Channel Hopping

BLUR/OASIS: THE BRITPOP YEARS Today, 9pm - Sky Arts

TO be brutally honest, I never really liked either Blur or Oasis. The best thing about either of them was that bit on Father Ted where the laddish Father Damo (Joe Rooney) challenged Father Dougal (Ardal O’Hanlon) on which he preferred. I’m firmly of the opinion that the only decent thing to come out of Britpop was Pulp, so I would be far more inclined to stick them on the iPod tonight than watch this nonsense.

ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE Tomorrow - BBC1, 9pm

A WELL-HEELED philanthropist Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor) is murdered and her adoptive son is arrested. Eighteen months later, however, it emerges that someone else may have been responsible. Agatha Christie mystery starring Bill Nighy (right) and Luke Treadaway.

DAVE ALLEN AT PEACE Monday, 9.30pm - RTÉ1

ACCORDING to the RTÉ blurb, this hour-long drama – a co-production with the BBC – looks at comedian Dave Allen’s rise to fame and ‘how his life and work was shaped by the tragic loss of his father, his brother and half of a finger’. With Aidan Gillen taking the lead role (left), the cast also includes Pauline McLynn, Tommy Tiernan and Fast Show stalwart Simon Day.

PUTIN, RUSSIA AND THE WEST Thursday, 9pm - BBC4

THIS four-part documentary begins in June 2001 when the newly elected George W. Bush met Vladimir Putin for the first time. We are told national security advisor Condoleezza Rice who was at the meeting recalls how Putin delivered ‘a prophetic warning about Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Taliban’ just three months before 9/11.