The very best of the week ahead
Today Strike: Troubled Blood
BBC One, 9pm
Cormoran Strike – the damaged ex-soldier turned private detective created by novelist Robert Galbraith, aka JK Rowling – returns for a fifth series, with the palpable chemistry of Tom Burke as Strike and Holliday Grainger as his partner-in-sleuthing Robin Ellacott yet again making for an electric screen pairing. St Mawes in Cornwall is the initial scenic setting for tonight’s opener, where a visiting Strike is approached by a woman whose mother, Dr Margot Bamborough, went missing in London in the 1970s. Intrigued by a cold case investigation, Strike agrees to look into it and soon discovers that although Bamborough’s body was never found, she was presumed by police to have been murdered by a notorious serial killer. The mystery then drags Strike and Ellacott deep into the seedier realms of London’s underworld past and present. Gerard O’Donovan
Strictly Come Dancing BBC One, 7.15pm
Bumped by the Qatar World Cup, it’s the semi-finals at last and the couples have to learn two dances. Telegraph diarist Helen Skelton produced a game-changing Couple’s Choice for last week’s Musicals special and could now be the one to beat. Tonight, she’s dancing a Waltz and an Argentine Tango. Elsewhere, there are three Paso Dobles and two Charlestons to distinguish between. We’re expecting fan favourites Hamza Yassin and Will Mellor to join Skelton in next Saturday’s Grand Final, but their fate will be decided in Monday’s results show (8.15pm). GO
Monday The Disappearance of April Jones
BBC Two, 9pm
The latest off the neverending conveyor belt of true-crime documentaries returns to the 2012 abduction and murder of April Jones. A five-year-old with partial cerebral palsy, April came from a quiet, well-liked family. Her vanishing was shocking for the Welsh town of Machynlleth, painted as a close-knit if occasionally fractious community. The horror and trauma among the townspeople is palpable as it becomes a global news story with ever-present cameras, microphones and helicopters. There is talk of “dark energy” as suspicion falls on an ex-squaddie with a string of failed relationships. It is a sad, sickeningly awful story, told with all due care and with April’s family interviewed at length alongside locals, police and journalists. Gabriel Tate
Anish Kapoor: Stupid Naughty Boy Sky Arts, 9.15pm
Fast reinventing himself as Sky Arts’ very own Alan Yentob, Waldemar Januszczak follows the sexuagenarian Anglo-Indian sculptor as he prepares two installations for this year’s Venice Biennale, both of them coated in “Kapoor black” – a nanotechnology that absorbs 99.96 per cent of light. GT
Tuesday Chris Kamara: Lost for Words
ITV1, 9.15pm
Even if you’re not a football fan, chances are that you know who Chris Kamara is thanks to his longstanding presence as a Sky Sports pundit. Kamara left the broadcaster last year, later revealing that he had been diagnosed with speech apraxia. A person with the condition knows what they want to say, but they have difficulty getting their jaw, lips and tongue to move in the way required to form words. Caused by damage to those parts of the brain involved in speaking, it involves the loss or impairment of speech. Matt David’s film follows Kamara as he tries to find some insight into his diagnosis and struggles to accept it while trying to continue with his broadcasting career (most recently as co-host of Ninja Warrior UK) – although Kamara, who now speaks much more softly and slowly, says he feels like “a fraud, as I don’t bring to the table what I used to”. We see him trying various therapies to improve his speech and talking to experts and other sufferers; Kamara says he hopes his public status can help to raise awareness. Veronica Lee
Beyond the Yorkshire Farm: Reuben and Clive
Channel 5, 9pm
Another visit to farmer Clive Owen and his son Reuben, who embark on a mammoth project building a 30ft drystone wall. They source the stone from the abundance of granite on the farm – and Owen Sr shares pearls of wisdom gained over the decades. VL
Wednesday Vienna Blood BBC Two, 9pm
Steve Thompson’s adaptations of Frank Tallis’s novels have always felt like a bit of an outlier on television: where so
many crime dramas focus on plot at the expense of almost everything else, for Vienna Blood it is all about the trimmings. There are few policiers with such gorgeously realised production design, location work or attention to period detail, although perhaps equally few where the supporting performances are so variable and the direction so curiously old-fashioned, in the manner of so many European co-productions. Pairing, as always, Jürgen Maurer’s gruff police detective Oskar Rheinhardt and Freudian psychoanalyst Max Liebermann (Matthew Beard), Deadly Communion pitches them into the world of high fashion when a seamstress is found dead in a factory, but with no obvious wounds. It never quite grips as it should, but Vienna Blood never loses its appealingly wintry chill. GT
Children of the Taliban Channel 4, 11.05pm
Following their Netflix film In Her Hands – about Afghanistan’s youngest ever female mayor – directorproducers Jordan Byron and Marcel Mettelsiefen return to again document life under tyranny. With remarkable access, their latest focuses on two boys and two girls: the girls have lost their fathers and are working to support their families; the boys, as sons of Taliban officials, face superficially brighter futures. But do they have more in common than we assume? GT
Thursday Litvinenko
PICK ITVX
OF THE In November 2006, WEEK ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with a then-mysterious radioactive substance by Kremlin operatives. Not on the streets of Moscow – but in central London. The case caused a diplomatic firestorm. ITVX’s four-part dramatisation opens with Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt (Neil Maskell) and Detective Sergeant Jim Dawson (Barry Sloane), visiting Litvinenko (David Tennant) at University College Hospital, where he’s become dramatically bedbound; doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. He’s gaunt and exhausted, and his hair has fallen out, leaving him bald in a matter of days. He tells them he’s been poisoned for speaking out against Putin, and after originally not believing him, they sit and listen to his story over three days as he inches closer to death. Watched today, knowing the devastation that Putin has wrecked on Ukraine and his own country, it’s even more affecting. Poppie Platt
Souls
Sky Atlantic, 10pm & 11pm
This mind-bending German drama kicks off with a double bill. In Germany, Hanna (Brigitte Hobmeier) wakes up in a hospital bed wondering how her 14-year-old son Jacob (Aaron Kissiov) managed to save her life, while in Stockholm, Allie (Julia Koschitz) desperately tries to dissuade her husband Leo (Laurence Rupp), a pilot, from going to work. Intrigue grows when Jacob recalls a past life. Is he telling the truth? PP
Friday Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators BBC One, 2.15pm Father Brown,
Much like this cosy daytime crime drama has become an afternoon staple. And it returns for a Christmas special with another deliciously bonkers mystery for our private investigators Frank Hathawayand Luella Shakespeare (Mark Benton and Jo Joyner) to solve. First, there is the mystery of who is trying to ruin “Wintermas”, the
revamped, inclusive Christmas festival headed by council leader Elaine (Angela Lonsdale). She is being sent threats from “the Voice in the Dark” demanding she cancel the event or face humiliation. They have even managed to sabotage the Christmas lights – the horror! Meanwhile, Frank and Lu’s sidekick, the aspiring thespian Seb (Patrick Walshe McBride), is given his first client: Rob (Steve Edge), aka Mr Christmas, who celebrates Christmas Day every day – turkey, carols, presents and all. He wants the detectives to find out which Grinch has left graffiti across his house pleading with him to stop. Would you believe me if I said that the two cases might be connected? It’s fun, unpretentious stuff, played with a sprightly step and a knowing wink to camera. Stephen Kelly
Comedy Classics: Porridge
Channel 5, 9pm
This 90-minute film is a celebration of all things Porridge. There are the usual compilation of funny clips, along with insight from the writers and cast. There is also a section on Going Straight, the sequel cut short by the premature death of Richard Beckinsale. SK