BEST OF THE REST
PANORAMA: SALISBURY NERVE AGENT ATTACK: THE INSIDE STORY
BBC1, 8pm
IT was a news story so bizarre and so terrifying that it could have come straight from the pages of a spy novel.
Russia sent an assassination squad to Salisbury to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The father and daughter were poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent, but miraculously survived.
This Panorama special tells the inside story and we’ve been promised plenty of revelations.
With exclusive access to the Salisbury investigation, reporter Jane Corbin hears from front line police officers, the government’s chemical weapons scientist, soldiers drafted in to decontaminate the city, diplomats and intelligence insiders.
She also travels to Russia to speak to friends and family of the former spy Russia wanted dead. And in America she hears from the scientist who helped develop the deadly nerve agent which killed Dawn Sturgess, left four people lucky to be alive and has had an impact far beyond Britain.
GEORGE CLARKE’S OLD HOUSE, NEW HOME
Channel 4, 8pm
HAVING to go through the kitchen to get to the only bathroom in a house isn’t exactly going to kill anybody, but it’s probably not ideal either – some may even be squeamish about the transference of germs.
Certainly the latest couple to appear in this series find it unpleasant, so much so that they’re planning to renovate their Victorian terrace home so that they can move it somewhere they find more tasteful.
George Clarke looks over their ambitious plans, but it soon becomes clear they don’t have the budget to make them work – but you can bet he’ll find a way to help, even if it means a compromise.
Plus, there’s a trip to the Cotswolds where a mother wants to knock together two tiny Grade II listed cottages to create one larger but still cosy family home.