The very best of the week ahead Today
Gentleman Jack BBC One, 9pm
Suranne Jones returns as PICK the redoubtable, restless OF THE 19th-century mine owner WEEK and modern queer icon
Anne Lister. We rejoin her two years into her romantic union with fragile, lovelorn Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle, back on Sunday nights on BBC One just a week after the end of Peaky Blinders), working her way towards installing her at the renovated Shibden Hall, bringing their sizable estates together and getting as close to a marriage as the time and society would then allow. Her obstacles include Walker’s smothering relatives (the returning Stephanie Cole, Peter Davison and Amelia Bullmore) and a sister (Gemma Whelan) with a cough – never a good sign in a period piece – and mounting debts as progress on the new mine is hindered by errors and incompetence. While Jones is reliably excellent, vulnerability bubbling under this force of nature, writer Sally Wainwright is as careful not to waste a wonderful ensemble, and the late appearance of Lydia Leonard as Walker’s spurned lover suggests torrid times ahead. A triumph. Gabriel Tate
Thatcher & Reagan: A Very Special Relationship BBC Two, 9pm
Charles Moore concludes his assessment of Transatlantic Cold War relations with an incisive examination of diplomacy stretched to breaking point. As the Iron Curtain began to fall, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were divided in their approaches to easing the process along. GT
Monday
Worlds Collide: The Manchester Bombing
ITV, 9pm
As the inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing g of May 2017 rumbles on (it started ted in September 2020), this two- o-part documentary uses evidence released during the inquiry to help tell the story. Tonight’s opener focuses on the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, and his process of radicalisation – both in his hometown of Manchester, and his parents’ homeland of Libya. There’s a chilling countdown of the hours leading up to the atrocity that at killed 22 people, in which
Abedi is shown on CCTV casing the Arena and carrying his bomb in plain sight on public transport. The “worlds collide” aspect of the film is particularly poignant, contrasting Abedi’s twisted religious mission with the innocence and optimism of the concert-goers: youngsters who’d attended the Ariana Grande show talk about their excitement on the night, and parents of some of the dead describe final exchanges with lost loved ones. Experts weigh in on the multiple failures of security that might have prevented the attack. It’s a sobering film that takes us up to the moment of the explosion; its aftermath aftermat features in tomorrow’s
conclusion. conclusio Vicki Power
The Ar Art of Architecture
Sky Arts, Arts 8pm
The seri series exploring the ideas behin behind buildings begins a third run, run showcasing a lesserknown kn building from Br Britain’s Norman Foster, the th architect behind the Gherkin. He also designed F France’s minimalist Narbo V
Via museum of Roman antiquities, the walls of w which evoke natural rock formations f and Roman concrete, a nod to the museum’s contents. VP
Tuesday
Julia
Sky Atlantic, from 9pm
This charming, deceptively flinty HBO series casts Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child, the role played by an Oscarnominated Meryl Streep in 2009’s Julie & Julia. Child was a pioneer: her long-running series The French Chef began in 1962 and transformed both home cooking and public television. From the moment she hijacks a stuffy book show to cook an omelette on a hotplate, it is clear her concept is as uncompromisingly approachable as the woman herself. Frasier alumni David Hyde Pierce (as Julia’s snobbish but affectionate husband) and Bebe Neuwirth (as her acid-tongued but loyal sister) find plenty of subtext to dig into around misogyny, ageing and societal expectations. Above all, it is a pleasure to see Lancashire in the sort of lighter role which her career-changing brilliance in Happy Valley has made an increasing rarity. Gabriel Tate
Fragile: a Concert for Uncertain Times
Sky Arts, 7pm
A big night for Sky Arts, with Art Traffickers: Treasures Stolen from the Tombs, a new series on art
heists, at 8pm and Stephen Mangan narrating the story of a Renaissance master in the feature-length documentary Botticelli, Florence and the Medici at 9pm. But first, a concert in three parts, themed around a set of visual installations from Maurizio Cattelan depicting the life cycle and accompanied by music from diverse composers including Bach, Byrd and Arvo Pärt. GT
