The very best of the week ahead
Today
The Luminaries
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Viewers who like their timelines linear and their storytelling crystal clear will already have abandoned this hallucinogenic jigsaw puzzle of a period drama series, in which New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton attempts – not altogether successfully – to condense her sprawling, timeshifting, multi-layered Bookerwinning novel into six hours of television. For those keen to stick with it, the swirling, dream-like narrative becomes marginally less opaque in this third episode. We open on the eve of vampy fortune-teller Lydia Wells’s (Eva Green) party to celebrate her husband’s gold strike; a ruse to mask her real intent to swindle the lot from him. Needless to say, things don’t go according to plan; and it doesn’t go well for aspiring politician Alistair Lauderback (Benedict Hardie) either, when he discovers Carver (Marton Csokas) waiting to blackmail him. Gerard O’Donovan
The British Soap Awards Celebrate 21 Years
ITV, 9.00PM
In another fill-in, Phillip Schofield meanders down memory lane to revisit some of the best acceptance speeches, funniest moments and biggest winners in over two decades of the awards ceremony. GO
Monday
Italy’s Front-Line: A Doctor’s Diary
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
Parallels with the UK abound in this powerful and almost painfully pertinent documentary about a hard-hit t hospital in Cremona, Italy at the height eight of the coronavirus pandemic. ic. Courageously made by Bafta-winning inning director Sasha Achilli, the film offers an intimate insight into nto three months on the Covid front-line ont-line with A&E doctor Francesca ca Mangiatordi and her team. In n the outbreak’s early days, the hospital pital is overflowing and the indefatigable Dr Mangiatordi giatordi works 12-hour shifts caring for those most ost affected. Due to lack of equipment, she faces s the traumatic task of prioritising which lives ves to save. At home, she’s fearful of infecting her husband, Sebastian, who suffers from a respiratory condition. Soon Mangiatordi notices a disturbing trend: it’s no longer just the old and vulnerable who are getting seriously ill. Narrated by Florence Pugh, it’s sobering stuff. Michael Hogan Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads
BBC ONE, FROM 8.45PM; WALES, FROM 10.45PM
Another double bill of Bennett’s classic monologues. The first, Her Big Chance, stars Jodie Comer as a naive aspiring actress. It’s followed by Playing Sandwiches, with Lucian Lu Msamati as a park-keeper park-ke with a dark secret. MH
Tuesday
The Hidden Wilds of the Motor Motorway
BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
Helen Macdonald, Mac author of H is for Hawk, is both a beautiful beautifu writer and a natural na presenter present as this enthralling enthra documentary proves. At its heart is a deceptively simple idea which sees Macdonald heading not to obvious bucolic spots but instead walking around the M25 to illustrate how even the most unprepossessing of places can house natural gems. Just off junction one in Kent she finds an untouched woodland and talks to a family still adapting to the motorway’s arrival; in the west she moves into JG Ballard-land, celebrating the author who made suburbia his own. North takes her to Rickmansworth where new homes abut ancient grasslands before she heads east to Epping Forest. Throughout it all Macdonald proves an engaging guide, whether talking about how bird migration might be used to control traffic flow or hearing about an innovative use of mushrooms as a method for congestion control. Sarah Hughes EastEnders: Sharongate
BBC ONE, 7.30PM
Grab the popcorn and settle down on the sofa for one of EastEnders’ finest moments. Yes, it’s the episode where a devastated and furious Grant reveals to a packed Queen Vic that his wife Sharon has been sleeping with his brother Phil. Never have those end credits sounded so ominous… SH
Wednesday
Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge: Storyville
BBC FOUR, 10.00PM
This deeply disturbing film has been made with members of a Russian group dedicated to saving the lives of gay men and women in Chechnya, where a state sanctioned purge is reportedly under way – apparently with encouragement from Chechnya’s “hard man” leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his friend and backer Vladimir Putin. Some of the footage is horrific – of gay men and women being beaten, tortured, maimed, even murdered.
The film follows the Russian LGBT Network’s brave and dedicated team of activists who risk their own lives to secretly extract victims from Chechnya and find safe houses for them, often in the West. The cynicism and complicity of the Russian government is everywhere in evidence, even when one victim defies death threats to demand a criminal investigation into his incarceration and torture – with perhaps all too predictable results. There aren’t many rays of hope here, but the activists’ spirit of defiance is impressive. GO Penny Dreadful: City of Angels
SKY ATLANTIC, 9.00PM
Not so much a spin-off from the 2014 horror-lite series Penny Dreadful, more an entirely new Californian offshoot. Set in rapidly expanding Los Angeles in 1938, the cops and demons storyline features Daniel Zovatto as LA’s first Chicano detective, who together with his partner Nathan Lane sets out to solve a grisly multiple murder that appears to be related to the building of a freeway. Meanwhile, Natalie Dormer plays chaos-loving bad angel Magda, who’s determined to get a race war going in the city with the help of Nazi-sympathiser medic Rory Kinnear. GO
Thursday
The Supervet: Puppy Special
CHANNEL 4, 8.00PM
Hankies at the ready everyone, tonight’s special episode of The
Supervet is all about puppies. From Rodney, who has no back feet – “There is the possibility that his mum may have bitten them off,” says foster owner Kelly, who hopes that an operation will help him find “a forever home” – to bulldog Chica, whose owners unfortunately dropped her when she was only a day old, the show revisits some of the team’s most memorable cases. Along the way we learn that the team (like most of us) go completely gooey for puppies, cuddling them whenever they can. Even Professor Noel Fitzpatrick, the Supervet himself, proves susceptible to their irresistible ways, however much he pretends otherwise. SH The School That Tried to End Racism
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
The second part of the fascinating attempt by Glenthorne High School in south London to tackle racial bias among pupils sees the 11- and 12-yearolds examining white privilege before asking whether the experiment has changed attitudes. SH
Friday
Huey Morgan’s Latin Music Adventure: Brazil
BBC FOUR, 9.30PM
BBC Four’s musical output, while consistently excellent, can become too pop and rock-focused, so it’s refreshing to see it mix things up with this vibrant three-part series. Fun Lovin’ Criminals frontman and 6 Music DJ Huey Morgan delves into the unique sounds of three countries – Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico – on a quest to understand Latin music’s enduring appeal and colourful history. Arriving in Rio, Morgan learns how Brazil’s government has come out against the hedonism of carnival and samba groups plan to protest. Hitting the beach, Morgan discovers that 1960s music wasn’t confined to the slick swing of The Girl From Ipanema. He meets Gilberto Gil, trailblazer of the politically conscious Tropicália movement, and then percussionist Carlinhos Brown in Salvador, who explains how Afro-positive music has shaped the sound of Brazil. It’s an educational journey that also happens to be heaps of infectious fun. MH Hamilton
DISNEY+
Few 21st century artistic works have had the cultural impact of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical Hamilton – the hip-hop version of US history via Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. It sold out record-breaking runs on both sides of the Atlantic, deservedly winning 11 Tony Awards, seven Oliviers and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now in light of the pandemic – and with its themes ever more timely – Disney has fast-tracked this film of the original Broadway production onto its streaming service for American Independence weekend. MH