Critics’ choice
Pick of the day
Call The Midwife — The Casebook (BBC1, 5.05pm)
Easily the strongest element in this “personal journey” by Stephen McGann (aka Dr Patrick Turner) is its strand of interviews with women who have special connections to the stories Call the Midwife tells: Aneira, who was Britain’s first NHS baby, in 1948; Rosaleen, one of the 1950s and 1960s Thalidomide victims highlighted in series five; Antonia, who trained with Jennifer Worth in Poplar; and Eleanor, a former midwife who, like Turner’s wife, Shelagh, gave up being a nun in order to marry.
Unfortunately, these compelling encounters are embedded within what is essentially a promo for series six, stuffed with information about the drama and the NHS’s early decades that fans will be familiar with; and McGann does that baffling thing of always addressing someone to the side of the camera, a cue for cries across the land of: “We’re over here!”
John Dugdale
Best foot forward
Dance Dance Dance (ITV, 6.30pm)
Forget the judges, the presenters and even the celebrities and their pals: the real star of this show is the staging, which uses the latest technology to place competitors right inside the music video they are trying to recreate. It is a shiny-floor show with additional shiny back wall, and the studio audience are on their feet as much for the 3D visuals as the dance moves. The overall effect is to create a spectacular piece of entertainment that makes Strictly look like it has hobbled onto the stage on crutches.
Never forget
Antiques Roadshow Holocaust Memorial (BBC1, 7.30pm)
In what the BBC calls “a rare break from tradition”, no items are valued in this programme hosted by Fiona Bruce, which follows specials on such themes as the First World War and the Raj. Instead, the keepsakes, photos and artefacts are put on display in an exhibition at the Foreign Office, and the Roadshow experts conduct poignant interviews with their owners — Holocaust survivors and their relatives — about the stories behind them. Among the guests are the children’s author Judith Kerr and Natasha Kaplinsky.
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Taking the Mick
Endeavour (ITV, 8pm)
Russell Lewis’s script plays fast and loose with music history this week as Morse meets the groovy young guys from the Wildwood, a band with more than a passing resemblance to the Rolling Stones. Their manager, who insists they are “good clean boys with a good clean image”, appears more Brian Epstein than Andrew Loog Oldham, but tonight’s tale of death, drugs and groupies reeks of Keith Richards’s Redlands mansion bust. Enter Mrs Joy Pettybon, a character quoting Mary Whitehouse and denouncing the BBC as pouring “disbelief, doubt and dirt” into millions of homes.
Slow but sure
Walking The Americas (C4, 8pm)
In 2015, both Stephen Fry (in a school bus for ITV) and Dara O Briain and Ed Byrne (in a car for BBC2) made series travelling south through Central America, so Channel 4’s greenlighting of a similar odyssey is surprising. Levison Wood can at least claim his journey is different because it is done on foot, although this approach means that usually he is plodding along with his pal Alberto, meeting fewer people and visiting fewer places. In this instalment he leaves Guatemala and marches on into Honduras and Nicaragua, passing through the notoriously violent San Pedro Sula in the former.
Shrimps abroad
Freddie Down Under (Sky 1, 8pm)
Freddie Flintoff and Rob Penn are following up their trips around Britain with a tour of Oz in which they turn themselves into barbecue cooks. Puzzlingly, though, they display no interest in testing their barbie skills in an opener that mimics what Robson Green did when beginning his Australian odyssey: meeting opal miners, flying in a light plane and staying on a remote cattle station. More enjoyable is Jim Carter’s booming voiceover deriding the series’s “paper-thin” premise.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Sport choice
ODI Cricket (Sky Sports 2, 7.30am) India v England
Football (Sky Sports 1, 12.30pm)
European Rugby (Sky Sports 3, 12.45pm) Scarlets v Saracens
Masters Snooker (BBC2, 1pm)
BDO Darts (C4, 4.15pm)
Africa Cup Of Nations Tunisia v Senegal (Eurosport, 6.45pm)
Tennis (Eurosport, 12 midnight)
Radio pick of the day
Private Passions (R3, 12 noon)
Philippe Sands QC, the celebrated human-rights lawyer and writer on genocide, talks to Michael Berkeley about his dramatic family history and the troubling aspects of great music: Hitler’s lawyer loved Bach’s St Matthew Passion, just as he does. Words And Music (R3, 5.30pm) has Emilia Fox and Alex Jennings reading about working the land. Jon Sopel’s The Weekend Documentary: The President And The Press (BBC World Service, 2pm), considers the White House and the Fourth Estate (see Radio Waves, Arts).
Paul Donovan
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You say
Notwithstanding the BBC’s desperation to find a successor to Attenborough, they should have realised by now that Kate Humble cannot be let loose on anything more serious than Blue Peter. Yellowstone (BBC2) was repetitive and feeble and certainly not suitable for viewing after the watershed.
Richard Crick
Far too many shots of the people, not nearly enough of the animals.
Clive Vaisey
I am 10 minutes in and cannot continue.What a waste of a golden opportunity. As usual, the idiots at the BBC have ruined a wildlife documentary with totally unnecessary music. Why not use the actual soundtrack recorded on location? When I go into the country I am pleased not to be pursued by an orchestra. Utterly disgusted by this acoustic vandalism.
Chris Hogarth
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
Film choice
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Bad Neighbours (2014)
C4, 9pm
Having played numerous fun-lovers, Seth Rogen attained a kind of maturity in this comedy: he is cast as a family man at odds with the revelling students (led by Zac Efron) who live next door. The film itself remains rude, loud and laddish but brings more wit to the party than many such movies do. Dir: Nicholas Stoller
You’ve Got Mail (1998)
C5, 4.45pm
With this romantic comedy about two people falling in love online, Hollywood approached the new world of the internet in safely old-fashioned style. Not only is the film a breezy Nora Ephron movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, it also has a plot that recalls a 1940 picture, The Shop Around the Corner.
The English Patient (1996)
ITV3, 10.30pm
An epic love story set in Italy and Libya before and during the Second World War, Anthony Minghella’s film (starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas) is unabashed about conjuring up swoony romantic vistas, but it also looks beyond appearances. Its characters, who are not always what they seem, are shrewdly studied.
Hanna (2011)
C4, 11.55pm
In this story of a girl brought up to be an assassin, the director Joe Wright takes an earnest approach to a popcorny plot. This mismatch is unhelpful, but the action sequences have verve — thanks partly to a Chemical Brothers score — and Saoirse Ronan’s young hitwoman is a blazing presence.
Edward Porter
Live football
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Premier League Manchester United v Liverpool (Sky Sports 1, 4pm)