Ghosts In The Machine BBC4, 9pm

THE supernatural has a long history on British television. Many still recall that early episode of Play School when Jemima was hurled across the studio by an irate poltergeist.

Ghosts In The Machine takes a look at how ghosts have been portrayed on the small screen down the years, revisiting controversial shows like Derren Brown's Seance and 1992's Ghostwatch which convinced thousands of viewers that Michael Parkinson was possessed by a poltergeist. He wasn't. He was possessed by an emu.

The programme also celebrates classic ghost stories like The Stone Tape, concerning a team of scientists who move into their new research facility, a renovated Victorian mansion with a reputation for being haunted, and Whistle And I'll Come To You, in which an old professor sparks off all sorts of ghoulish goings-on when he discovers an old whistle half buried in the grounds of an ancient cemetery. Both stories are ideal bedtime fare for the under-fives.

The documentary also examines the recent explosion of interest in the paranormal. How did television become the medium of the medium?

Contributors include the aforementioned Brown; Jane Asher, who starred in The Stone Tape; Kenneth Cope, the dead half of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased); Yvette Fielding from Most Haunted, pictured, the Living TV show in which the action always somehow happens just a couple of feet off camera; Mark Gatiss who starred in and wrote last Christmas' BBC4 chiller Crooked House; Sarah Greene from Ghostwatch; Jonathan Miller (Whistle and I'll Come to You); and Bill Paterson (Sea of Souls).