The very best of the week ahead
Today Adele ITV, 7.25PM
ITV kicks off a blockbuster evening (centred on the new series of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! which follows at 9pm) with a pre-recorded 90-minute concert in which megastar singer Adele performs her current single Easy On Me, as well as more songs from her new album, 30, in front of an audience of “friends, family, personal heroes and heroines, fellow musicians, artists, actors, sportsmen, sportswomen and more.” That amounts to a lot of celebrities packing out the 2,286-seat London Palladium – with Dua Lipa, Idris Elba, Samuel L Jackson, Emma Watson, Mel B, Harry Hill and Alan Carr among those in attendance. Then again, Adele’s first album in six years is guaranteed to be one of 2021’s biggest and, even more significantly, this is the first time Adele has performed live in the UK since cancelling the last two dates of her 2017 world tour due to vocal-chord damage. Quite an occasion, then, and with all but a couple of the tracks kept as a closely guarded secret until the album’s release last Friday, this will be among the first opportunities most of us get to hear songs that are certain to become the soundtrack of the coming months. Gerard O’Donovan
I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! ITV, 9PM
Ant and Dec return to Wales to play torture-and-tease with another line-up of celebrities. The Saturdays star Frankie Bridge, The Telegraph’s Agony Uncle Richard Madeley, Paralympian Kadeena Cox, former footballer David Ginola and, at 78, I’m a Celebrity’s oldest ever contestant, Arlene Phillips, are among those taking part. GO
Monday The Princes and the Press BBC TWO, 9PM
The welcome antidote to Channel 5’ s Windsor cash- h-ins with a roll-call ll of familiar rent-a- aquotes, this two- wo-part series is the result of more than 80 hours of interviews, conducted over a number of months by BBC Media Editor Amol Rajan. It covers the last, turbulent decade of relations between the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Sussex, their spouses and the media. The story begins in 2012 with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, covering a period in which the Prince of Wales’s sons were close to the peak of their popularity with the birth of Prince George and Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markle. Front and centre among Rajan’s interviewees are the journalists, some of whom became part of the story they were reporting when news of phone hacking broke and the associated furore – not least when it was revealed reveal that members of the Royal family famil had been targeted – brought brough one media outlet, outlet the News of the World, World to its knees. Both episodes are on iPlayer, iPlay alongside a BBC Sounds podcast.
Gabriel Gab Tate
The Th Truth About Electric Ele Cars: Dispatches Dis
CHANNEL 4, 8.30PM
With the sale of new petrol and diesel cars set to end by 2030, there’s never been a better time to invest in an electric car – or has there? Morland Sanders, who owns an electric car, asks if the UK’s charging network is good enough and how long the cars actually last. GT
Tuesday The Great Escape: A Daring Plan CHANNEL 5, 9PM
It comes as a surprise to hear the Great Escape described, at one point, as “the greatest example of Anglo-German co-operation since the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert”. But this hyperbole only adds to the atmosphere of a story already brimming over with stiff upper lips and derring-do. It gets a terrific treatment in this three-parter outlining in fine detail the heroism and, especially, the ingenuity that went into the Second World War’s most famous prisoner of war escape when, in March 1944, 76 men tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III. What’s perhaps less well known is the two years’ of planning that went into the escape, or the MI9 spying operation run from the camp, or, indeed, the help given by sympathetic German guards. This opener takes us from the first tentative digging through to the excavation of three tunnels to facilitate a mass exodus of up to 200 prisoners – right up to the moment disaster strikes within days of the first planned escape. GO
The Great British Bake Off: The Final CHANNEL 4, 8PM
In one of the most closely fought finals in years, the last three bakers battle for the title with a carrot cake signature, a Belgian bun technical, and a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party showstopper. Who’s your money on? GO
Wednesday Robin Robin NETFLIX
Christmas comes earlier and earlier by the year, but when the outcome is this appealing, who’s complaining? Aardman Animations’ first musical is a stop-motion affair crafted with typical charm and eccentricity. Bronte Carmichael voices Robin, who, having fallen from a tree into a nest of scavenging mice headed by Adeel Akhtar’s kindly, endlessly patient Dad Mouse, dreams of a sandwich of her own are hamstrung by her ineptitude as a sneak thief. When she ventures out into the world to prove herself, she encounters both friends and foes, embodied by the covetous, generous, pompous Magpie (Richard E Grant, having a ball) and the persistent, malicious Cat (Gillian Anderson in her most camply terrifying turn since Mrs Thatcher). A well-paced paean to family, charity, persistence and finding virtue in our apparent shortcomings, it is another fine showcase for the studio’s technical brilliance. GT
Grand Designs House of the Year CHANNEL 4, 9PM
While individual designs may not be to your taste, it is hard not to admire the ingenuity on display here, where imagination meets technique in the use of materials including Danish oak, corten steel and concrete. GT
Thursday The Beatles: Get Back DISNEY+
Based on 57 hours of footage that had been locked in a vault, unseen for 50 years, and a further 150 hours of audio, this extraordinary three-part, six-hour documentary (being released today, tomorrow and Saturday), plunges us back into 1969 and a London recording studio where, two months before they split up, The Beatles are feverishly writing and recording 14 new songs for the album Let It Be – the last they made together. Director Peter Jackson brings a shimmering vividness to picture and sound in this production which, in the ultimate seal of approval, is co-produced by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. Among the classics created in front of our eyes are Let It Be, Get Back and Don’t Let Me Down with an intimacy that, at times, really is like being in the room with the band. In the face of their near-impossible deadline, their creativity and friendship are put under extreme pressure – at one point fracturing completely when George quits the band. Superb. GO
The Martin Lewis Money Show Christmas Special ITV, 8PM
A useful Christmas consumer advice special on the best seasonal deals, and the pitfalls awaiting unsuspecting buyers, plus the top Black Friday offers, online and in the shops. GO
Friday Lindisfarne’s Geordie Genius: The Alan Hull Story BBC FOUR, 9PM
“He was our Bob Dylan.” So says Sting about Alan Hull, the songwriter who was a founder member of the folk rock band Lindisfarne. And Sting is not the only luminary to pay fulsome tribute to Hull, who, best known for the band’s 1971 hit Fog on the Tyne, is praised as a supremely gifted artist whose other songs, such as Lady Eleanor and Clear White Light, had a philosophical and poetic quality. Mark Knopfler, Elvis Costello, Dave Stewart and Peter Gabriel all chime in, and miles of grainy footage confirm Hull as a singer-songwriter with a memorable voice and earthy charisma. Even Hull’s early death in 1995, aged 50, can’t explain why he wasn’t a bigger star. This film may help redress that wrong. Vicki Power
The Wild Gardener BBC TWO, 8PM; WALES, 9.15PM
Encouraging us to lose our lawns in order to lure back fauna, Colin Stafford-Johnson continues overhauling his own Irish backyard in this gardening series. He is rewarded with a visit from a red squirrel, insects, frog spawn and aerial predators. VP