Have you seen the trailer for dear Bianca's return to EastEnders (BBC One)? It is thrilling, and features the “Jackson Five” (Bianca and her now four children), with the ginger princess herself belting out, painfully flat, the Jackson 5's “I want you back” as she and her brood jive through Albert Square. Most of the characters seem happy to see her, bar Peggy who looks as if she has just stepped in something.

Gillian Richmond, the writer of last night's episode, daringly segued Frank Butcher's funeral and Bianca's return, with the vicar at the crematorium about to eulogise Frank with a “He was a...” followed by Bianca, shouting “Dirty old man” as she barrelled out of a bloke's terraced house with binbags strewn around her.

Pat decided Frank's funeral would be an East End affair... so horse- drawn carriage, hideous floral displays and Dot Cotton on everyone's shoulder, as doomy as Death itself carrying a scythe, dispensing homilies guaranteed to make the grief-stricken that little more depressed.

On Monday, Pat and Peggy sadly stopped snarling at each other and became a nice old pair of dears caught up in convincing the least plausible gay couple seen on any drama EVER to go through with their civil partnership ceremony. Then, last night, in another episode that seemed out of time, Frank Butcher was dead and Pat was sallying forth across the Square going on about a “knees-up”. We got the first “Rick-aay” not from Bianca, but Pat, a pistol-sharp “Rick-ee” to be precise. Sid Owen looked as hopeless as he did years ago (saddled now with Melinda, a sub-WAG shrew who nevertheless has already perfected her own grating, “Rick-aay”). Bianca's trade-marked tendecibel “Rick-aaayy” will no doubt be deployed at a pivotal moment.

Making sandwiches, Pat and Peggy forgot they were friends and snarled anew. Peggy told Pat the idea of her and Frank having sex was “not a pretty sight”; Pat was a “stupid, fat old tart”. Pat said Frank had come to her because he wasn't “getting enough at home”. Then the panto started. Peggy wheeled out her catchphrase: “Get ahhhhht my pub.” Pat replied, “With pleasure”, and then told Peggy it had been hers and Frank's pub once.

“You bitch!” Peggy cried and slapped Pat. “You cow!” Pat cried and slapped Peggy.

Huh? They've done this before. They keep doing this. Is it a music hall turn? Can Pat and Peggy either be friends or enemies and can each confrontation please not end, with “You bitch”/SLAP/”You cow”/SLAP.

Janine (Charlie Brooks), the Square's best villainess, returned, shod in spike heels, both up to no good and grief-stricken over her dad's death. Her nose was visibly twitching, smelling money. As “Francis Aloysius” went to join his soapmaker, and as assembled lips quaked, he got “the music”. Rarely awarded, “the music” is a little bit of instrumental, signifying a major emotional event, which swells before the theme tune. But somehow this was Bianca's, not Frank's, episode. Patsy Palmer powers every scene she is in: welcome back to the silver parka.

Agggh. What is it with Robert Peston's raggedy, querulous intonation? “LONdon IS the CAPital of CAPITAL” the BBC Business Editor said/screeched at the start of Super Rich: The Greed Game (BBC Two), which was supposed - I thINK - to be about how London is rolling in money. But we're all in a credit crunch, so while the super-rich can afford to buy Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull, the rest of us are stockpiling Dairylea and remain mystified by hedge funds.

He shovelled loads of figures into the mix which meant nothing, blethered on about sub-PRIME BORROWING and JACKPOT CAPITALISM and then, walking like a crab, sideways down pavements, revealed that he didn't know where all the money for everything was coming from. However, there were self-congratulatory clips of his finest moment - Mr P had broken the Northern Rock story on the 10 O'Clock News.

Peston went designer shopping and found bags for £8,500 and heard that a rich person had bought a Premier League footballer to play football with their child and that some people were customising submarines. He exclaimed squawkily at news of each extravagance. Suddenly, the curious magic of Robert Peston began to work on me. NO, REAlly.

Out of the Box

“Devastation Street” Coronation Street promises of this Sunday's episodes, with a picture (on my preview disc) of David Platt framed by licking flames. Cripes, hide, you think: he's going to burn them all down. What he in fact does is go mad with a pole, occasionally smashing something. And then... well, you'll have to wait and see. But the Devil Child's “devastation” is slightly underwhelming.

Gosh. You may have thought (had you seen it) a bizarre blancmange of loud lewdness and bad interviews but Lily Allen and Friends is coming back for a second season. “Lily is a star,” said BBC Three chief Danny Cohen. “She has developed astoundingly well as a TV host in just a few weeks and has established herself as a firm favourite with the young audiences BBC Three targets.”

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