CRITICS’ CHOICE
Winner’s dinners
Nadiya’s British Food Adventure (BBC2, 8.30pm)
Nadiya Hussain may have won The Great British Bake Off in 2015 but the real prize went to the BBC, who secured her presenting services. After making a recipe-driven trip to Bangladesh for The Chronicles of Nadiya, Hussain travels around Britain for this series, searching out regional dishes and seasonal produce. In the first episode she examines culinary traditions of the home counties, even trying out the undignified contraption necessary to pick asparagus — “It takes me back to childbirth.”
Elsewhere, she meets a former firefighter who now smokes fish, resulting in a smoked haddock rarebit, makes an eton-mess cheesecake and transforms the cheese scone from a domestic-science staple into a sophisticated teatime treat with the addition of herb butter. Hussain’s style and delivery have a lot in common with Mary Berry’s: gentle, slightly old-fashioned and as welcome as a cup of tea and a slice of victoria sponge.
Victoria Segal
Is Love Racist? The Dating Game (C4, 10pm)
It’s a busy week for Emma Dabiri: as well as presenting Wednesday’s The Sweet Makers, she also orchestrates this investigation into modern romance. Online dating sites encourage people to state their racial preferences in a way that is unacceptable elsewhere: here, 10 singles submit to experiments that test their biases, opening up a wider discussion about race in society. (VS)
John Torode’s Korean Food Tour (Good Food, 9pm)
After years of Masterchef invention tests, John Torode’s palate ought to be jaded, yet this culinary trip around South Korea appears to surprise and delight him. Even hard-to-impress cookery-show fans will be intrigued, as Torode, wandering around Seoul during a heatwave, encounters chilled noodles with beef and pear, boiling hot chicken-and-ginseng soup and shaved ice with beans. (VS)
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World’s Oldest Family (BBC1, 7.30pm)
You need a wide-angle lens to take a photo of the Donnelly siblings of Collegeland, in County Armagh. They stand abreast for a portrait, all 13 of them (from a one-time batch of 16), aged from 93 to a nipper of 71. As the family is entertainingly profiled, questions arise regarding the secrets of longevity and whether or not, with 1,075 years between them, they can claim a world record. (MJ)
The Great European Cigarette Mystery (BBC4, 10pm)
Described as a political-thriller documentary that is also darkly humorous, this film certainly qualifies as “genre-defying”. At its core are suspicions about Big Tobacco and the investigatory work of Mads Brugger and Mikael Bertelsen, two Danish journalists who travel to Malta intent on proving the existence of a conspiracy against the former EU health commissioner John Dalli. (MJ)
FILM CHOICE
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Sky Cinema Comedy, 6.35am
Featuring Tim Allen, Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver as actors in a Star Trek-like television show who stumble into a real space adventure when aliens come to them for help, Dean Parisot’s film goes where no other Trek parody has gone before — or since. It may at first look like a mere send-up, but it becomes a likeable action comedy in its own right.
The Drop (2014)
Film 4, 9pm
Centred on a Brooklyn bar used for mob cash deposits, Michaël R Roskam’s film is an agreeable hangout for fans of blue-collar American crime stories. Its denizens include Tom Hardy (as the mumbling, aloof protagonist) and an actor who made his name in this milieu: James Gandolfini.
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Boccaccio 70 (1962)
Talking Pictures TV, 12 midnight
A curio for lovers of vintage European arthouse films, this jumble of present-day tales of love and sex (inspired by the medieval poet Boccaccio) features works by three well-known Italian movie-makers: Luchino Visconti, Vittorio De Sica and Federico Fellini, who directs Anita Ekberg in the collection’s wackiest item.
Office Space (1999)
Sky Cinema Select, 1.50am
Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butt-Head, moved into live-action comedy as the writer/director of this story of bored white-collar drones. Funny in its depiction of casual male comradeship, it can now be seen as a step in its maker’s progress towards his sitcom Silicon Valley.
Edward Porter
Radio pick of the day
The FBI’s Most Wanted Woman(Radio 4 FM, 10,45am)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste captivates and shines in the opening episode of Debbie Tucker Green’s vivid, hallucinatory (and often terrifying) five- part adaptation of the 1987 autobiography by Assata Shakur, the Black Panther activist. In Public Indecency (R4 FM, 4pm) Simon Callow begins a three-part exploration of the past 100 years of queer art in Britain.
Andrew Male
Sports choice
Test Cricket England v South Africa (Sky Sports 2, 10.30am)
Women’s Euro 2017 Football (Eurosport, 4.45pm; 7.30pm)
Racing (Sky Sports 1, 7pm)
You say
Wasn’t Doctor Who good? I loved it!
Elizabeth Dixon
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Can I be the only one who cried when the Doctor kept saying, “I don’t want to go”? Definitely a tissue episode — up there with the one when Donna was made to forget.
Carol Fox
Here’s your comment: for someone so ancient, Doctor Who has a magnificent head of hair.
Helen Griffiths
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk