Britain's Missing Top Model (BBC3, 8pm); Was Crippen Innocent: Revealed (five, 8pm); Crash Scene Investigators (ITV1, 9pm)

DESPITE the declaration that "nakedness and wheelchairs don't mix", Britain's Missing Top Model is offering a disabled woman the chance to do a fashion shoot for Marie Claire magazine.

This seems like taking the reality TV idea a bit too far. Even the judges are worried about patronising the eight finalists, who have a variety of disabilities. And there's the problem. How do you compare, say, a paraplegic with someone with one arm?

The competitors will live in a penthouse apartment for five weeks with one hopeful eliminated every few days. Already the judges are in disarray as they look for not just a model, but a role model for the disabled.

One argues that you can't tell from looking that one contestant is deaf. Another feels they need someone who can do the job and that a deaf person shouldn't be penalised for not looking disabled.

It's personality, not looks, that count.

If the series makes us reassess our attitude to the disabled, I suppose it'll have done some good, but the feeling these girls are being exploited because they're "different" won't go away. Its heart is in the right place, but turning it into a competition makes me uneasy.

The contestants behave like any other reality show participants. They cry, they bitch, they declare it's all too much for them and say "I want this so badly".

As the first one is sent home, one judge is still muttering loudly: "It's the totally wrong decision." So, according to the Revealed programme, was convicting Dr Crippen of murdering his wife, Cora, and burying her body in the cellar.

Forensic scientists have reopened the case. New tests on old evidence, they claim, prove that he didn't do it and that the decomposing body in the cellar wasn't even that of his missing wife.

The evidence is persuasive, leading his cousin to ask the British government to pardon Dr Crippen. He was convicted in one of the first cases using forensic science, the sort of case an early 20th Century CSI team would have investigated.

John Trestrail, a forensic toxicologist (that's expert in poison to you and me), had his doubts, as dismembering a body doesn't fit with the psychology of a poisoner.

There's talk of the police planting evidence, of a postcard allegedly sent from the US by his wife being a forgery, and the fact that Crippen was caught thanks to the new-fangled Marconi wireless. The ship on which he was fleeing to the US was equipped with it, leading to his arrest when he set foot on dry land.

Genealogists trace Cora's nearest living relative - a great niece - for a DNA sample to match against slivers of skin from the remains in the cellar that have been kept in the Royal London Hospital historical pathology collection. Scotland Yard, the meanies, refused a request to hand over strands of hair and bloodstained cloth from the case in their possession.

The results show that the body wasn't Cora. Or even a woman. The corpse was male. Trestrail reckons it was there before Crippen moved into the house.

It's a detective story with which TV's many fictional cops couldn't compete.

Real life road accidents don't seem like the basis for a decent series but Crash Scene Investigators proves not only thorough but interesting.

Cameras follow two investigations in detail - a marine knocked down on a motorway and a cyclist hit by a lorry. We see them collect evidence, as well as talking to parents of the dead soldier, wife of the injurist cyclist and even the driver whose car collided with the pedestrian solider.

Mostly it's a sensitive look at the painstaking investigation following an accident.

There are no crazy car chases, just policemen doing their job. Seeing a policeman preparing to visit a dead man's parents to relay the bad news, you can only be glad that you didn't have his job.

8:31am Tuesday 1st July 2008

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