Television - Peter Taylor uncovers jihadists in Waziristan - and Wembley. By Andrew Billen The New al-Qaeda (BBC2)

As the police continue the hunt for the bungling four who failed to set their bombs off in London on 21 July, there is still, at the time of writing, no sign of the most wanted man in British television. I refer to the documentary-maker Adam Curtis, whose BBC2 series The Power of Nightmares argued last year that al-Qaeda was a fantasy whipped up by American neo-cons. It was a comforting thesis that at once allowed us to sleep more soundly in our beds and to feel a bit radical and ill-disposed towards Tony Blair. I admired the iconoclasm of the series and the almost subliminal way it pursued its case by means of arcane cinematic imagery, but wrote at the time that the flaw in Curtis's argument was that Islamic terrorists did not need to belong to a SMERSH-style network to be deadly. It did not really matter if al-Qaeda was a made-up name or not. Now that the bombing of London has become a reality, the punchline of Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects springs to mind: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was to convince us that he did not exist.

As we wait for Curtis to come out of hiding and tell the bereaved what he really meant, we can at least thank him for spurring Peter Taylor on to make The New al-Qaeda (Mondays, 9pm). With-out naming him, Taylor is on Curtis's case from the off. His first two episodes begin caustically: "There was a view that the threat from al-Qaeda was a nightmare dreamt up by politicians to keep electorates in their thrall. Even before the London attacks it was not a view I shared."

Whereas Curtis hid behind old film clips, Taylor's face is frequently featured in expensively lit but gory close-up. Curtis is the sarcastic clever clogs in the cutting room. Taylor is the old-fashioned gumshoe, tackling shady Osama sympathisers in their dens, finding latex gloves at the farmhouse where the Madrid bombers welded mobile phones to explosives, and eyeballing General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan on the vexed question of whether, all things considered, he actually wants to be the Muslim leader respon-sible for capturing Bin Laden.

Taylor's thesis is not the complete antithesis of Curtis's. Both agree that, since the Taliban were bombed out of Afghanistan, Bin Laden has not commanded and led a coherent organisation. Where they differ seriously is in their assessment of where al-Qaeda stands now. Unlike Curtis, Taylor believes its nebulous new form is even more dangerous. In Monday's opener, Jihad.com, Taylor interviewed General John Abizaid, the US commander-in-chief in Iraq. Abizaid explained that the "virtual realm" was al-Qaeda's last safe haven. It is more than a bolt-hole, however. Its websites are both recruiting agent - if you want to see Abu Musab al-Zarqawi behead an American, the footage is only a mouse-click away - and online instruction manual for bombers. The internet, said Taylor, is the new Wild West and it cannot be tamed.

Nevertheless - and to his evident surprise - Taylor discovered a guy running such a platform who was more than happy to give an interview. At a hotel near Wembley Stadium, Dr Mohammed al-Masari, a Saudi exile given sanctuary by the British government, looked on approvingly as Taylor viewed the suicide bombing of three Black Watch soldiers online. Offensive? No, what al-Masari found offensive was Tony Blair's having left "the boys there to die". Egged on, General Abizaid said these websites should be "moved against", leaving Taylor suggesting darkly that this would contravene the old-fangled First Amendment. I doubt it. Babar Ahmad, the British Muslim who set up the notorious azzam.com, has already been indicted in the States for giving "material support" to terrorism and is facing extradition.

Taylor's bosses were probably happiest with this opening film - TV executives still think the word "cyberspace" trendy. But his account of the Madrid bombing, in the second programme, is the stronger film, revealing with terrible relevance to Britain how al-Qaeda terrorists are prepared to adopt western dress and mores as part of their cover. The Madrid ringleaders were a playboy drug dealer, an enthusiastic estate agent and a mobile telephone engineer. The name for these beardless jihadists is takfiris: remember it. The final programme, which is on Pakistan, is also excellent, with Taylor out on ops in Waziristan, where Bin Laden may still be hiding.

Taylor built his considerable reputation as the television reporter who did more than any other to explain Irish terrorism. Here he does the same for al-Qaeda, though he seems more intolerant of its aims and philosophy than he ever was of the IRA's. I'll leave it to Curtis to say something silly and suggest he is building up the threat to ensure his own future employment, but a few thoughts do occur to me. First, if al-Qaeda plots by means of e-mails, it should not be long before the technology and the laws exist to intercept them. Second, the terrorists are no high-tech professionals out of 24: they use planes and dynamite and mobile phones. Third, our record in arresting these losers is actually rather good: even Madrid was almost averted.

Having seen these three doomy programmes, I still managed to fall into a nightmare-free sleep.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

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