The very best of the week ahead
Sunday
Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall The Baliem River on the island of New Guinea is one of the wildest waterways in the world. An untamed 300-mile stretch from its source in the Trikora mountains to the Arafura Sea in the Pacific, it still offers a glimpse of stone-age life. Naturalist Steve Backshall sets out on a mission to discover the ancient tribes that live along its banks and meet the dangerous animals lurking in the surrounding jungle. However, the only way to explore these inaccessible hidden worlds is to travel the river’s entire length from source to sea – a feat that has never been achieved before. In this first part of two, Backshall begins his month-long journey inland at Lake Habbema, braving fierce white water rapids in his kayak. Full of pristine wilderness, perilous scrapes and tense encounters, it’s a thrilling adventure with shades of Bruce Parry’s Tribe. Michael Hogan
Call the Midwife BBC ONE, 8.00PM
Series six of the period drama comes to an end with a last-minute wedding. When Barbara (Charlotte Ritchie) learns that her father, a Canon, has accepted a missionary posting in New Guinea, she and fiancé Tom (Jack Ashton) rush through their wedding plans so that he can officiate the ceremony. Catherine Gee
Monday Meet the Lords BBC TWO 9.00PM
Adam Hopkins’s engrossing three-part documentary series has found the upper house of Parliament in transition: grossly overpopulated, battered by public perceptions of corruption and laziness, and in severe need of reform. Yet it also found plenty of willing members to counterbalance the cliché of old buffers turning up just to claim expenses. Serial non-attendees may find the gravy train hitting the buffers, if the likes of Baroness Boothroyd and Lord Blencathra have their way, although Theresa May could help by showing a restraint that evaded her predecessors: Blair and Cameron appointed a staggering 618 peers between them. This final instalment follows the ceremony of the Queen’s Speech, while also tracking the push to mend both the crumbling building and the embattled institution. It climaxes with February’s pivotal Brexit debate. Gabriel Tate
Big Little Lies SKY ATLANTIC, 9.00PM
Liane Moriarty’s novel is given a classy adaptation by David E Kelley, which is bolstered by a terrific cast (Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern). In the first episode, there is a suspicious death at the school fundraiser in the fancy town of Monterey, California. Simon Horsford
Tuesday The Replacement BBC ONE 9.00PM
There have been quite a few unlikely twists and turns in this torrid three-part thriller about an architect whose maternity cover arrangements turn into a living nightmare, but that hasn’t stopped it being fiendishly gripping. We last left elegant Glasgow architect Ellen (Morven Christie) having a late-night showdown with her seemingly psychotic nemesis Paula (Vicky McClure). Tonight’s nerve-shredding concluding episode opens on the climax of that tension-filled tête-à-tête, and another shock revelation about Paula’s background. Suffice to say, it puts the state of her mental health beyond doubt. But, for Ellen, the problem is proving it, and this is not the only occasion on which her claim “there’s nothing she could possibly do that would surprise me now” is put cruelly to the test. Gerard O’Donovan
Inside No 9 BBC TWO, 10.00PM; NI, 1.15PM
Another delicious slice of macabre humour sees Keeley Hawes and Mathew Baynton star as a couple whose world is flipped on its axis by a seemingly chance find in the street. Patrick Smith
Wednesday Mystery of the Man on the Moor CHANNEL 4, 10.00PM
One wintry day in December 2015, a tall, grey-haired man in his late 60s walked into a London train station, The Replacement: Morven Christie bought a return ticket to Manchester and never came back. The following day, his body was found on Saddleworth Moor, near Oldham. Poorly dressed for the weather, he carried few clues to identify him: no phone, wallet, passport or driving licence. Toxicology tests confirmed that he died from a dose of strychnine. For 13 months, his identity remained a mystery. In a world where our every movement seems to be monitored, it’s extraordinary how someone can prove so hard to trace. This procedural film, granted full access to the year-long investigation by the heroically dogged DS John Coleman of Greater Manchester Police, follows his painstaking work to unravel the man’s story and understand his lonely death. MH
The Royal House of Windsor CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
The documentary series recounting the life of our Royal family reaches the Seventies. It examines the Prince of Wales’s close relationship with his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who arranged a secret meeting with the exiled king Edward VIII in Paris, and how the Prince navigated a complicated early love life. CG
Thursday The Last Kingdom BBC TWO, 9.00PM
One of 2015’s more unexpected successes was Stephen Butchard’s adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories novels, telling the tale of impetuous young warrior Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon), born a Saxon but raised a Dane, on a revenge mission against those who murdered his father. On paper, it all sounded a bit post-Game of Thrones, but wholehearted performances, spectacular action sequences and intelligent storytelling raised it if not quite to the level of the Westeros epic, then respectably close. Happily, the second series picks up where the first left off after a helpful 90-second catch-up. Uhtred is heading to Northumbria to reclaim his ancestral lands, while his ally King Alfred (David Dawson) shores up his Wessex power base with an eye to expanding his influence and his faith. Linking their destinies is shifty, unreliable Guthred (The Bridge’s Thure Lindhardt), a slave prophesied by monks to become a great Christian king of the north whom Alfred hopes to spring from his brutal Danish captors. Yes, there is portentousness, self-importance and gratuitous slo-mo, but humour and telling modern parallels, too, in the clash of faiths and cultures. GT
Call the Midwife BBC ONE, 8.00PM
Bionic vet” Noel Fitzpatrick returns to perform more veterinary “miracles”. His latest clients include a black Labrador hit by a car, a Cocker Spaniel with a slipped disc and a portly Basset Hound with buckling legs. GT
Friday Judge Rinder’s Crime Stories ITV, 8.00PM; NOT UTV/STV/WALES
Oh, what a difference a sprinkling of stardust can make to a TV career. Robert Rinder, Britain’s answer to US television’s Judge Judy, might have lolled forever on daytime TV had he not flaunted his footwork on Strictly
Come Dancing. Eager to exploit his newfound fame, ITV has “reversioned” (ie edited down) for prime-time this series that was previously considered so exciting that it was aired in the afternoon doldrums of last summer. Sadly, the low-budget origins remain all too clear in its tabloid-style treatment of real-life cases of crime and injustice. Tonight’s opener certainly has plenty of shock value, telling the sad story of Redditch postman Victor Nealon, who spent 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Rinder, posing in barrister’s gown and bands (he spares us the wig), has little involvement beyond topping and tailing the film with an introduction and summation, and what makes it worth watching are the interviews with Nealon himself. But while the film is good on his uphill struggle for justice, it does little to explore the bizarre circumstances of his conviction, or to hold the West Mercia police officers responsible for it to account. GO
Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World BBC TWO, 9.00PM; NOT WALES
Expect stunning vistas and languorous camera shots, as natural history cinematographer Colin StaffordJohnson journeys along Ireland’s Atlantic coast in this first of a two-part film. Tonight, he focuses on the wildlife and wild places that make the region so captivating. PS