Evening Standard (London): PICK OF THE NIGHT

Sex Traffic 10pm, Channel 4

TO US girls about town (well, I'm a girl about the suburbs, really, but you get my drift), a miniskirt and calf-length boots might be a suitable outfit to go out on the razz with our female friends. It's the kind of ensemble that makes us feel confident and sexy.

But when the central characters in this shocking new drama about the sexual trafficking of girls in Eastern Europe wear miniskirts and boots at the behest of their sleazy employers, they look frightened, and a long way from alluring.

Their clothes are a symbol of oppression, not freedom, trapped as they are in an exploitative industry, in which they are bought and sold by men who force them into sordid sexual encounters.

Anamaria Marinca (above) and Maria Popistasu star as Moldovan sisters Elena and Vara, who leave their rural home on a promise of jobs in London and pots of dosh. But no sooner have they got into the car to take them to their future than their passports have been seized and they find themselves caught up in the sex trade.

Abi Morgan's screenplay, based on realliferesearch, does not hold back in presenting the brutality of the girls' situation, as they are pushed around, forced to undress in order to be sold, or - more nastily - raped by their latest pimp.

Director David Yates (State of Play) contrasts these harsh, depraved images with the opulence of wealthy America, as the girls' story intertwines with that of a US private-security company working in Bosnia. He also manages to portray sexual acts without gloss or titilation - the drama is about the exploited, but then you feel the actors are not.

Marinca and Popistasu, newcomers to TV acting, are are tear- inducingly believable, and John Simm also puts in a suitably frustrated performance as an idealistic charity worker.

Brilliant. May stay in your subconscious until its conclusion next Thursday.

Big Art Challenge

7.30pm, Five

Evening Standard art critic Brian Sewell (right) is on gloriously acerbic form as a judge in this competition which will award Pounds 10,000 to Britain's best grassroots artistic talent.

The series begins with art's answer to Pop Idol-style auditions: a roomful of paintings, installations and performance art in London.

(Or "village fayre rubbish", according to Sewell.) Ten artists selected from this heat will join 30 others for a later semi-final. These 40 will become 10, and then there's a live grand final you get the picture. At least, the winner hopes you do.

The Frank Skinner Show

10pm, 11pm, ITV1

Forget Parky; the real battle for chat-show supremacy is between Jonathan Ross and Frank Skinner. Both shows feature grownup humour and both are taped the day before transmission for added topicality. Skinner returns to ITV1 either side of the news (presumably banking on inheriting its second-half audience from the London weather forecast), chatting to Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, who talks about his role on the West End stage in The Producers.

Holiday Showdown

9pm, ITV1

What does the advert for Holiday Showdown say? "Interested in displaying stereotypical traits on national television"?

Anyway, here's a new series of the show that makes families with opposing ideas of what makes a good holiday share contrasting vacations. Gravel-voiced Fiona Dixon-Box (left) and her well-heeled family like skiing in the French alps; Penny and Paul from Blackpool like a back-to-nature African island.

You can guess the rest

Horizon

9pm, BBC2

Did your lottery numbers fail to come up again last night? All may not be lost, especially if you're a swot. This programme has the tantalising subtitle Making Millions the Easy Way, and follows the attempts of brainy types to beat casinos at blackjack. Professor Ed Thorp devised a method of card-counting in the 1960s that got him a grant from the mafia. These days, students operating as teams have coined it in. Pay attention.

SOAP BOX

Emmerdale 7pm, ITV1

Notebooks at the ready, please, ITV bosses - idea for a new crime series: Alan Turner, Sleeping Detective.

Drug-addled and bedridden he may be, but big Al (Richard Thorp, above) has an idea of the whereabouts of ex-girlfriend Shelly, and his daughter Steph's role in her disappearance. "She's killed her," he slurs. Get that man a job in the Soap Police.

EastEnders 7.30pm, BBC1

Don't Darren and Demi Miller have any real mates?

We know they are socially dysfunctional, but they are 13 - surely they should be winding each other up or loitering in shopping malls, rather than hanging around exclusively with one another. They must have some pals - from her condition, we assume that Demi knows at least one boy