This week’s best TV
FRIDAY FIRST DATES VALENTINE SPECIAL (C4, 9pm)
VALENTINE’S Day may have been and gone, but love is still very much in the air – or at least it is if Fred Sirieix has his way, for tonight the smooth-assilk maitre d’ and his dedicated team play Cupid for a new round of hopeful daters at the Paternoster Chop House.
They include blonde bombshell Dominique, who is looking for a man as chatty as she is. She’s paired with mortgage advisor Buddy, who is the apple of his dear old nana’s eye, but is ready to head off on a romantic adventure - if only he can find the right person to whisk away.
SATURDAY TROY: FALL OF A CITY (BBC One, 9.10pm)
HOW do you put a new twist on a story that has been around for three millennia?
David Farr does it by retelling the story of the fall of Troy from the perspective of the Trojans rather than, as Homer chose to in The Iliad, the Greeks.
By focusing on the Trojans, Farr also gets a chance to put the relationship between Helen and Paris, the lovers’ whose relationship triggers the war, at the centre of the action – in most versions, they are sidelined following their elopement.
SUNDAY BRITISH ACADEMY FILM AWARDS 2018 (BBC One, 9pm)
JOANNA Lumley takes over from Stephen Fry as host of the British Academy Film Awards, where Hugh Grant, her co-star from Paddington 2, is in the running for Best Supporting Actor thanks to a wildly funny turn as the villain of the piece. The movie is also nominated for Best British Film and Best Adapted Screenplay.
While most of those involved in the evening have no idea whether or not they have a chance of winning, one man is guaranteed to be taking home a trophy – film-maker Ridley Scott, who will receive a Bafta Fellowship.
MONDAY MARCELLA (ITV, 9pm)
IN THE second series of the hit crime drama, we catch up with DS Marcella Backland (Anna Friel) following a grim discovery inside a wall. The body of a child is found, clothed in a school blazer, and Marcella is devastated when she realises the tragic victim is Leo Priestley, a boy who was abducted a few years earlier – and who had been friends with her own son Edward.
Not only must Marcella help her son come to terms with the death of a schoolmate, but she also has to protect her own children from a deadly predator. And it seems her efforts might not quite hit the mark.
TUESDAY MUM (BBC Two, 10pm)
THE acclaimed sitcom returns for a second series. For those who didn’t catch the first run in 2016, it focuses on Cathy (Lesley Manville), a middle-aged woman whose efforts to deal with her husband’s death are charted over a year, during which we got to know her hapless son Jason, his dim but well-meaning girlfriend Kelly, her brother Derek and his self-centred partner Pauline. The only person able to offer Cathy any comfort was her friend Michael, who was clearly carrying a torch for her.
Cathy wasn’t ready to start another relationship – but perhaps now she and Michael will finally get together.
WEDNESDAY THE BRIT AWARDS 2018 (ITV, 8pm)
THE all-conquering Ed Sheeran may have dominated the charts over the past 12 months, but tonight he could well be upstaged by a 22-year-old breakthrough pop star from London.
Dua Lipa, who scored a huge summer hit with New Rules, has earned the most nominations at the 2018 Brits, receiving nods in the British Female Solo Artist, Breakthrough Act, Single and Video categories, along with the night’s biggest award, British Album Of The Year.
Jack Whitehall hosts.
THURSDAY DEATH IN PARADISE (BBC One, 9pm)
THE seventh series of the detective drama concludes with DI Jack Mooney (Ardal O’Hanlon) tackling a locked-room mystery.
Guitarist Billy Springer (Levi Roots) is found dead in his dressing room after playing a reunion gig with his legendary reggae band.
There’s a gun in his hand and the door was locked from the inside, which would point to suicide – if wasn’t for the fact that Billy had earlier told the Commissioner (Don Warrington) he had new evidence about the unsolved murder of his wife 30 years earlier.