The Remake: Clive James

Things go astronomically out of control for Joel Court when Veronica Lilywhite muscles in on the discovery of his star, 'The Smudge'. Not that it was his star - no astronomer gets to own a star, although they might get to have a say in naming it. But Veronica's joyless methods were winning the professional contest. While she arrived at her elegant, seminal discoveries with half-baked mathematics in infuriating Chinese notebooks, Joel was becoming the David Attenborough of Asteroids in his own television spot. Every week the programme took Joel from the bosom of his family to the bosom of blonde research assistant Gael and eventually, Joel's wife simply turfed him out. It was time to navigate the convoluted corridors of the Barbican to the flat of fellow ex-pat Chance Jenolan, a specialist on the other sort of star and bankable enough now to have embarked on a suicidally obscure 'great big bad movie'. So there are plenty of 'stars' about - but one heavenly body shone so brightly that Joel couldn't bear to have it out of his sights. Her name was The Mole...