PICK OF THE DAY

GREAT COASTAL RAILWAY JOURNEYS 6.30PM, bbc2

★★★★ Michael Portillo certainly knows how to make train travel look fun. He might use the railway tracks to plan his journeys, but really, this show is all about showing you the sights, and as he embarks on a new series, showing over the next four weeks, it’s all about stunning coastlines. For week one, Michael starts on the Jurassic Coast, at Lyme Regis, before venturing onward to the Lizard Peninsula and the Isles of Scilly, via Exeter, Plymouth, Penzance and Porthcurno. Tonight, don’t miss his attempt at reading the TV weather, and a chilly celebration of the discoveries of pioneering palaeontologist Mary Anning.

GRAND INDIAN HOTEL 8PM, CH4 ★★★

For the final episode of this colourful series, we’re at the Oberoi New Delhi, on what is the busiest week of the year. This vast hotel – a city within a city – makes huge sums of money during the India

Art Fair, which draws in well-heeled visitors from around the world. The Oberoi’s staff (right) will be kept on their toes catering for these guests in its restaurants, bars and banqueting halls. If you watched the recent BBC series on Mumbai (Streets Of Gold, watch on BBC iplayer), you’ll know that there’s a superrich elite emerging in India, and as the hotel launches its new concept restaurant, headed by a Michelin-star chef, the pressure is on to draw in these new monied crowds, as well as keep the old guard happy.

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE 8.30PM, bbc2 ★★★★

Amol Rajan, who took over from Jeremy Paxman last year, has settled in nicely as the host of this long-running student quiz show. Rajan completes his first full year with tonight’s final, which sees the four-times winners Imperial College London facing University College London, who have never claimed the trophy before despite competing in the series since the show’s debut all the way back in 1962.

MEET THE ROMAN EMPEROR WITH MARY BEARD 9PM, bbc2 ★★★★

Mary Beard (right) has some stories to share about the most powerful men in antiquity. And they’re not the ones you’ve heard a thousand times before. Mary is interested in the details that the historical and archaeological evidence can prove, rather than the tales recycled in Hollywood movies. For example, did you know that ‘an awful lot of kissing went on in the Roman court’? So much so that it had to be curtailed after a nasty outbreak of herpes. Mary also reveals the specific jobs undertaken by slaves, including imperial handbag carrier.

DEFIANCE: FIGHTING THE FAR RIGHT 9PM, CH4 ★★★★

‘It’s just Indian blood,’ said the policeman at the scene of the murder of a Sikh teenager in Southall in 1976. This three-part series, showing over consecutive nights, sheds sad and shocking light on the extent of racist attitudes and violence against South Asians in the Britain of the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on communities in Southall, west London, and Brick Lane in the east of the capital, we hear from the generation who, unlike their parents, took to the streets to fight back against the gangs of far-right ‘skinheads’ and the National Front who were murdering their friends and neighbours.