Wednesday

Imagine: Andrea Levy – Her Island Story

BBC ONE, 10.45PM; SCOTLAND, 11.15PM; WALES, 11.40PM

“I don’t write to change people’s minds, I write to open them,” states author Andrea Levy at the beginning of this wonderful profile of her life and work, which has been commissioned to coincide with the BBC’s adaptation of her fifth novel, The Long Song. She commands every scene here, whether she’s pithily dismissing those who insult her Windrush-generation parents (“P--- off, we’re getting on with our lives”) or dryly noting that Rupert Norris might regret asking her to sit in on rehearsals for the forthcoming National Theatre production of her bestseller Small Island. As the film goes on, the sense of an author coming to terms with her past, her writing and her own mortality unfolds. Even Alan Yentob is thoughtful, though he gets Levy complaining: “What part of ‘I don’t want to talk about this’ don’t you understand?” Above all, however, it’s Levy’s tough, funny and compassionate voice that shines in a film that manages to be melancholy and full to the brim with life. SH

The Undiscovered Kenneth Williams SKY ARTS, 10.00PM

Victor Lewis-Smith’s survey of British comedians moves on to Carry On star Kenneth Williams. Making use of Williams’s diaries, he carefully builds a picture of a complex man. SH