BEST OF THE REST
THE CHOIR: SINGING FOR BRITAIN
BBC2, 9pm
THESE are heartwarming stories from Britain’s pandemic frontline, but given a musical twist from Gareth Malone.
If there’s one thing Gareth knows how to do it’s form a choir and he has been singing with more than 100,000 people through his lockdown home chorus, broadcasting from a studio at the bottom of his garden.
Now he wants to take things further and get to know some of the choir members, collaborating and song writing.
In this episode he meets frontline workers, working with them to write a song and finding out their personal stories along the way.
It’s all quite emotional. Hannah, 20, a trainee critical care nurse, tells him how difficult work has been, especially being unable to see her parents.
He unites her online with 26-year-old junior doctor Sarah and the pair start writing a duet, battling the usual tech problems.
In the end, expect to have goosebumps. “The goosebumps never lie,” says Gareth.
BAKE OFF: THE PROFESSIONALS
Channel 4, 8pm
IT’S vegetable week, just to make things even more complicated.
“The vegetable needs to be the star of the show!” declares judge Benoit Blin. “But it must taste like a sweet dessert.”
Bring on veggie concoctions like beetroot with chocolate, pea sponge, carrot garnish and pumpkin jam. But will any of it taste any good?
The first challenge is to produce two different types of desserts – layered vegetable cake slices and tomatoshaped desserts.
One of the cheffing teams achieves this scathing review from Benoit: “Wrong beyond belief.”
In the second challenge, the teams must create a showstopper made of choux buns.
It must look like an allotment basket, filled with everything you’d find in an allotment, all made from sugar.
By the end, one chef wants to call her mum. But one choux-stopper prompts judge Cherish Finden to burst into song: “That’s the way, aha aha, I like it!”
Well she had to like something eventually...