The very best of the week ahead
Today Walk the Line ITV, 8PM
While he may be stepping back from his on-screen commitments, Simon Cowell remains as active as ever in concocting variations on the talent show. The latest begins tonight and runs every night until Friday’s pre-recorded final, in which the winning musical act, whether solo, duet or group, will take away £500,000. Maya Jama, one of 2021’s ubiquitous television personality, will be hosting, with the panel of longstanding Cowell cronies Gary Barlow and Alesha Dixon, alongside resurgent R’n’B singer Craig David and Dawn French, who should at least ensure any silliness won’t go unacknowledged. Tonight will see five acts, chosen at random, performing for votes of virtual and studio audiences. The winner will be able to either cash out for £10,000 or hang on for the following evening and take on a new selection of acts for £20,000 instead. Each evening will see the pot increase by £10,000, to a potential £500,000, provided the previous night’s winning act hasn’t taken the mony and run. Gabriel Tate
Heaven Made
BBC ONE, 11.30AM; NOT SCOT
This warming three-part series follows a trio of abbeys caught up in pre-Christmas bustle. It’s less about prayer than capitalising on business opportunities – at Ireland’s Kylemore Abbey the sisters make hampers and the monks of St Augustine’s in Surrey produce rosary beads. GT
Monday David Baddiel: Social Media, Anger and Us
BBC TWO, 9PM
Another thoughtful film from the comedian and social cial commentator, this time me exploring whether the inexorable ble rise of social media has changed nged society for the worse. “I want nt to find out if something originally ginally designed to help us talk alk to each other is just leading ding to everyone shouting at t each other,” says Baddiel, illustrating his point with footage of a London family targeted by firebombers, bers, apparently because of their popularity on TikTok. k. Baddiel admits that he’s addicted to Twitter and is all too familiar with the ranting, abuse and extreme emotion that social media engenders in some users. As such, questions around whether this abuse is a result of envy or frustration, and how online aggression really does provoke real-life responses, even criminality, are among the more interesting avenues he explores. Sadly, Baddiel is tempted down too many roads (ironically, it’s as if his attention span is fried) in this limited hour. So, while his film is never less than fascinating, conclusions are thin on the ground. Gerard O’Donovan ODonova
Succession SKY ATLANTIC, 2AM & 9PM 9
We know that Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), St weddings and water wat are never a good mix – so exactly what that tantalising tanta ending to last week’s we superb Tuscany-based ba episode presaged, pr we’re on tenterhooks te to see. Whatever Wh the case, the fifinale finale of this sizzling third series is set to be an explosive explo one. GO
Tuesday Christmas Magic at Kew Gardens
CHANNEL 5, 9PM
The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, southwest London, look especially stunning in the winter as they are dressed for the festive season with a 2.6km long trail of lights. This one-off special goes behind the scenes as the team there prepares. The coverage is split neatly between the public-facing work and the essential horticultural research that takes place there. Expect to see preparations for the winter trail which will lead visitors to Father Christmas, work on the Palm House light display and the tireless efforts of those who are hanging lights onto the tallest living Christmas tree in the country – an activity freighted with significance, given Kew’s crucial role in establishing the tradition of tree decoration in the first place. Happily, those workers will also be rewarded by a feast of heritage carrots, kale and Jerusalem artichokes harvested from the vegetable gardens. Back among the scientists, meanwhile, there will be an investigation into the importance of frankincense, and an outting to Wakehurst, home of the Millennium Seed Bank. GT
The Yorkshire Vet at Christmas: It’s a Wonderful Life
CHANNEL 5, 8PM
Despite the title, this is not quite Peter Wright and Julian Norton being pulled back from the brink by a guardian angel, appalled at the turn their lives have taken. This Christmas special addresses less esoteric matters, with plotlines including a pet turkey being savaged by a dog, a tumour being removed from a terrier and a parrot that goes in search of its missing owners. GT
Wednesday Portrait Artist of the Year 2021
SKY ARTS, 8PM & 9PM
It has been a competition overbrimming with talent this year, proof if any were needed that the art of great portraiture is thriving in the UK. And what a great challenge for the climax, to have that most complex of comedians, Barry Humphries, as their subject. Typically mischievous, he sets nerves jangling from the start by declaring that he sat for David Hockney recently. All three finalists – Calum Stevenson, Christos Tsimaris and Mark Oliver (happily, a competition in which all the finalists are white males feels more like an aberration, nowadays, than the norm) – rise to the challenge with extraordinary paintings completed in the allotted four hours. But proof of what they are truly capable of, in the commissions they completed in their own time for the final, is what really blows the judges away – and sets the seal on the choice of a winner. Next, we follow the winner as they execute their £10,000 commission to paint the violinist Nicola Benedetti, and its unveiling at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. GO
The Gulf
ALIBI, 9PM
This crime series proved it had more than a glorious setting – New Zealand’s Waiheke Island – to offer in its satisfyingly tangled first series. Notably, Detective Jess Savage (Kate Elliott) is an excellent, complex lead – last season she had amnesia after the car crash that killed her husband – and the second series’s double opener picks up her story with energy and intrigue. GO
Thursday I Literally Just Told You
CHANNEL 4, 10PM
Jimmy Carr adds to his bulging portfolio of light entertainment gigs with this six-part game show created by Richard Bacon. And hats off to Bacon, because it’s rather innovative. Instead of just firing general knowledge questions at the four contestants, Carr quizzes them on what others in the studio have just said: he’s got two writers penning questions on set, one of whom is The Sky at Night’s space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, randomly. What appears even more random is Eamonn Holmes turning up in the audience half-way through. It’s largely a memory game, but the on-the-hoof content gives it a slightly chaotic feel that’s fun. The atmosphere could be better: the studio audience is sparse and how low must the production budget be when ousted contestants have to humiliatingly carry their own chairs off the stage? Clearly all the money was spent on Carr, but it was a smart move. His effortless-seeming shtick – making merciless fun of himself and the contestants – works brilliantly. Vicki Power
And Just Like That…
SKY COMEDY, 8AM & 9PM
The first two episodes of this Sex and the City revival got off to a rocky – and emotional – start, with the now 50-something women struggling to traverse the modern world of explicit podcasts and knowing what is and isn’t offensive. Then a major death changed the course of events. This third episode sees Mr Big’s ex-wife Natasha (Bridget Moynahan) make an appearance. VP
Friday
The Witcher
NETFLIX
When Netflix launched PICK The Witcher in 2019, it held OF THE the prospect of filling the WEEK lashings-of- gore-and-naked-flesh-plus-specialeffects streaming void left by HBO’s fizzled-out Game of Thrones. But with a
focus less on dynastic power and more on the individual square-jawed monster-slayer Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), and a narrative core that tended to the soppily romantic, it proved a mite soft for some. After a spectacular season finale, though, featuring an epic battle and finally fusing the disparate storylines of the three main characters – Geralt, his sorceress paramour Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and ward Ciri (Freya Allan) – the door was left open for more complexity. And series two rushes in to grab it with both hands as Geralt battles through multitudes of fearsome monsters to protect the notas-vulnerable-as-she-seems Ciri, while Yennefer turns evermore political as she proves pivotal in the ongoing war with the Nilfgaardian invaders. GO
Vienna Blood
BBC TWO, 9PM; NI, 11.05PM
The period murder-mystery gruesomeness continues when a mutilated corpse is discovered in a Vienna slum and the local secret services warn Oskar (Jürgen Maurer) not to get involved. GO