The very best of the week ahead
Today
The Platinum Pageant BBC One, 1pm
The apogee of the Jubilee PICK celebrations, a £15million OF THE pageant beamed live from WEEK London’s St James’s Park
honours the Queen’s reign with a dazzling visual spectacle. The three-hour event will feature horses (a royal favourite) and eye-catching sights such as a 20-foot puppet of a young Princess Elizabeth and a puppet dragon the size of a double-decker bus. A 1.5km “river of time” will feature dances across the ages, everything from the Lambeth Walk to rave, and a cavalcade of 150 game-changing public figures will include Ed Sheeran, Cliff Richard and Torvill and Dean. Stunt cyclists, athletes and circus performers will show off stunning feats, while key workers remind us of their contribution in the pandemic. The whole thing will culminate with a booming rendition of God Save the Queen at the gates of Buckingham Palace. Commentary comes from Clare Balding, with reporters including Anita Rani and Anton Du Beke visiting a selection of street parties around the UK. Other celebratory programming includes Songs of Praise: Platinum Jubilee Special (12.10pm) and Platinum Jubilee: What a Weekend! (8pm), in which Kirsty Young looks back at the various Jubilee highlights. Vicki Power
Britain’s Got Talent Final ITV, 7.30pm
The confetti cannon is loaded for the climax of the talent spectacular. After seven weeks of displays by precocious children, ballroom dancers, magicians and puppeteers, opportunity knocks for one act in tonight’s grand final. Fourteen series in we know well that anyone can win, and that Amanda Holden is bound to cry. VP
Monday
Silent Witness ess BBC One, 9pm pm
This gripping ng series of the crime forensics drama ama has involved grisly murders, fancy ncy medical technology and social media, to name just a few of the moving parts ts in a complicated d story where several al characters have something to o hide and the e body count is rising fast. The penultimate episode builds the intrigue as Sam Ryan (Amanda Burton) behaves suspiciously after pocketing a blood sample from the Lyell lab which would identify the health secretary’s murderer, and Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) and her colleagues are called to investigate the death of the journalist who had been digging around Sam’s medical data company. As Nikki tries to make sense of her ex-husband Tom Faulkner’s (Matthew Gravelle) involvement in the assassination, she uncovers something so dramatic that it could “destroy the field of forensic science for ever”. The thrilling story concludes tomorrow. tom Veronica Lee
Springwatch BBC Two, 8pm
Hatches, matches and a dispatches of the wildlife w kind can be beautiful beaut or brutal, but they have ha an endless capacity to fascinate. And so proves p the humble badger, ba who steals the t limelight lime via the th nest cameras c at Wild W Ken Hill. Iolo Williams goes in search of white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Mull, while Megan McCubbin showcases coastal life at Hauxley Nature Reserve. VL
Tuesday
Everything I Know About Love
BBC One, 10.40pm; NI, 11.10pm Adapted by author Dolly Alderton from her own successful memoir, this seven-parter, directed by China MooYoung, is “a story about great love – but not the one you think it is”. This is just as well, given that it begins with a meet-cute between Maggie (Emma Appleton, playing Alderton’s avatar) and Street (Connor Finch), an intolerably smug musician who wears a trilby, tactically deploys Philip Larkin quotes and performatively hates smartphones. While he flits in and out of her busy life in a Camden houseshare, the most important relationship in Maggie’s life remains that which she shares with Birdy (Bel Powley), her sweetly gauche childhood friend. When Birdy unexpectedly upends the established order and finds Mr Right, Maggie must reckon with jealousy, loneliness and hints of a life that may be spinning out of control. The opening episode is a fun and generous paean to female friendship and finding your feet, laced with enjoyable slapstick and karaoke sessions, and is fine as far as it goes. Later episodes (the whole series is available on BBC iPlayer) build effectively on the premise, balancing the frivolity with more introspection, the performances and observations sharpening as the story matures. Gabriel Tate
