The very best of the week ahead Today
Howards End BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Oscar-winning American screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan was perhaps an unusual choice to adapt a turn-of-the-century British novel about class divisions, but he has turned EM Forster’s dialogue into sparkling, flirtatious conversation and has given his characters depth while avoiding caricature. Two pivotal events in this second episode set in motion the tragedies to come. Ruth Wilcox (Julia Ormond) has died, and her family is appalled to discover that she made a last-minute bequest to Margaret Schlegel (Hayley Atwell). Meanwhile, the do-gooding Schlegel sisters’ meddling in the life of lowly clerk Leonard Bast (Joseph Quinn) send him down a destructive path. Vicki Power
Britain’s Cycling Superheroes: The Price of Success
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
This documentary sees the architects of Britain’s cycling achievements, Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton, defend themselves against accusations of doping. VP
Monday
Elizabeth & Philip: Love and Duty
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
To mark the 70th wedding anniversary of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, Kirsty Young presents this respectful portrait of the couple. Young traces their story from the moment in 1939 when, on a visit to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth with her father King George
VI, the then 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth first set her eyes on the dashing young cadet Philip Mountbatten. Their subsequent marriage in 1947 is recalled as the most glamorous event in times of great postwar austerity. Most affectingly, a handful of good citizens who also tied the knot that year fondly remember their own courtships and enduring relationships.
Gerard O’Donovan
Labour: The Summer That Changed Everything
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
This eye-opening film follows four Labour candidates through Theresa May’s snap election and its aftermath, assessing the key role played by Momentum. GO
Tuesday The A Word BBC ONE, 9.00PM
It would b be nice if Peter Bowker’s lovely family drama received t the attention that it deserves. From its starting point last s season, looking at the effect th that five-year-old Joe’s (Max V Vento) autism had on his family, the show has spread out its v vision to examine the wider relationships amo among those characters wh while continuing to sho show how Joe, now sev seven, deals with the ch challenges of life. This is a drama attuned to the everyday rhythms of life and filled with recognisable moments and personalities, from Christopher Eccleston’s well-meaning but blunt grandfather Maurice to Morven Christie’s prickly Alison, determined to do right by her son regardless of the personal cost. This episode sees Joe adjust to his new school, while his older sister Becky (Molly Wright) attempts to deal with the fallout from the end of her relationship. Sarah Hughes
The Truth About Muslim Marriage CHANNEL 4, 10.00PM
Academic Myriam François presents this interesting film about Muslim marriage in the UK. It focuses on the many women who assume that they’re legally married having undergone an Islamic ceremony. François looks why this misinformation is so widespread and the problems that it causes. SH
Wednesday Mary Berry’s Country House Secrets BBC ONE, 8.00PM
A more ambitious prospect than Mary Berry’s usual cookery series, Country House Secrets sends the erstwhile Bake Off judge to four of the nation’s great rural piles where she learns about their history, experiences their hospitality, looks upstairs and down, and, of course, cooks a few dishes. With Downton Abbey now consigned to TV history, Berry visits its real-life equivalent, Highclere Castle, for this opener. Owned by the Carnarvons since 1679, Highclere became renowned in the Victorian era for its house parties, entertaining everyone from Benjamin Disraeli to the future Edward VII (the latter’s festivities costing the modern equivalent of £500,000 for three nights). There are cameos from Tutankhamen, a B17 Flying Fortress and some eager spaniels; the banter errs towards soporific, but no one tunes into a Mary Berry programme for high-octane thrills. Instead, she proves a refreshing antidote to the standard celebrity host, her modesty symbolised by the endearing verbal tic of prefacing gobbets of information with “I’m told” (it’s hard to imagine many other presenters giving credit to researchers so willingly). Gabriel Tate
Godless NETFLIX, FROM TODAY
Westworld’s deft deconstruction of the mythology of the oater hasn’t denuded it of its power after all, if Godless is anything to go by. While this Steven Soderbergh-produced western respects the genre’s traditions, it is not in thrall to them – this seven-parter sees outlaw Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) arriving at Alice Fletcher’s (Michelle Dockery) ranch in a town run by women. He is on the run from criminal Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) and his gang, who have been tracking their former ally across the dust-swept plains of New Mexico. Written and directed by Logan’s Scott Frank, it combines spectacle, hardscrabble frontier life and guarded emotions with aplomb. GT
Thursday Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
It’s an eye-catching idea: identify individual bombs from the millions that rained down on Britain during the Blitz, and select four that had greater impact than any others. So much so, they might even have had beneficial effects in the long run. The bomb featured in this opener, which hit 8 Martindale Road in London’s Docklands on the first night of the Blitz in September 1940, didn’t actually explode. But the evacuation it prompted set in motion a series of events that led to horrific loss of life. Public outrage at the authorities’ ineptitude, unpreparedness and apparent callous disregard for working people, boosted by campaigning journalist Peter Ritchie Calder, eventually led to Tory MP Henry Willink being appointed to organise a better response to the Blitz. He, in turn, wrote the first draft of the postwar White Paper, proposing what would eventually become the NHS. It really is a bit of a stretch to suggest that a German bomb was what effectively led to the founding of the British welfare state. But the story makes for an intriguing slice of social and political history none the less. GO
John Bishop: in Conversation with Jeremy Corbyn
W, 9.00PM
In what is a last-minute addition to John Bishop’s intimate interview series, the Labour leader joins him for a frank discussion about his life and his politics, including his thoughts on President Trump and the Chilcott Enquiry, as well as the impact of the death of his brother. GO
Friday Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast
CHANNEL 4, 8.00PM
Jamie Oliver and childhood mucker Jimmy Doherty return for another series of their hyperactive meld of cookery programme, food information and celebrity chat hosted at their Southend Pier caff. This series tends to stand or fall with the visiting celebrity but luckily this week it’s Simon Pegg, who gamely enters into the spirit of things by serving customers, cooking what looks like a pretty good tagine and admitting that he’s far more food conscious in these Mission: Impossible days. “It’s fundamentally evil but at the same time beautiful,” Pegg remarks of Oliver’s Provençal Bake, a calorific but clearly delicious mixture of pancakes, cheese, ham and tomatoes, which causes one customer to gush, “I never want it to end.” Elsewhere, Oliver and Doherty go on the road to uncover the joys of free-range duck, and Doherty builds a barbecue for the Stoke Mandeville wheelchair rugby team. SH
Extreme Wives with Kate Humble BBC TWO, 9.00PM; WALES, 9.30PM
Kate Humble heads to the remote town of Shillong in north-east India to meet with the matrilineal Khasi people in the fascinating final episode. The Khasi pass everything, including property, down the female line and hand power to the youngest daughter in each family. SH