The very best of the week ahead
Sunday The Control Room BBC One, 9pm
An emergency response centre is a claustrophobic precinct for any thriller, but writer Nick Leather (who was also behind the excellent drama Mother’s Day about the Warrington bombing) is confident enough in his material to use it as mere bookends in an intense, occasionally opaque new three-part thriller, which concludes on Tuesday. Its focus is Gabe (Iain De Caestecker), a competent, empathic but green emergency call handler for the Scottish Ambulance Service based in Glasgow. Having just successfully delivered his first baby over the phone, he receives his next call from Sam (Joanna Vanderham), a desperate sounding woman who recognises his voice, just as she confesses murder.
Plagued by flashbacks to a troubling childhood event involving bullying and either hiding out or getting lost in a field of farmed Christmas trees, Gabe also has a fractious relationship with his father and a number of enemies, as becomes apparent when enquiries about Sam meet with either hostility or incomprehension. Smartly directed by Amy Neil and with a queasy score from Carly Paradis, it shows how trauma from the past can suddenly surface again, effectively ramping up tension alongside the mounting panic of its protagonist. Gabriel Tate
Britain’s Next Prime Minister: The ITV Debate ITV, 7pm
After a week of political tumult, Julie Etchingham hosts the second major debate to choose the next leader of the Conservative Party. All five remaining candidates – Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat, and Kemi Badenoch – will be taking part and will submit to questions put by the host before making closing statements. GT
Monday Witness Number 3 Channel 5, 9pm
While not every stripped pped Channel 5 drama lands, ds, their ambition generally ally can’t be faulted. This s new four-part thriller courtesy urtesy of Thomas Eccleshare, re, running until Thursday, aims high and, on the basis of tonight’s opener, delivers. Based on real accounts of witness intimidation, it follows hairdresser and single mother Jodie Packer (Nina Toussaint-White), who spots a brief, seemingly innocuous encounter just outside the window of her salon and comes forward when the police ask for witnesses, little realising the gravity of the investigation. While she is granted anonymity, word soon gets out concerning her involvement, threatening messages begin to arrive and a mob of balaclava-wearing gang members start a campaign of terror, as Jodie tries to retain her resolve. Despite p a slightly-too-neat g y link to her police case handler handl (Sion Daniel Young), it all rings rin true – perhaps no surprise, with w the involvement of docudrama docud specialists Story Films. Fil As even the police find fin themselves powerless powerles to help her, and with Jodie’s Jodi testimony vital to the success su of the case, the stakes st are high and the ramping tension is unremitting. u This is a crime drama that t positively drips with menace, practically from the first frame. Gabriel Tate Long Lost Family Special:
The Unknown Soldiers
ITV, 9pm
Lacking a little of the emotional charge and race-against-time tension that comes with a standard episode, this special still provides ample quantities of historical context and a few twists as Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall follow efforts to identify nine victims of the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 and inform their descendants. GT
Tuesday Britain’s Tourette’s Mystery: Scarlett Moffatt Investigates Channel 4, 10pm
In recent years there has been a rise in new cases of Tourette’s syndrome in the young, with sufferers developing tics and compulsive swearing. Oddly, the new cases are appearing in girls, when previously boys were four times more likely to develop the condition. This one-off documentary tasks the former Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt, who suffered from tics as a child, with finding the source of this anomaly.
Experts attribute the upsurge to a perfect storm of social isolation, a rise in social-media use and, crucially, a growth in prominent Tourette’s sufferers highlighting their condition online. This appears to have the power of suggestion over some teenagers, and it is posited that a kind of mass hysteria has ensued. On the other hand, one harrowing scene of a man in the grip of a Tourette’s-induced seizure leaves us in no doubt of victims’ real suffering. Vicki Power
Freddie Flintoff ’s Field of Dreams
BBC One, 8pm
As his series reaches its final innings, Flintoff ’s scrappy band of Lancashire estate kids play cricket against an elite private school, but the match is threatened by dissent in the ranks. Flintoff has been the revelation here, showing real empathy for the lads. VP
Wednesday Unvaccinated BBC Two, 9pm
Professor Hannah Fry returns for this one-off documentary which tries to understand why four million British adults remain unvaccinated against Covid, inviting seven such adults to a hotel to help them see the light.
The ensuing hour is like watching Fry bang her head against a wall: five days isn’t enough time to disabuse her guests of their conspiracy theories and mistrust of government, the medical profession and “big pharma”, or of their poorly informed opinions about the risks of the vaccine. Fry’s intention is to gently educate the group by bringing statistics to bear, alongside conversations with leading scientists, some doctors who’ve watched Covid patients die, and Will Moy, the chief executive of the fact-checking charity Full Fact. Because the refuseniks have such divergent reasons for avoidance, and because some lack even the good manners to participate seriously, it’s hard for her to alter views. Calm and empathic throughout, Fry at least highlights a big problem. Vicki Power
Maryland BBC Two, 10.05pm
Lucy Kirkwood’s playlet, written in the wake of the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, is a raw rallying cry. Zawe Ashton and Hayley Squires play two women, both named Mary, who are each reporting sexual assaults at the police station at the same time, while a chorus of other women chime in concerning the kinds of dangers that women still face daily. Powerful. VP
Thursday Big Oil vs the World BBC Two, 9pm
Climate change, for all the threat of famine, drought and apocalypse, still struggles to cut through. That’s no accident, this three-part documentary series claims, but is the product of a decades-long campaign of denial and distortion conducted by the wealthiest organisations on Earth. It’s a tale of corporate power, cynical self-interest and unchecked capitalism that could turn the most rabid petrolhead into a padlock-wielding Greenpeace activist.
The first instalment takes us to the mid-1970s, the early days of climate science, with research driven by an unlikely player: fossil fuel behemoth Exxon. Every model showed that the Earth was warming as a result of fossil fuels. But rather than start us on the transition to renewables, Exxon suppressed its research. We meet ugly characters such as Professor Patrick Michaels – not a climate scientist – who made a fortune writing climate denial papers. It’s hard to disagree with Prof Martin Hoffert, who led Exxon’s climate research, when he says, “It’s actively evil… the moral equivalent of a war crime.” Jack Taylor
The Supervet: Noel Fitzpatrick Channel 4, 8pm
Britain’s favourite vet is back, providing cutting-edge care to pets. First on the agenda is limping dog Raven, whose owners must choose between amputation and a risky total hip replacement, and kitten Fury who broke his little leg in a play fight. JT
Friday Jane Austen’s Sanditon
ITV, 9pm
The second series of the period drama begins in lively enough fashion by exploding a metaphorical bomb under
our heroine Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams), who receives news that her lover, Sidney (Theo James), has died. Money worries lead her to take a job as a governess for the nasty children of a distant, little-liked landowner (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), while the arrival of a platoon led by Colonel Lennox (Tom Weston-Jones) offers opportunities: business ones for Kris Marshall’s fallible entrepreneur, still trying to make his fortune from the titular resort, and romantic ones for several of Sanditon’s most eligible young women.
The appearance of an eccentric artist (Alexander Vlahos), plus the return of the cad Edward Denham (Jack Fox) and his waspish aunt (Anne Reid), alongside a plethora of familiar Austen touchstones (balls, garden parties, young love), make this a solid, if indistinct costumer. Gabriel Tate
Trying Apple TV+
Andy Wolton’s comedy-drama begins its third series with Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) trying to persuade authorities that the brother of their adoptive daughter should also be placed in their care. Unfortunately, their new caseworker (Karl Collins) proves to be a stickler for the rules. GT