THIS WEEK’S TOP TV PICKS
MOTORING Top Gear Sunday,BBC1,8pm
Like Line Of Duty, Peaky Blinders and various other shows before it, Top Gear is ditching BBC2 in favour of its s more illustrious i sister channel. There’s something else a little different about the latest run too – as it was started before the lockdown but completed after it, there won’t be as many outrageous stunts in foreign climes to enjoy. Chris Harris does, however, start the series with a trip to Italy to drive the SF90, Ferrari’s new supercar. But the main thrust of the programme is more down-toearth. It sees Paddy McGuinness (above) take Harris and Freddie Flintoff back to his home town of Bolton for a 24-hour companycar road-test.
TRAVEL Michael Palin:
Travels Of A Lifetime
Sunday,BBC2,8pm
He’d already played a variety of surreal roles in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, but more than 30 years ago go Michael Palin li took k on what was then perhaps his most surprising role of all: that of the cosmopolitan traveller guiding us around the exotic and all-butunreachable far corners of the world. In a new four-part series, the presenter and actor looks back on his extraordinary journeys for the BBC, starting with his attempt to recreate the route of the gentleman explorer Phileas Fogg as first imagined by Jules Verne in Around The World In Eighty Days. This is followed by the chance to see the opening episodes from the series, first shown in 1989.
DRAMA Adult Material Monday, Channel4, 10 pm
Acclaimed writer Lucy Kirkwood turned her play Chimerica into a TV drama for Channel 4 last year, and now she’s back, having created ated a very different project for the broadcaster. Hayley Squires (above), who was so good in Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, impresses again as the wonderfully named Jolene Dollar, a devoted mother-of-three who prides herself on being her family’s main breadwinner. However, what most of her friends and acquaintances don’t know is that she earns her living as one of the British porn industry’s most bankable stars. Sadly, her double life is about to be exposed. Rupert Everett,
Joe Dempsie and Phil Daniels are among the supporting cast.
SCIENCE Surgeons At
The Edge Of Life Tuesday,BBC2,9pm
You’ve got the best seats in the house for the greatest real-life drama imaginable. The venue is the operating theatre. The documentary series returns, taking viewers behind the scenes at the world-leading Royal Papworth and Addenbrooke’s hospitals in Cambridge, where gifted surgeons such as Andrew Carrothers (above) push back the boundaries of medicine and science with amazing life-saving procedures. In the opening episode, a patient is taken to the point of death and beyond as her heart is stopped and her body drained of every drop of blood – but only so that her lungs can be cleared of clots to save her life. A fascinating if gruesome glimpse of the best of the NHS.
MUSIC John Lennon’s 80th Birthday Friday,BBC4,from8pm
He was senselessly gunned down in New York in 1980, but even now John Lennon remains one of the icons of music, thanks to a matchless legacy from The Beatles and his solo career. Now, to mark the occasion of what would have been his 80th birthday, an evening of programmes reminds us of both his music and charismatic, rebellious persona. Among the highlights is the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night (8pm) – still the greatest match-up between the movies and pop music – and a documentary about his life after The Beatles, Lennon: The New York Years (10pm). Sky Arts contributes John Lennon – Imagine (12.30am), focusing on the star’s solo album.