Critics’ choice
Pick of the day
The Windsors (C4, 10pm/10.35pm)
Channel 4 has long viewed Britain’s royal family sceptically, but this sitcom sets about them with a vitriolic energy that makes their treatment in Spitting Image seem tame in comparison. As in Dickens’s satirical comedies, its virtuous protagonists are beset by monsters, reactionaries and fools. Prince William’s (Hugh Skinner) dreams of heroism are blocked by his dad; while Kate (Louise Ford) is undermined by both her mother-in-law and her sexually predatory sister (Morgana Robinson).
Some of the caricatures are irresistible in the double-episode opener — Haydn Gwynne’s Camilla and Richard Goulding’s Harry stand out — but there is too much replication: two wicked witches, three idiots, two cash-strapped spongers. The writers also seem unsure of what to do with Charles (Harry Enfield); instead of being lampooned like everyone else, he is merely gently mocked.
John Dugdale
Family fare
Matilda And The Ramsay Bunch (CBBC, 5pm)
Nothing to do with Roald Dahl, or, indeed, Neighbours. Tilly, the presenter of this mixture of family frolics and recipes, is a teenage cookery blogger whose parents are Gordon and Tana Ramsay. This makes the series a kind of celebrity reality show, although the celebrities are only supporting characters. A dead ringer for Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Tilly begins the second series on holiday with her family in California: going to the beach, taking selfies, initiating food fights and awaiting the judgment of her “annoying” dad after she prepares an evening meal.
Age shall not wither
Scream Street (CBBC, 5.45pm)
The animated fantasy sitcom peopled by freaks and ghouls returns with a typically hectic story. Eefa the lovely witch (voiced by Debra Stephenson) tells Luke the teenage werewolf (Tyger Drew-Honey) and his friends — a vampire and an Egyptian mummy — to clear out the clutter in her Emporium. What they throw away, however, includes a painting of an old lady; and, in a rare CBBC nod to Oscar Wilde, 300-year-old Eefa needs to have it in the Emporium to preserve her youthful looks. Frantically searching for the portrait, Luke learns that it was recycled by an artist who was painting Otto (John Thomson).
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This England
The Extraordinary Collector (BBC2, 8pm)
Two days after the final bow of Normal for Norfolk’s Desmond MacCarthy, BBC2 introduces another mildly eccentric English character to fill the gap, and like the gentleman farmer, Gordon Watson (one of the regulars in Channel 4’s Four Rooms) is an enthusiastic celebrator of life’s joys, but with an underlying anxiety derived from having to make money. An antiques and art dealer rather than a “collector”, he is seen visiting Lord Rothschild at his stately home and trying to think of items he might be able to sell him. Later, Watson returns with designer chairs and a chandelier.
It’s reigning women
Henry VIII And His Six Wives (C5, 8pm)
Dan Jones and Suzannah Lipscomb address the final stages of Henry VIII’s unhappy marital history in the closing episode of this seductively pouty pop- history show, complete with steamy reconstructions. With poor Anne of Cleves (“divorced”) dismissed for being too ugly, Henry was able to transfer his affections to the supposedly virginal Catherine Howard, marrying her two weeks after his previous union was annulled. The programme shows how her turn at being queen went quickly off the rails, before moving on to the story of Catherine Parr (“survived”) who combined tending to her husband’s ulcerated legs with a dangerous religious zealotry.
Ten’s a crowd
The Five (Sky 1, 9pm/10pm)
The sinister storage unit, the convict playing mind games, the splash of religious mania: Harlan Coben’s thriller packs in as many creepy clichés as it can manage in these two episodes. It is a state of affairs that makes you wonder if, duration-wise, this 10-part series would have been better off emulating its title. Still, with so many secrets left to dig up — why is everyone obsessed with ABC’s Poison Arrow, for a start — viewers will probably decide to hang on for next week’s undoubtedly bitter end.
John Dugdale and Victoria Segal
Sports choice
Madrid Open Tennis (Sky Sports 2, 11am/7pm)
Cycling (Eurosport, 1.30pm)
Racing (C4, 2pm)
IPL Cricket (Sky Sports 1, 3pm)
Football (BT Sport 1, 7.15pm) Inverness v Dundee United
Challenge Cup Rugby League (Sky Sports 1, 7.55pm)
Radio pick of the day
Friday Night Is Music Night (R2, 8pm)
Bing Crosby, never particularly fashionable but one of the biggest recording and cinema stars of his era and someone who sold 1bn discs, is honoured in a show hosted by Michael Feinstein. Performers include the jazz singer Clare Teal, Lance Ellington from Strictly, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Larry Blank. The Full Works (Classic FM, 8pm) also highlights American music, concluding a week-long celebration of New York’s Carnegie Hall as it enjoys its 125th birthday.
Paul Donovan
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You say
I like The A Word (BBC1) but why is Joe allowed to wander down the road all on his own?
Lesley Badgely
How much more professional, controversial, entertaining and, it has to be said, good looking are ITV’s GMB team than the second-rate, jumped-up sports and business presenters that BBC Breakfast is now using to front the programme. Dan and Mike are ok, the lovely Carol excellent, and wasted reading the weather, but the rest are probably only there by being desperate enough to relocate to Stockport and work for peanuts.
Mike Powell
Shame on BBC for broadcasting spoilers when F1 rounds are run in early hours GMT out of Europe. This smacks of pique because they lost to Channel 4. Stop it!
Susan George
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
FILM CHOICE
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Eurotrip (2004)
BBC1, 11.50pm
Crass, vulgar and cheap are the more generous adjectives that apply to Jeff Schaffer’s teen sex comedy centring on a jilted US high-school leaver who travels to Europe to visit a German penpal. The culture clash of American boorishness and Old World caricatures is so childishly reductive you may just kick yourself for laughing.
Ricki And The Flash (2015)
Sky Movies Premiere, 4.30pm/8pm
Playing a supermarket worker- cum-rock singer and deadbeat mum who tries to reconnect with the unhappily divorced daughter she abandoned years earlier, Meryl Streep turns it all the way up to 11 in Jonathan Demme’s crowd-pleasing comedy drama, which riffs on well-strummed familial themes yet builds to a show-stopping emotional and musical finale.
The World Is Not Enough (1999)
ITV, 10.40pm; STV, 11.05pm
Although Pierce Brosnan is a commanding James Bond in his third outing as the not-so-secret agent, and the plot about oil terrorism has a millennial topicality, Michael Apted’s 007 is a mixed bag of tricks, notably featuring a wickedly good Sophie Marceau playing a deadlier-than-the-male femme fatale, and a cartoonish Robert Carlyle, channelling his inner Begbie as a hissably nasty villain.
Copland (1997)
C4, 12.10am
Sylvester Stallone did a Robert De Niro in James Mangold’s crime drama, piling on the fat to credibly play a New Jersey sheriff who turns a blind eye to a resident gang of corrupt New York detectives. Ironically, De Niro himself wastes away here on a script that offers him thin gruel as an internal-affairs agent.
Previews by Trevor Lewis