings: massive political intelligence coupled with overwhelming charisma. President Bartlett has both in spades. He's got it goin' on. Thus we have something a little special at the core of Nine's new statesman soap - a drama that takes as its basic text the heated, frenzied and desperate working, and private lives of the handful of people entrusted with the stewardship of the US. West Wing builds on those strengths with a televisual technique schooled in E.R. and Hill Street Blues - a theatre of near chaos in which the riveting bones of the obvious action are given muscle through convincing, complex characterisation. And, so, as deputy communications director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) tangles with both policy and a pot-smoking call girl, as chief of staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) bites the knees off the vice president and schmoozes the religious right, as near hysterical political consultant Mandy Hampton (Moira Kelly) totals the suspension in her BMW, we are slowly drawn in, then hooked. This is probably the best thing that's been on telly all year, but such is the Nine network's high opinion of its audience's capacity to discriminate, it has held this little gem for an out of ratings silly season tryout. Program executives were no doubt bemused by West Wing's lack of gardening and recipe segments but we, the audience, need not be deterred. It's riveting, addictive stuff. In the closing minutes of tonight's episode, the Pres must chose how to respond to an act of deadly terrorism. He is determined to act: ``I'm going to blow them off the face of the Earth, with the fury of God's own thunder,'' but we must wait until next week for the result - the security of the planet just grist to our cliffhanger. How could you not come back? The great joy of television is its capacity for accidental but inspired juxtaposition.