Best on the box
Stuff’s James Croot’s top TV picks for the week ahead.
Kes, 8.30pm, Saturday, Ma¯ ori TV
Ken Loach’s Bafta-winning 1969 drama about a 15-year-old neglected and bullied boy who seeks solace by stealing and nurturing a small kestrel. ‘‘A compassionate, powerful high point of low-budget realist cinema,’’ wrote Total Film magazine’s Philip Kemp.
Sue Perkins and the Chimp Sanctuary, 7.30pm, Sunday, Choice
In this new, one-off BBC documentary, the animal-loving comedian travels to America’s Chimp Haven to meet a group of newly retired female chimpanzees. After a recent change in US law, decades of medical testing on chimpanzees has been brought to an end and cameras follow as Jill, Whitney, Paula-jean, Tessa, Martha and Ariah settle in to the sanctuary after an 800-mile journey from a laboratory in New Mexico to rural Louisiana.
Stan, 8.30pm, Sunday, Three
New 90-minute documentary which promises to follow ‘‘the highs and lows of much-loved New Zealand music and acting idol Stan Walker, as he comes face-to-face with one of ‘‘life’s biggest challenges’’. ‘‘I wanted to make the documentary to help people, and to also help myself process the whole thing,’’ Walker himself says.
Billions, 8.30pm, Tuesday, Soho
Damian Lewis’ Bobby Axelrod and Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades Jr continue their battle of egos and wits in the third season of this excellent US drama. Added to the mix is John Malkovich as a Russian billionaire.
I Am Not Your Negro, 8.30pm, Thursday, Rialto
James Baldwin was a man who knew Malcolm X, Medger Evers and Martin Luther King Jr and was deeply saddened by the death of each of them. Raoul Peck’s 2017 documentary takes archival footage of the writer and raconteur, blends it with his words (narrated by Samuel L Jackson) and comes up with a portrait of white America’s attitudes to its African-american counterparts that feels hauntingly relevant today. ‘‘A ferociously well-argued, blazingly intelligent, wondrously layered and utterly watchable piece of work,’’ wrote Stuff’s Graeme Tuckett.
The Americans, 9.30pm, Thursday, Soho
Start of the10-part conclusion to the much-loved Cold War drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in the 1980s. Season six picks the action back up as Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell) shelve their arrangements to move back to the Soviet Union with their children.