The very best of the week ahead
Today The Pale Horse
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
The always-watchable Rufus Sewell heads up this adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s later novels, published in 1961. Sewell plays suave antiques dealer Mark Easterbrook, who’s drawn into a rather bizarre investigation – centred on eerie goings on in the fictional Surrey village of Much Deeping – following the death of his first wife and, later, a woman with whom he’s had a casual sexual encounter. Christie fans will spot major deviations from the original from the start, although this is par for the course with screenwriter Sarah Phelps, whose previous Christie revisions tended to provoke as much outrage as pleasure among purists (notably Christmas 2018’s The ABC Murders, featuring John Malkovich as a bizarrely reconstructed Hercule Poirot). This two-parter certainly plays up to the novel’s atmospheric 1960s setting but the almost obsessive attention to murky mood and close-up period detail can feel like an attempt to distract from a thin and incoherent plot. Gerard O’Donovan
Endeavour
ITV, 8.00PM
It’s New Year 1970, as this spin-off returns for a seventh run, and Shaun Evans’s young(ish) Morse – fresh from a dreamy canal-side fling in Venice – is brought back down to Earth with a bang, investigating the murder of a barmaid on an Oxford towpath. DI Thursday (Roger Allam) fancies her boyfriend for it; Morse suspects otherwise. GO
Monday
Rio & Kate: Becoming a Stepfamily
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
Following his emotional 2017 documentary about life after his wife Rebecca’s premature death, this new film finds former footballer Rio Ferdinand preparing for marriage to the reality star Kate Wright. Yet all is not entirely rosy in the newly blended family with Wright admitting that she struggles with step-parenting and Ferdinand worrying that his three children, Lorenz, Tate and Tia, have yet to fully process their mother’s death. The questions raised here are important: how can you be the sort of mother you wish to be without supplanting a dead woman? What do you do if family members refuse to get fully on board with the new relationship? Both Wright and Ferdinand are disarmingly honest about these issues while the programme’s emotional centrepiece is a visit by the children to a child bereavement centre where Lorenz, so often the calm centre of his family, admits that he wishes he had someone his own age with whom to talk. Sarah Hughes
Inside No 9
BBC TWO, 10.00PM 10.00PM; NOT NI
Secrecy shrouds this episode of Inside No 9
– meaning that Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have even more tricks planned for us than usual. They amp up the chills with a story deftly tackling our ongoing property obsession. Jenna Coleman and Kadiff Kirwan star as a couple who’ve got a bargain on their new flat, only to find out that there might be a very good reason for that. SH
Tuesday
The Split
BBC ONE, 9.00PM; WALES, 10.35PM
Abi Morgan’s legal melodrama returns after a first series that grew in confidence and stature, climaxing in the partial collapse and rejuvenation of the Defoe family with the death of its wayward patriarch (Anthony Head). Warring sisters Hannah (Nicola Walker), Nina (Annabel Scholey) and Rose (Fiona Button) reunited with their mother, Ruth (Deborah Findlay), even as the philandering of Hannah’s husband Nathan (Stephen Mangan) brought public humiliation. Financial troubles also saw the family firm merged with a larger, glossier rival. Series two finds Hannah approached by a TV presenter (Donna Air, strikingly persuasive in her first acting role for five years) seeking a way out of a toxic marriage to her controlling partner, a superficially charming music producer (Ben Bailey Smith). You wouldn’t call it subtle – each new case gives the characters pointed opportunities to reflect on their own lives – but it’s certainly never dull. Gabriel Tate
The Brits at 40
ITV, 8.00PM
Jack Whitehall celebrates four decades of the music awards ceremony from the highs (Stormzy’s statement, Jarvis Cocker’s intervention, a showstopper from Rihanna and Drake) to the lows (the Phil Collins and Annie Lennox years, dear old Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood). GT
Wednesday White House Farm
ITV, 9.00PM
While it hasn’t perhaps reached the heights of Jeff Pope’s devastating takes on the true-crime genre ( A Confession, Litte Boy Blue), Kris Mrksa’s retelling of events surrounding the White House Farm murders has largely been sensitive in its handling of the story and respectful of those who were directly affected by the deaths. As the series reaches its climax, Bamber (Freddie Fox) is arrested for multiple murders. Fox has been excellent throughout, capturing Bamber’s youthful arrogance and hedonism as well as his disbelief that the “little people” could ever bring him to court. But this finale really belongs to Mark Addy’s dishevelled DS Stan Jones as he tries to convince Bamber’s exgirlfriend Julie (Alexa Davies) to testify in court. Plaudits too to Mark Stanley, who never lets us forget Colin Caffell’s aching sense of loss. SH
Kevin McCloud’s Rough Guide to the Future
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
Kevin McCloud’s new series sees unlikely trio Jon Richardson, Phil Wang and Alice Levine investigate how to make the world more green. In China, Wang samples insects, in Japan Levine checks into a tiny hotel and in America the vegan Richardson is caught on the horns of a dilemma. SH
Thursday
Hospital
BBC TWO, 9.00PM
It’s hard to imagine anything more dispiriting for hard-pressed NHS staff than having a £350million hospital, packed full of state-of-the-art medical equipment, sitting idle and unused for three years. But as fans of this documentary series – which follows six NHS trusts across Liverpool – know, that’s what’s going on with the new Royal Hospital, which has lain unfinished since the collapse of Carillion in 2018 and the subsequent discovery of serious structural defects. We join staff and patients for a sixth series as a major merger of the old Royal Liverpool and Aintree University hospital trusts is being undertaken in a cost-saving exercise that sees all bar one of the Royal’s operating theatres closed for a day while staff, patients and equipment are transferred round the city. (This is so that the hospitals can “rationalise” their services.) What results is the sort of barely controlled chaos that induces disbelief at the staying power and dedication of NHS doctors and nurses – and at the madness of so-called efficiencies that put patients in one hospital and the life-saving equipment that they need in another five miles away. GO
Tyson Fury: The Gypsy King
ITV, 9.00PM
Ahead of a much-hyped rematch against WBC world champion Deontay
Wilder, this intimate three-parter follows Tyson Fury – the mouthy former heavyweight champion – at home and in the ring as he embarks on his quest to regain the title. GO
Friday
Britain by Barge: Then & Now
CHANNEL 5, 9.00PM
With their bittersweet narrowboat escapades in Channel 4’s Great Canal Journeys, husband and wife team Timothy West and Prunella Scales reignited our enthusiasm for Britain’s canals. Now a new celebrity crew – including conservationist Bill Oddie, presenter Anne Diamond, royal reporter Jennie Bond and pop producer Pete Waterman – build on our affection for these elegant waterways, as they board two classic barges to explore three of the country’s finest examples, and to show us how past and present meet along their banks. In tonight’s first episode, the barges head to the mighty Leeds to Liverpool canal, making some intriguing stop-offs on the way. At Saltaire they find the imposing former mill transformed into a gallery and high-tech factory, while at Bingley Five Rise they navigate a spectacular series of climbing locks topped by a café in a centuries-old stable block. As they steer through the countryside, our amiable gang swap stories, clink wine glasses and meet a heartening gaggle of locals dedicated to keeping canal history alive. Toby Dantzic
Classic Albums: Tears for Fears: Songs from the Big Chair
BBC FOUR, 9.30PM
Tonight this fascinating series winds back to 1985 to learn how emo-pop duo Tears for Fears produced their masterpiece of arena-ready anthems, Songs from the Big Chair. Band members Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith take us behind the scenes. At midnight there’s also a chance to see the group perform at the BBC Radio Theatre in London. TD