Wednesday Gazza BBC Two, 9pm
England manager Bobby Robson described him as “daft as a brush”, but Paul Gascoigne’s footballing brain was magnificent, conjuring goals out of nowhere with a quick turn of pace and showy ball skills. His sporting acuity, however, was never matched in his personal life, which was marred by alcohol and a trusting nature that attracted the worst sort of hangers-on. Using match clips, never previously seen home videos and archive material, Sampson Collins’s two-part documentary charts Gascoigne’s story during the late 1980s and the 1990s, when his exploits migrated from the sport sections to front pages and “Gazzamania” was born, as tabloids lapped up his on- and off-field misdemeanours. This first part opens in 1988, when the young, workingclass player with a winning smile signed for Terry Venables’s Tottenham Hotspur for a record transfer fee. Veronica Lee
Grand Designs: The Streets
Channel 4, 9pm
Kevin McCloud returns to Graven Hill in Oxfordshire, Britain’s first self-build community, to meet a new tranche of housebuilders. He follows Carlos and Maite, who have handed over their £234,000 for a plot and now try to bring their stunning design to fruition. Like McCloud, you will be rooting for this lovely couple as they overcome their many obstacles. VL
Thursday Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
BritBox
A couple of episodes of House aside, this richly enjoyable adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 mystery is Hugh Laurie’s first piece of direction and screenwriting for almost two decades; on this evidence, it’s a shame that he left it so long. Witty, intelligent and agreeably tense, the three-parter eschews Christie’s more established detectives, instead pairing Will Poulter’s naval officer Bobby Jones with childhood playmate-turned-laconic aristocrat Lady Frances Derwent (Lucy Boynton) to investigate the mysterious death of a man who Jones finds at the foot of a cliff on the Welsh coast, alive for just long enough to utter the titular line before expiring in dramatic fashion. A fine cast, including Alastair Petrie as the local vicar and Jones’s father, Conleth Hill as his sage mentor and Jim Broadbent and Emma Thompson as Lady Frances’s imperious parents, drift in and out of a narrative that both embraces and gently lampoons the Christie modus operandi. The amateur gumshoes attempt to answer the question and solve the mystery, all the while avoiding the seemingly Va murderous attentions of a shadowy figure in a bowler hat. A genuine pleasure to watch, and quite obviously to make as well. GT
Taskmaster
Channel 4, 9pm
A 13th series for a comedy format that shows no sign of flagging, the comic chemistry of the contestants once again judged to perfection. Ardal O’Hanlon, Bridget Christie, Sophie Duker and Judi Love each bring something different. Chris Ramsey, meanwhile, simply looks delighted to be there. And why not? Tasks tonight include duck hunting and duelling. GT
Friday Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough
BBC One, 6.30pm
This 90-minute documentary explores the day an asteroid hit the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. David Attenborough explains how, in a North Dakotan prehistoric animal graveyard
(named Tanis after the Egyptian city in Raiders of the Lost Ark), palaeontologist Robert DePalma has made an incredible discovery. He has unearthed the fossilised remains of animals that contain material thought to have come from the impact site thousands of miles away in modern-day Mexico. It contains the first known example of articulated animal carcasses from the day and myriad examples of prehistoric life. Attenborough interprets the findings for us, aided by some impressive CGI, describing the late Cretaceous period and providing a minute-by-minute account of that cataclysmic moment 66million years ago. VP
La Voix Humaine BBC Two, 10pm
A tour de force from soprano Danielle De Niese in Poulenc’s short opera, based on Cocteau’s 1928 play. A brief dialogue between De Niese and Antonio Pappano, who conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, provides background information before she launches into song. It’s an intimate and visceral piece in which Elle (De Niese) conducts a desperate phone call with her departed lover. VP