Tuesday Tu
BrokenBro BBC ONE, 9.00PM JimmyJi McGovern’s latestl six-part drama is a howl of frustration on behalf of those families – plenty of them hard-working – who find themselves in desperate cycles of debt. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t skint,” says single mother Christina (Anna Friel). The focal points of the drama are Christina and Sean Bean’s gentle yet troubled Father Michael Kerrigan: two people trying their best in near-impossible circumstances. Broken is an unsentimental appraisal of working-class culture and community in the North – celebrating its importance and recognising its limitations in a society where the state’s safety net is fraying badly. In Friel and Bean, it has two actors in rewarding new chapters in their careers, while McGovern is at something close to his best, making his points without hammering you over the head, and leavening the growing tragedy with well-judged humour. Broken is also, sadly, a drama for our times. Gabriel Tate
Twin Peaks: The Return SKY ATLANTIC, 9.00PM AND 10.00PM
In what is surely the most anticipated small-screen revival of the century so far, David Lynch and Mark Frost’s influential series returns for 18 more episodes, 25 years after bowing out with a controversial cinema spin-off. Very little is known about the plot, other than that it will see FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) return to the place that changed him forever. Is there yet more to be revealed about the death of Laura Palmer? Those who were unable to stay up for last night’s 2am simulcast, catch the opening double bill tonight instead. GT