Saturday, 9th February 2008 - 00:00CET

Best on Television

BATMAN RETURNS
Today, Italia 1, 1.55 p.m.

Batman faces two new enemies in Gotham, the Penguin ? a warped and deformed individual who is intent on being accepted into Gotham society. Crooked businessman Max Schreck is coerced into helping him become Mayor of Gotham and they both attempt to expose Batman in a different light. And also Selina Kyle, Max's secretary, who is transformed into Catwoman, a mysterious figure who has the same personality disorder as Batman, after Max throws her from the top of his building. Batman must now attempt to clear his name, all the same time deciding just what must be done with Catwoman.

THE SONG OF BERNADETTE
Monday, Rete 4, 3 p.m.

The Song of Bernadette is a reverent recounting of the life of St Bernadette of Lourdes. As a teenage peasant girl growing up in the tiny French village of Lourdes in the 19th century, Bernadette experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary in a nearby grotto. At least, she believes that she did. The religious and political "experts" of the region cannot accept the word of a silly little girl, and do their best to get her to renounce her claims. Bernadette's vision becomes a political hot potato for many years, with the authorities alternately permitting and denying the true believers' access to the grotto. No matter what the higher-ups may think of Bernadette, there is little denying that the springs of Lourdes hold some sort of recuperative powers for the sick and lame. Eventually, Bernadette dies, never faltering in her conviction that she saw the Blessed Virgin; years later, she is canonized as a saint, and the Grotto of Lourdes remains standing as a permanent shrine.

JUST MARRIED

Tuesday, Italia 1, 9.10 p.m.

Tom Leezak and Sarah McNerney are a young couple unexpectedly swept off their feet after their first meeting. Tom is a late night radio traffic reporter whose good looks, blue collar lifestyle and unrelenting passion for sports makes him the ultimate alpha-male. Sarah is a beautiful, free-spirited writer whose family is as wealthy as it is snobbish.

Following their wedding, the happy couple sets off with the highest of hopes and ideals about love and marriage, on what they expect will be the perfect vacation in Italy. But thanks to Sarah's wealthy ex-boyfriend and a relentless string of bad luck, the happy couple experiences a honeymoon from hell that tests the limits of their young love.

ALONG CAME A SPIDER
Thursday, RaiTre, 9.05 p.m.

Spider is a strange and lonely man. After a long period in a mental institution, he returns to the streets of London's East End where he grew up. The sights and sounds and the smells of those streets begin to awaken the deeply buried memories of his childhood. At the centre of these memories is the great trauma of losing his mother, which occurred, he believes, because his plumber father murdered her in order to move a prostitute into the house in her place.

As Spider claws through the falsehoods he has woven around himself, he begins to arrive at the truth about his childhood and about his mother's death. The truth will take him to the very limits of his faltering sanity.