The very best of the week ahead
Today
Homeland
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
In 2011, Homeland was the definition of watercooler television, as viewers debated furiously whether Damian Lewis’s rogue marine was a one-man sleeper cell. Not so now, although its delayed final season begins with reminders of what this series can do when it ditches the obvious (last season’s assaults on Donald Trump and InfoWars) to focus on its strengths: espionage thrills both domestic and foreign. Released after 213 days in Russian detention (180 of them spent in a state of psychosis), CIA agent Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) is recovering in a secure unit, physically stronger but still fragile and deemed a security risk by many of her superiors. Enter her mentor, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), a National Security Advisor who’s desperate to hold together peace talks with the Taliban. Who other than Carrie has the expertise and contacts to reopen negotiations? Danes is a marvel of commitment and signs are that this story will reward our dedication, too. Gabriel Tate
Endeavour
ITV, 8.00PM
Racial tensions explode in Oxford as campaigning for the 1970 general election begins and, with far-Right agitators stirring the pot, there is tragedy and then murder for Morse (Shaun Evans) and Thursday (Roger Allam) to contend with. GT
Monday
Confronting Holocaust aust Denial with David Baddiel l
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
“Like anyone with a Jewish background I feel the history of the Holocaust in my bones. I wouldn’t be here if my grandparents hadn’t escaped from Nazi Germany before the e war.” David Baddiel begins his spirited film with a pre-war photograph of his parents’ extended family, amily, most of whom were murdered by the Nazis in the 1940s. The fact is, the Holocaust is one of the most documented, witnessed and written about crimes in history. Yet, bizarrely, the evidence suggests that one in six people worldwide either don’t believe it happened or think its scale has been exaggerated. Here, Baddiel sets out to explore the roots of Holocaust denial and what can be done “to stop the Holocaust becoming fake news”. Along the way he tangles with Facebook’s ex-Lib Dem MP director of policy (not the one you’re thinking of) over the social media platform’s policy on hate speech, and wrestles with the problem of having to engage with individuals who peddle the sort of hatred any normal person would find obscene.
Gerard O’Donovan
This Country
BBC ONE, O 10.35PM; N IRELAND, IR 11.35PM
The Mucklowes return for a final series with Kerry (Daisy May Cooper) working at the tip and Kurtan (Charlie Cooper) supporting her – if only to get his gran’s Bitcoin investment back. GO
Tuesday The Brit Awards 2020
ITV, 8.00PM
Another week, another awards controversy. The days when Britain’s biggest music awards were a byword for the weird, the wild and the wonderfully incompetent are long gone. Instead this year’s biggest issue concerns the nominations, specifically the paucity of female nominees in the mixed gender categories. The only woman to make it across that divide is Mabel, nominated for New Artist and Song of the Year for Don’t Call Me Up. Mabel is also nominated in the Female Solo Artist category alongside Freya Ridings, FKA Twigs, Charli XCX and Mahalia, while the International Female Solo Artist sees Ariana Grande competing against Camila Cabello, Lana Del Rey, Lizzo and singer of the moment Billie Eilish. Comedian Jack Whitehall returns to host for a third time, while Sir Rod Stewart closes the show, having first played the event in 1993. Stormzy, nominated for Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Male Solo Artist, is among the performers on the night. Sarah Hughes
Royal History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley
BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
Dressing up boxes at the ready, as Lucy Worsley returns with another enjoyable three-part romp through history’s national myths. This time the focus is on British royalty – future episodes tackle the Armada and Queen Anne. Worsley has great fun challenging the notion of Henry VIII as Protestant hero, pointing out that the king was having twice daily Catholic masses said in his name before he died, before looking at why the outcomes of the Reformation continue to feed notions of British exceptionalism today. SH
Wednesday Cilla: The Lost Tapes
ITV, 9.00PM
Lest we forget, Cilla Black was a major star across four decades, scoring the biggest-selling British single by a female artist in the 1960s with Anyone Who Had a Heart. She also became the highest-paid woman on British TV when Blind Date and Surprise Surprise were in their 1990s pomp. Sheridan Smith – who played Black in ITV’s three-part 2014 biopic – narrates, while a phalanx of famous friends and admirers, including Cliff Richard, Jimmy Tarbuck and Paul O’Grady, marvel at newly discovered homemovie footage. Among the treasures are Black skiing with “fifth Beatle” George Martin, clowning with Ringo Starr and Basil Brush, and holidaying with husband Bobby. It’s charming, if not enormously revealing. More intriguing are interviews between Black and her ghostwriter, suggesting a spikier character and someone with a keen sense of her own worth. GT
Spy in the Wild
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
The final edition of this odd but insightful nature series heads to the ends of the Earth with mesmerising close-ups of Antarctic penguin colonies and Arctic walruses. GT
Thursday
Best Home Cook
BBC ONE, 8.00PM
The final helping of this home cookery contest will decide which contestant takes home the prize plate and whether the second-series rejig warrants a follow up. The all-female finale features a frantic amount of cooking and so many intriguing creations that they go by in a blur. To shake things up, the show kicks off with the more-difficult “Rustle Up” task – Suzie, Sarah and Georgia are asked to produce two dishes each from the star ingredient: a salmon tail. One contestant is sent home after a fiddly pasta-making session and the remaining two are judged on a three-course dinner party. Without a doubt, Best Home Cook’s tastiest ingredients are its regular staff. Judge Angela Hartnett serves as the Paul Hollywood-style foil to Mary Berry, whose comments about the “spankingly good flavours” of one dish tickle Hartnett’s funny bone. The purpose of third judge Chris Bavin is less obvious, but host Claudia Winkleman’s cheeky asides are a delight. Vicki Power
Death in Paradise
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Ralf Little’s new cop DI Neville Parker harks back to the heyday of Ben Miller as the finicky fish-out-of-water DI Poole, and the show is all the better for it. The penultimate episode sees Parker struggle to unravel a killing in a hairdresser’s. VP
Friday
Hunters
AMAZON PRIME
Al Pacino leads a terrific cast in this outlandish but adhesively gripping new conspiracy series following a band of Nazi hunters living in 1970s New York. Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman plays Jonah, a gifted young Jewish man who gets into trouble with the police while trying to track down the killer of his beloved concentration camp-survivor grandmother. Only when a mysterious benefactor, Meyer Hoffman (Pacino), intervenes on his behalf does Jonah realise that all is not as it seems and that, in fact, a new Nazi conspiracy is under way to bring about a Fourth Reich in the United States. Meanwhile, when rookie FBI investigator Millie Malone (Jerrika Hinton) is dispatched to investigate the death of an elderly Nasa rocket scientist, she runs into a little more opposition than she’s anticipating. It’s all very impressive, especially when the pace picks up after the featurelength pilot sets out its stall. GO
Intelligence
SKY ONE, 9.00PM/9.30PM
It is hard to resist the slapstick silliness of this new spy comedy from British comedian Nick Mohammed ( Stath Lets Flats), starring Friends veteran David Schwimmer as a mouthy American spook who causes chaos at GCHQ when he arrives in a liaison role. GO