We Own This City
Sky Atlantic, 9pm
The Wire’s David Simon and George Pelecanos return to Baltimore for this unflinching six-part miniseries, shockingly based on fact. A superb cast is led by Jon Bernthal and Wunmi Mosaku as the city’s law enforcement copes with aftershocks of a death in police custody: some are pulling back from arrests for fear of citizen journalists sending them viral, while others act with impunity. Angry, urgent and enthralling. GT
Wednesday
How to Catch a Cat Killer ITV, 9pm; not STV
In late 2018 cat owners in Brighton, West Sussex, became concerned about a series of stabbings and mutilations of their pets. Eventually loner Steven Bouquet, a 52-year-old shopping centre security guard, was jailed for 16 attacks, but the actual number of cat killings is thought to be far higher. Carly Aston’s film shows how Bouquet was brought to justice after one woman, Wendy, decided to take action; with a group of other residents she alerted pet owners to the danger lurking in their locality, and one installed CCTV outside his home. Just a few months later, Bouquet was caught on camera during an attack – the breakthrough that the stumped officers needed. The subject matter is gruesome (although thankfully we see little to offend) but it’s uplifting to see how community action and police work gets results. VL
Ms Marvel
Disney+
Fans of the Marvel universe assemble: Kamala Khan is a New Jersey highschooler and fan of the Avengers (not the John Steed variety), who gains cosmic energy powers and becomes a superheroine (named Ms Marvel). Iman Vellani plays Marvel’s first Muslim superhero. VL
Thursday
Reel Britannia BritBox
Somewhere between the esoteric meanderings of Mark Cousins and the self-conscious, slightly disappointing prestige affairs occasionally churned out by the BBC, this irreverent, well-informed documentary series manages to cram three-dozen examples of 1960s British cinema (three more editions tackle the following decades) into an hour. Written and directed by Jon Spira (also behind Hollywood Bulldogs and Elstree 1976) and narrated by comedian Nick Helm, it gathers an estimable collection of relevant talking heads, from Terence Davies and Ken Loach to Stephen Frears and Edgar Wright, and embraces an eclectic selection of undisputed classics ( Performance, Whistle Down the Wind) and curate’s eggs ( The Small World of Sammy Lee, Charlie Bubbles) generally confined to Talking Pictures TV. An unexpected delight. GT
Who Do You Think You Are?
BBC One, 9pm; not Wales
As so often with this frequently surprising series, you couldn’t make it up: televisual brainbox-turned-crime novelist Richard Osman tonight discovers his four-times great grandfather’s involvement in a famous Brighton murder case. Alongside this, we hear the touching story of how his grandfather’s army career would come to indirectly inspire his own life. GT
Friday
My Name Is Leon BBC Two, 9pm
Heartstrings will surely be twanged by this sweet 90-minute adaptation of Kit de Waal’s novel. Set in 1980s Birmingham, nine-year-old Leon (a remarkable Cole Martin in his debut TV role) is taken into care with his baby brother after neglect from their mother. But soon baby Jake is given up for adoption, not least because babies are easier to find families for, but also, it’s intimated, because Jake is white and Leon is mixed race and they don’t look related. Leon is determined to be reunited with his brother, but has some tough life lessons to learn. His comingof-age journey involves finding security with a foster mother (the wonderful Monica Dolan) and investigating his blackness with a kindly mentor, Tufty (Malachi Kirby). The narrative is told entirely through Leon’s eyes and captures beautifully the boy’s hazy understanding of the adult world. Heavyweight cameos come from Lenny Henry and Christopher Eccleston, and Olivia Williams is a hoot as Sylvia, Leon’s interim foster mother. VP
Celebrity Gogglebox
Channel 4, 9pm
Following Denise Van Outen’s break-up with partner Eddie, she will now be joined by pal Duncan James for this new season of the show where celebrities unleash their inner TV critic. This series also boasts a welcome return for Rylan Clark and his wonderful mother Linda, and Gyles Brandreth will be re-matched after the lamented departure of Maureen Lipman. VP