New Tricks
BBC One, 9pm
One group of fossils investigates another. The opening episode of this hugely popular series takes place in and around the Natural History Museum, in London. According to the Keeper of Palaeontology (Vicki Pepperdine): “Most people only visit the museum three times in their lives. Once with their parents. Once with their children and once with their grandchildren. We’re constantly working to bring them back more often.” And what better way to do that than by showcasing the Natural History Museum in a well-liked television series? The museum, we are told, contains 80 million items and is so large that even the longest-serving staff will not have trodden every corridor. We learn about the multimillion-pound market in fossil art, and why the study of microfossils is relevant to the oil industry. All of this is wrapped inside the usual formula of benign codgers (Alun Armstrong, James Bolam and Dennis Waterman) celebrating their old-school values, bemoaning the good old days of policing and solving an old murder while Amanda Redman’s superintendent tries to make sure they stay in the 21st century.
Dispatches
Channel 4, 8pm
After Stephen Butchard’s drama about child slavery on Sunday, here is more evidence of the ugly underbelly of life in Britain today. As the cost of housing forces more people than ever to rent, Jon Snow reports on the return of the slum landlord. An undercover reporter goes to work for a rogue property empire in the north of England, where he films a world of forced evictions and dangerous living conditions. In London, thousands of people are renting squalid sheds from unscrupulous landlords and, as always, it is the most vulnerable members of society who are the prime victims.
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Sirens
Channel 4, 10pm
I wish I hadn’t been so disparaging about the first episode of Sirens. It’s true that it is an entertainment with a strong laddish element, rather like Casualty crossed with a late-night Channel 4 comedy. And no, it isn’t presented with anything remotely resembling realism. But this grassroots comedy drama about the ambulance service is funny, energetic, intelligent and filled with likeable characters. In this episode the leader of the pack (Rhys Thomas) blames his impotence on a hormonal imbalance caused by stress. The “real” reason is not entirely plausible but, for all that, it’s a fresh, lively watch.