Live Davis Cup Tennis
BBC Two, 1.30pm
Team GB make their return to the elite World Group in the Davis Cup after an absence of five years against Argentina. Now that the Davis Cup stalwarts Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman have retired, all hope of a British victory rested with Andy Murray, but he has pulled out with injury, leaving his brother Jamie and team-mates Alex Bogdanovic and Jamie Baker with a near impossible task. And the weight of history is against them - it is 22 years since GB last won a Davis Cup match at World Group level.
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7.35pm
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However much television is criticised for dumbing down, some series manage to survive against all odds. ITV has The South Bank Show and Channel 4 still has Unreported World - long may they last. Evan Williams begins a new series in the slums of Cairo. Although Egypt purports to be a secular state, Coptic Christians are marginalised and discriminated against. Some 100,000 Christians live in the Zebeline slum, collecting and recycling Cairo’s rubbish by hand. The stench is overpowering. Rats flourish and pigs are reared on the detritus. The Egyptian Government is embarrassed that anyone should be seen to live like this, and yet - so widespread is anti-Christian discrimination - that even affluent Christians choose to live in the ghetto. Unreported World, to its immense credit, shows life far from the tourist resorts.
Natural World
BBC Two, 8pm
Dolphins can recognise their own reflection in a mirror, which - as any teenage girl will confirm - is a sure sign of self-awareness. Now it transpires that dolphins are also capable of self-sacrifice and altruism, which hitherto had belonged only in the realm of myth. First, there was a case in the Red Sea in 1996 when a man attacked by a shark was saved when a dolphin came to the rescue. Even more astounding was the case of the family swimming off New Zealand’s North Island, when they were encircled for 45 minutes by seven enormous dolphins behaving frantically and slapping their tails on the water. Only afterwards did they realise that a great white shark was waiting to attack them. Trouble is, how do you thank a dolphin?
The Choir: Boys Don’t Cry
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BBC Two, 9pm
It’s not as if Gareth Malone, the choirmaster, breezes into a school and waves a magic wand to get a bunch of tough kids to sing like angels. He cajoles. He encourages. He refuses to take “no” for an answer. He has as much enthusiasm, self-confidence and determination as any one human being could possibly have - and even then it may not be enough. After the umpteenth listless rehearsal with his new choir, he seems to have reached a brick wall. “I can’t make you do this,” he tells the boys. “You have to take on some of the responsibility yourselves.” And when they do, it is pure joy for everyone involved: for the choir, the audience, a few million television viewers - and even the PE department.