TV CHOICES

The Mysterious Mr Lagerfeld

BBC2, 9pm

Having helmed Chanel since 1983, Karl Lagerfeld was one of the fashion industry’s most celebrated designers. However, it is said not that many people ever really knew the man behind the sunglasses, who lived in Paris with his blue-cream tortie Birman cat Choupette, before his death in February 2019. In this new film for Arena, director Michael Waldman tracks down Lagerfeld’s inner circle. The film features extraordinary access to Lagerfeld’s bodyguard, neighbour, doctor and the niece he hadn’t seen for 50 years, as well as the people who worked closely with him - and sometimes fell from grace. There are also chats with the male models who were the designer’s muses, while we also meet Choupette, the feline who is rumoured to be heir to her owner’s fortune.

The Cannibal Next Door Channel 5, 9pm

After spending much of his youth devouring German fairy tales and having a lifelong fantasy of eating another man, German computer repair technician Armin Meiwes found a willing victim on the internet in 2001. Forty-three-year-old engineer Bernd Brandes agreed to be dismembered and eaten for sexual pleasure. This documentary looks at the shocking story behind one of the world’s most notorious cannibals, including how the killer and the victim’s lives led to their fatal night together. It also tells the story of how the ‘Rotenburg Cannibal’ was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in prison in 2004, before being retried for murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005.