The very best of the week ahead
Sunday
The Warship: Tour of Duty BBC Two, 9pm
Returning to HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time since his similarly themed 2018 series Britain’s Biggest Warship, Chris Terrill’s established rapport with the crew pays real dividends in terms of access and honest appraisals of life for some of the 1,600 on board. This floating city is setting off on its first operational voyage, a seven-month journey to the South China Sea; following a morale-boosting trip from the late Queen herself (the series was filmed in 2021), the opening episode takes in the leg to Italy. We meet Able Rating Helayna Birkett (one of just 208 women on board), strait-laced SubLieutenant John Hawke and chef Ronnie Lambert, an effortlessly engaging guide to the ship with frank views on eggs, uniform and the troubles that led him to join up. Gabriel Tate
Happy Valley BBC One, 9pm
Another unbearably tense hour of storytelling free of trickery or artifice, leavened by splendidly surreal humour. Sally Wainwright’s masterpiece finds Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) heading to court and perhaps his destiny, while Catherine (Sarah Lancashire) tries to circle the family wagons around Ryan. GT
Monday Everyone Else Burns
Channel 4, 10pm & 10.35pm
A double header to launch Dillon Mapletoft and Oliver Taylor’s enjoyable sitcom, with Simon Bird, about a puritanical religious sect. Despite sporting a very weird haircut, Bird essays another version of his characters in The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner as David Lewis, a condescending, permanently exasperated individual who is thwarted in his ambitions – including to become a church elder – at every turn. The Lewis family are members of the Order of the Divine Rod in Manchester, an apocalyptic congregation who believe the end of the world is nigh and that sinners – ie everyone but themselves – will be cast into eternal flames on the day of reckoning. Cracks are starting to appear in David’s life; son Aaron (Harry Connor) is a true believer, but long-suffering wife Fiona (Kate O’Flynn) disappears to her neighbour’s house to watch telly, while teenage daughter Rachel (Amy James-Kelly) is discovering what hormones are for. Veronica Lee
How the Holocaust Began
BBC Two, 9pm
Six million is the figure most of us recall when we think of Hitler’s murder machine, but in this documentary – released ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day this Friday – historian James Bulgin examines how millions more were shot and buried by the Nazis across Eastern Europe before the death camps were built, and how technology is now helping to record these crimes for the first time. The last instalment of The US and the Holocaust is also on BBC Four at 10pm. VL
Tuesday
Three Minutes: A Lengthening: Storyville BBC Four, 10pm
“Of the Jewish presence in Nasielsk, nothing remains. No memorial. No sign. The only thing left is an absence.” Bianca Stigter’s film on the Holocaust conveys a haunting sense of its appalling scale through the annihilation of one Jewish community in one small town. The title refers to three minutes of ordinary (but viewed through the lens of history, extraordinary) footage recorded by film-maker David Kurtz on a visit to his birthplace, Nasielsk in eastern Poland, in 1938. Discovered by Kurtz’s grandson in 2009, it overflows with life. Hundreds of Jews mill around the town square and synagogue, smiling, laughing, waving – excited by Kurtz’s camera. What none of them could have known is that within months they would all be gone: humiliated, beaten and robbed, deported to ghettos and on to death camps by the Nazis. A community of 3,000 extinguished; the sense of absence compounded by the intense, repeated focus on faces, clothing, forgotten names, the few traces that remain to remind us of the horror. Gerard O’Donovan
Super/Natural
National Geographic, 8pm
Produced by Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron and narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, this spectacular nature series makes the most of cutting-edge film technology that enables viewers to see and hear beyond the normal limits of perception, revealing the secret powers of some extraordinary creatures, beginning with chatty elephant seals and glow-in-the-dark squirrels. GO
Wednesday The Catch Channel 5, 9pm
Jason Watkins brings real emotional heft to the role of Ed Collier, a Cornish fisherman finding catches harder, competition stiffer and an ageing, possibly sabotaged boat putting real pressure on him and his family – wife Claire (Cathy Belton) and daughter Abbie (Poppy Gilbert). Of more pressing concern, however, is the arrival of Abbie’s new boyfriend, Ryan (Aneurin Barnard): confident, wealthy and with the uncanny habits of saving the day and ingratiating himself with Ed’s nearest and dearest. Does this smooth-talking new arrival represent an existential threat to a family unit bound tight by tragedy some years earlier, or are Ed’s suspicions fuelled by guilt and paranoia? Adapted by Michael Crompton from TM Logan’s popular thriller, The Catch hits a few familiar beats but the performances ensure every possible uncertainty or enigma is played to the hilt, while the Irish coast makes an impressive, persuasive stand-in for Cornwall. GT
Extraordinary
Disney+
This amiably silly comedy (an impressively accomplished debut from writer Emma Moran) imagines a world in which everyone over the age of 18 has been granted a superpower – or almost everyone. One of the unlucky few still waiting is 25-year-old Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who will have to go in search of hers. GT
Thursday Grayson Perry’s Full English
Channel 4, 9pm
The ever-evolving idea of Englishness has long served as a flashpoint in the culture wars. In this illuminating three-part documentary, the artist Grayson Perry goes on the road to disentangle the debate, meeting with people from all walks of life and asking what Englishness means to them. He begins with wedding DJ Jeremy, who patrols the coast of Dover in search of migrants crossing in small boats. His love of Englishness is shaped by images of spitfires and Second World War street parties; images that, as Perry argues, bear no resemblance to the England of today. It serves as an interesting contrast to the rowdy football fans that he meets in Munich, before an England v Germany game, who surprise Perry with a more progressive form of patriotism. As one fan says, his diverse London borough of Lambeth is as English to him as anywhere else in the country. The latter part of this first episode, themed around the south, sees Perry visiting druids and a fascinating group who campaign for the right to roam by trespassing across the land of Tory peer Lord Benyon. To them, England is the soil beneath your feet. Stephen Kelly
Deep Fake Neighbour Wars
ITVX
This six-part comedy series uses deep-fake technology to make it look like celebrities, such as Idris Elba, Kim Kardashian and Greta Thunberg, are feuding neighbours. The gimmick itself ranges from ropey to quite disturbing in terms of future possibilities. SK
Friday Shrinking
Apple TV+
Another high-quality release from Apple TV+, this comedy from Ted Lasso’s Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein is founded on an enjoyably droll conceit: a therapist who goes rogue and starts telling the truth to his cosseted patients. Jason Segel (who also gets co-creator/writer credits) is terrific as cognitive behavioural therapist Jimmy Johns, who’s mired in grief following the death of his wife and crippled by fear that his relationship with his daughter is also disintegrating. Pushed to the edge in the face of his self-pitying and selfdefeating clients, he cracks and starts pointing out harsh home truths to them – and suddenly his breakthrough rate begins, very entertainingly, to rocket. The humour gets a lot darker than Lasso at times, but it’s saved by a smart, snappy script that is backed up by excellent acting. Notably from Luke Tennie as Sean, a young war veteran with serious anger issues, but also by Harrison Ford as Jimmy’s concerned but ineffectual by-the-book boss, Paul, and Jessica Williams as their therapist colleague, Gaby. Lukita Maxwell is a strong presence, too, as daughter Alice – a tougher nut to crack than any client. GO
Lockwood & Co
Netflix
Written and directed by Attack the Block’s Joe Cornish, and set in a world plagued by murderous ghouls, fright-night thrills abound in this lively London-based series about a renegade trio of psychic teenagers who set out to make their name in the competitive world of ghostbusting. GO