The very best of the week ahead
Today
World’s Tiniest Masterpieces CHANNEL 4, 10.10PM
Willard Wigan, the 61-year-old artist, has been astounding people with his microscopic sculptures since he first began them at the age of five, working with a razor blade and scrap wood to build ant houses. These days, he uses more sophisticated tools while continuing to eschew technology as far as possible. The results are truly astonishing, from a 1 mm replica Mona Lisa painted with an eyelash to a church carved from a grain of sand with splinter of diamond attached to a hypodermic needle. Kenny Scott’s eye-opening documentary follows Wigan as he bids to make the world’s smallest handmade sculpture, offering insights into his technique but hardly a bluffer’s guide: Wigan’s combination of patience, discipline and dexterity must be almost unparalleled. Gabriel Tate
Vienna Summer Night Concert 2018 BBC FOUR, 7.00PM
Valery Gergiev conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace, with works from Rossini and Verdi, plus a Puccini aria sung by soprano Anna Netrebko. Katie Derham introduces the performance. GT
Monday
Who Do You Think You Are? BBC ONE, 9.00PM; WALES, 10.40PM
“My family is fairly boring,” states actress Olivia Colman at the beginning of this week’s episode of Who Do You
Think You Are? Of course, as fans of the long-running ancestry show know statements such as these are as a red rag to a bull for the programme makers and thus Colman swiftly finds that her family’s past isn’t boring at all. Instead the self-confessed “least adventurous person I know” soon finds herself on a quest that heads from the Houses of Parliament to India and the Scottish Highlands taking in adultery, divorce and illegitimacy along the way. The story that really grabs Colman’s imagination, however, is that of her great-greatgreat-grandmother
Harriot whose life plays out like the plot of a
ays
novel involving childhood tragedy, ever-changing fortunes and loves lost and gained. Sarah Hughes Sharp Objects SKY ATLANTIC, 9.00PM
Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), the journalist/anti-heroine of Sky Atlantic’s new drama, has problems. She drinks on the job, there are hints of self-harm and, worst of all, has a problematic relationship with her narcissistic mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson). Adapted by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn from her first novel, expertly directed by Dietland’s Marti Noxon and Big B Little Lies’ Jean-Marc Vallée, Sharp Objects drips menace from the start as the troubled Camille returns to her home town to cover the disappearance of two teenage girls. This is the first must-watch drama of the summer. SH
Tuesday Tu
The Centenary of the Royal Roya Air Force
BBC ONE ONE, 9.30AM Festiv Festivities for the Royal Air Force’s centenary are long under way. A stirring concert at the Royal Albert Hall ushered in the institution’s official birthday on April 1, a 100-day baton relay is currently passing through countrywide locations that have links to the Force, and a raft of tea parties, gun salutes and street fairs have been held all over the country. Today, however, sees the centrepiece of the celebrations for this venerable institution. With Sophie Raworth, Jeremy Bowen and Babita Sharma at the helm, the BBC presents live coverage of events from central London. A service from Westminster Abbey in the presence of current personnel, veterans and cadets begins proceedings, followed by parade of the RAF Queen’s Colours and Squadron Standards along the Mall. The day’s crowning glory is a flypast due to cross over Buckingham Palace at 1.00pm, showcasing a range of aircraft from the Red Arrows and the classic Spitfire and Hercules, to Britain’s newest fighter jet, the Lightning, making its debut public appearance. The display promises to be the most diverse aerial formation since the Queen’s Coronation. Toby Dantzic
Horizon: How to Build a Time Machine
BBC TWO, 9.00PM “Quantum entanglement”, “time crystals”, “wormholes” – these are just some of the terms surrounding current attempts to make time travel a reality. Tonight’s film investigates those possibilities. TD
Wednesday
Picnic at Hanging Rock BBC TWO, 9.05PM
St Valentine’s Day, 1900. Four pupils at an exclusive finishing school in the Australian bush disappear during a picnic, throwing the school and its wealthy patrons into turmoil. What happened to them? This six-part series from Beatrix Christian and Alice Addision toys with perspectives and timelines to uncover a cauldron of adolescent tensions, suppressed violence and good old Victorian hypocrisy, handled with maturity by a young cast that includes Romper
Stomper’s Lily Sulllivan. This is, it is important to note, an adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel rather than Peter Weir’s superbly strange 1975 film. Yet comparisons are inevitable, and where Weir’s stifling, sexually charged atmosphere felt effortless, here it feels a little too calculated. Taken on its own terms, however, as a woozy thriller, it works just fine, helped no end by terrific camerawork and a superb lead performance from
Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer, teetering between calm control and unhinged mania as Hester Appleyard, the headmistress whose secrets are outnumbered only by her demons. GT
Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing
BBC TWO, 10.00PM; N IRELAND, 11.15PM
Simultaneously frivolous and profound, this deeply enjoyable affair finds the odd couple fishing for Roach in Norfolk’s River Wensum and musing once again on age and their declining physical powers. GT
Thursday
Keeping Faith BBC ONE, 9.00PM
This new crime thriller, jointly commissioned by BBC Wales and Welshlanguage broadcaster S4C, has already proved to be a huge hit. Filmed in both English and Welsh versions, the eight-part series netted unprecedented viewing figures and clocked over 9.5million hits on iPlayer, after it was shown on BBC Wales earlier this year, a success which has led to this plum slot on BBC One. Our protagonist is harassed but happy Faith Howells (Eve Myles, Torchwood’s Gwen Cooper), a spirited sort juggling motherhood and a career as a lawyer, but who’s always up for a drink with the girls. Faith’s life gets derailed when her seemingly dependable husband Evan (Bradley Freegard) goes missing one morning and she’s drawn into solving the mystery of his disappearance. Writer Matthew Hall only starts to build tension towards the end of the episode as revelations fracture Faith’s view of her marriage – next week’s outing then should give a better sense of the show’s dramatic potential. For now, though, Myles’s performance is the main draw here, a mercurial mix of irreverence and seriousness, which hints at complexities to come. TD
The Game Show Serial Killer: Police Tapes
ITV, 9.00PM
Susanna Reid pores over police files and interview tapes, investigating Welsh murderer John Cooper, who killed four people in the Eighties. It took an appearance on the game show Bullseye, along with advances in DNA profiling, to convict him over 20 years later. TD
Friday
First Night of the Proms BBC TWO, 8.30PM
This year’s Prom concerts promise to be enjoyable ones, with a tribute to West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein and a celebration of New York music among the many highlights. The season begins at the with the world premiere of Five Telegrams, which was commissioned to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War and features music by acclaimed
composer Anna Meredith and digital projections from 59 Productions, the team behind War Horse. It’s followed by performances of Vaughan Williams’s Toward the Unknown Region and the Proms’ favourite from Gustav Holst, The Planets. Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, alongside the BBC Symphony Chorus, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and the BBC Proms Youth Ensemble. SH
Smashing Hits! The 80’s Pop Map of Britain & Ireland
BBC FOUR, 10.00PM
In the second part of Midge Ure and Kim Appleby’s enjoyable trawl through UK’s chart hits of the Eighties, we pass through Scotland’s bouncy pop of Altered Images to the countryinspired songs of The Bluebells. From there, it’s on to Ireland where the punky north gets slightly short shrift before Ure and Appleby head over the border for a very entertaining Bob Geldof rant about U2. SH