What not to miss in the week ahead
MUSIC Rock ‘n’ Roll Guns For Hire: The Story Of The Sideman BBC4 on Friday nights is the home of great music documentaries and this one, celebrating rock’s unsung heroes, sees Earl Slick, longtime sideman to David Bowie, tell some of the stories of the musicians whose job it is to make the star of the band look and sound great, all the while standing in the shadows. As Keith Richards puts it in the programme: “As a sideman, it’s your job to be invisible; you should be heard and not seen. You’ve got to know who you are and where you stand in the hierarchy. The hard thing for a sideman is that the better you are at your job the less people notice you, and that’s the whole point.”
As Slick worked with the likes of Eric Clapton and John Lennon, as well as Bowie for 40 years, he knows a thing or two about living in the shadow of a star.
Friday, BBC4, 9pm
SPORT Sue Barker: Our Wimbledon By way of a taster for the tournament proper, which begins on Monday and is all over BBC1 and BBC2 for the next two weeks, Sue Barker travels the globe to meet some of the legends who have graced the famous grass courts of SW19 and had the honour of holding the winner’s trophy aloft.
Tennis royalty, including Sir Andy Murray, Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Chris Evert, Billie Jean King, Pete Sampras, Björn Borg, Virginia Wade, Martina Navratilova, Boris Becker and John Mcenroe share memories and reflect on how their lives and careers were changed by winning Wimbledon.
Tomorrow, BBC1, 5:20pm
TRAVEL
Joanna Lumley’s India The Abfab star returns to the country of her birth for a deeply personal journey around India.
Born during the last days of the Raj, both sides of Lumley’s family called India home for several generations.
In this three-parter, she travels the length and breadth of the country, from Madurai and its dazzling Meenakshi temple in the south to the tea plantations of the Valparai Plateau and through the throng of Calcutta to Sikkim, at the foot of the Himalayas, where her grandfather was stationed and where her mother grew up.
Wednesday, STV, 9pm
DOCUMENTARY
The Highland Midwife The work of community midwives who serve the rural, coastal and island communities of the Highlands is celebrated in this new three-part documentary on Channel 5. Each week the cameras follow three mums-to-be and the midwives who care for them, with hospital hours away in the event of any problems.
Wednesday, Channel 5, 8pm FAMILY HISTORY Who Do You Think You Are? The ever watchable series taking a celebrity through their family history returns for its 14th season. First up is Charles Dance, whose career playing the wealthy and powerful belies the fact his mother was a parlour maid.
Thursday, BBC1, 9pm
SPORT
The Tour de France 2017 Cycling fans can get their fix of the greatest grand tour of them all as ITV4 brings live action of all 21 stages of the Tour de France, which this year begins in Düsseldorf, Germany and takes in Belgium and Luxembourg before heading to all five of France’s mountainous regions – the Vosges, the Jura, the Massif Central, the Pyrenees and the Alps before ending on the Champs-élysées in Paris.
Gary Imlach and Chris Boardman present, with commentary from Ned Boulting and David Millar. ■
Today, ITV4, 2pm