Even were there not a dead child at the top of the programme, the first episode of ITV's new drama, The Children, would have justified the catchline by which the network has been promoting it: “When adults play, the children suffer.” It was as if the Mail's Melanie Phillips had written the screenplay rather than Lucy Gannon, best known for Soldier Soldier and episodes of Corrie. But this morality tale carried the ache of truth nevertheless. The Children may be the best drama serial ITV has come up with in months, but there'll be droves of divorced parents for whom, suddenly, New Tricks on BBC One is essential viewing.

It is about that pass-the-parcel of loyalties that is played when men abandon their families. Cameron, played by Kevin Whately, his niceness blurring all the time into his selfishness, has left Anne, played by the incomparably visceral Lesley Sharp. Cameron is living with Sue, who in turn was left by Paul, who has had a baby with Natasha. Two children are left out of the game: Cameron and Anne's troubled teenager, Jack, and Sue and Paul's little girl, Emily, whose sinister end punctuated the programme in flash-forwards.

Let's forgive ITV its need to reduce this serious piece to the genre of whodunnit, and see Emily's death as a metaphor for the adults' deepest buried wishes. Whatever they think, these middle- aged adults are led not by their parental love but by their libidos. Cameron is big on afternoon sex sessions, which Sue, played by a wonderfully tense Geraldine Somerville, seems to see as her due after her husband's desertion for “Pneumatic Tits”. Anne too, at 38, is not out of the game. Indeed she is out most nights downing cocktails with her underlings at work and conspiring to bed her boss. The one person who deserves to see some action, Jack, has to content himself with internet porn, for which he is castigated.

When not behaving adolescently, the grown-ups behave childishly. “You are a very peeved peevish person, a VPP,” Sue tells Cameron, a headmaster, in her best baby talk. Over-sexed with one another, when they honour their children with quality time, the parents are over-playful with them. The child actors steal the show: Sinead Michael as the callously vulnerable little Emily, and Freddie Boath's wonderful performance as Jack, the 14-year-old who everyone forgets is still just that. Take away the murder mystery, and ITV would have here a very adult drama.

When in January last year Dispatches broadcast evidence of Islamic extremism being preached in British mosques, a police investigation into its allegations eventually led the coppers to complain to Ofcom about the programme itself. The watchdog cleared Channel 4 and the police and the CPS ended up paying libel damages to Dispatches. Thus vindicated, Dispatches went under cover again. Last night it reported back with evidence that the London Central Mosque, the King Fahad Academy and the Muslim World League, all located in London, were distributing intolerant propaganda originating from Saudi Arabia's theocrats. The programme, I hasten to say, was fairly made, but I would have been more surprised if Wahhabism were not being taught here. Rather than drive it underground and then, excitedly, expose its existence, is it not time for moderate Muslims, and the rest of us, to actually take it on in debate?

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