The very best of the week ahead
Today Bodyguard BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Whatever this new six-part thriller from the makers of Line of Duty might lack in plausibility, it makes up for in highoctane drama and characterisation. Richard Madden (who made a big impression as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones) stars as David Budd, a war veteran turned policeman. Following an act of bravery in the nerveshredding opening minutes, he is promoted to personal protection officer to hawkish British Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes). It’s not exactly a match made in heaven as the hyper-diligent Budd and the brittle Montague clash over his insistence on sticking to procedure. Cracks begin to appear, never more so than when Budd (whose post traumatic stress disorder seems to have gone undetected by the Met’s vetting procedures) gets the hump over some of Montague’s more bellicose official pronouncements on the use of military force. Continues tomorrow. Gerard O’Donovan
BBC Proms 2018 BBC FOUR, 8.00PM
This recording of Prom 48 sees Simon Rattle conduct the LSO in a ravishing all-Ravel concert performance of the ballet Mother Goose, the Sheherazade song cycle and the one-act opera L’enfant et les sortilèges. Magdalena Kožená, Patricia Bardon and Anna Stephany are among the soloists. GO
Monday Drinkers Like Me: Adrian Chiles
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
“I’m not an alcoholic – at least I don’t think I am,” states presenter Adrian Chiles at the beginning of this film about his lifelong relationship with drink. What strikes you from the outset is Chiles’s beguiling honesty about his drinking. He not only documents the amount he drinks, but also, and more tellingly, the times he fudges it and pretends to have drunk less. This is key because the point the presenter is making is that many of us consume booze in this way. We wouldn’t say we’re alcoholics because we don’t “see spiders on the ceiling”, as comedian and recovering alcoholic Frank Skinner succinctly put it, and we don’t have a problem stopping after three or four drinks but we drink regularly, in Chiles’s case often six out seven of nights each week (the exception is the night before his morning show on Radio 5 Live). It’s a way of consuming alcohol that’s increasingly prevalent among people in their forties and fifties and Chiles doesn’t shy away from exploring the consequences. The result is an engaging and revealing film which may end up making more than one viewer reconsider their drinking habits.
Sarah Hughes Hugh
Speed with Guy Martin: Classic F1 Special
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM 9.
The thinking man’s petrolhead returns with a one-off special which sees him taking part in his first ever Formula 1 r race: going head-to-head with the 2009 world champion Jenson Button around Silverstone. SH
Tuesday The Great British Bake Off CHANNEL 4, 8.00PM
Bake Off continues to provide a bubble of glorious escapism as the televisual confection returns for a ninth series. Starting on a larky note, hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding perform a silly Back to the Future skit poking fun at last year’s Twitter gaffe, when new judge Prue Leith tweeted the winner’s name before the episode had aired. All is forgiven, however, as Leith and fellow judge Paul Hollywood re-enter the tent to inform us that this year’s 30 challenges will be tougher than ever. The contestants are the usual mix of young and old, quirky and quietly determined, British and foreign, with a few standouts emerging – look out for French girl Manon and Bristolian Briony. In a break with tradition, the challenges for this first week are biscuit-focused rather than cake, with the bakers asked to make regional biscuits, Wagon Wheels and a show-stopping 3D self-portrait. The hosts’ warm quips and judges’ sharp critiques are cut together with briskly edited scenes of whipping, crumbling and piping to create a tense but always polite hour of TV in which baking skills are king, not soppy backstories. Vicki Power
The Joy of Winning BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
This documentary is a fascinating introduction to the maths of game theory. Hannah Fry, who also presented The Joy of Data, is an engaging presence as she explains the history of the theory and related concepts using easy-to-follow examples, funky graphics and old game-show clips. And the cheering pay-off is that maths has proved the existence of human goodness. VP
Wednesday Upstart Crow BBC TWO, 8.30PM
Few would have believed that Ben Elton could ever again reach the levels of wit and invention in Blackadder, but the opening episode of the third series of the Shakespearean sitcom confirms it as his finest work since the Atkinson-Robinson classic, replete with nimble wordplay, crass silliness and gleeful anachronisms. As always, the episode pivots on a play from the Bard’s back catalogue, as Will (David Mitchell) wrestles with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, convinced it is destined to be one of the finest stage comedies in history. So begins a farce involving love potions provided by faeries-cumcon artists, a Nigel Planer cameo as an oafish lord and a key role for Will’s doltish manservant Bottom (Rob Rouse). There’s also a very Elton-ian riff on privatisation of public transport that could have been ripped from one of his Eighties routines. Gabriel Tate
Horizon: a Week Without Lying – the Honesty Experiment
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
This is a fascinating and often funny experiment in which a priest, an advertising executive and a YouTuber have their physical and verbal tics and twitches analysed before they attempt to go a week without lying. It’s an engrossing hour that makes clear how closely our identity is bound up with our relationship to the truth. GT
Thursday Our Everest Challenge: With Ben Fogle and Victoria Pendleton
ITV, 9.00PM
Olympic gold-medallist Victoria Pendleton hit the headlines in May when she was forced to abandon a charity challenge to scale Mount Everest alongside climbing partner, broadcaster and adventurer Ben Fogle. It was a reminder of just how enormous a struggle getting to the top of the world’s highest mountain is. This atmospheric film captures that struggle viscerally, following the pair from the Nepalese capital Kathmandu to Everest base camp and on up the mountain for the summit attempt. As they trudge up the sheer, ice-shrouded slopes into the mountain’s notorious “death zone”, physical exhaustion, adverse weather conditions and plain old bad luck test them to their limits. It is a fascinating account of a lifechanging journey. GO
The No.5 War BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
A new take on the story behind the world’s most famous perfume, Chanel No.5 (Marilyn Monroe sealed its fame saying it was all she wore in bed), and how its creator, designer Coco Chanel, was rumoured to have conspired with her Nazi-official lover to try to force her Jewish partners out of the business when the Germans invaded France. Was she an anti-Semite? Was she working as a double-agent for Churchill? Whatever, it still whiffs. GO
Friday Edinburgh Nights with Nish Kumar BBC TWO, 11.05PM
As the Edinburgh Festival comes to an end, comedian Nish Kumar presents his final guide to the UK’s largest arts festival. The likeable Kumar has been busy – in addition to presenting these films, he’s also trialling his new show It’s in Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves at the festival. In previous episodes covering stand-up and books, he’s proved to be an engaging host, capturing both the mayhem of life in Edinburgh in August and the work involved in getting an act there. This round-up focuses on theatre, with Kumar attempting to uncover what makes a show soar or flop. SH
Britain by Bike with Larry & George Lamb
CHANNEL 5, 8.00PM
The father-and-son team are in the Peak District, Britain’s first ever National Park. There, as well as cycling the popular Monsal Trail, Larry attempts to convince George that now is the time for his son to overcome his fear of heights by abseiling down one of the route’s Victorian viaducts. SH