CRITICS’ CHOICE
Pick of the day
The Story Of Cats (ITV, 8pm)
As if doing a vocal warm-up before appearing on screen in The Night Manager, Olivia Colman narrates this three-part series about feline evolution and the domestic cat’s connections to its wild cousins. As the opener looks at the latter species in turn, echoes abound of Sky’s recent Big Cats — An Amazing Animal Family; indeed, anyone who saw Patrick Aryee’s series may experience serial déjà vu, since there are near-identical sections on leaping caracals and acrobatic clouded leopards, and the same South African “lion whisperer” pops up.
ITV’s offering, though, differs in comparing the characteristics it considers (a cheetah’s markings, say) with those of the furry enigma patrolling your garden; and the similarities and differences prove fascinating, explaining, for example, why pet cats get stuck up trees and eat as they do, and illuminating the secrets of purring, pouncing and territory marking.
John Dugdale
Family fare 1
Nature’s Miracle Orphans (BBC1, 5.35pm)
This pleasant series about baby animals saved by humans has the perfect Sunday-tea-time feel. Everyone in front of the camera is lovely; the dreadful poachers conduct their business off screen; and the presenters, Lucy Cooke and Patrick Aryee, are intelligent and curious, but determined that the animals remain the stars. This week, a young rhinos is returned to wild (minus horn) and a tapir tries to be sociable.
Family fare 2
Call The Midwife (BBC1, 8pm)
A proper cockney wedding — a jolly knees-up, not an EastEnders fiasco — is almost the only happy scene in the final episode of the fifth series. Otherwise, there is the complementary funeral of a popular character; Patrick (Stephen McGann) agonising when it is confirmed that the thalidomide pills he dispensed to mothers caused defects in babies; Trixie (Helen George) sobbing that she wants a boyfriend; worries that a baby will arrive before the wedding of its parents, and so be stigmatised as illegitimate; and a potential suicide risk who spends all day in the cafe. Glumness reigns, with the usual offsetting lighter subplots here given the night off.
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Because it’s there ...
Steve Backshall’s Extreme Mountain Challenge (BBC2, 8pm)
In this two-parter, Backshall and his fellow adventurers aim to make the first ascent of one of Venezuela’s tepuis (table-topped mountains) before the rainy season arrives — but get their timing wrong. Once they reach their base camp, after an arduous canoe journey to their base camp and hacking through jungle, storms render the vertical cliff face slippery and almost unclimbable. Part one ends with Backshall fed up with a “ludicrous” climb that is “much harder than any of us expected”.
Not so magical
Penn & Teller — Fool Us In Vegas (C5, 8.10pm)
Jonathan Ross presents this magical mishmash of talent and variety, in which, as he puts it, “when someone is flipping the bird, it usually just means a dove”. It is this lack of danger from the usually challenging Penn and Teller that is the programme’s weakest point — they spend most of the time chatting (or in Teller’s case nodding enthusiastically), which hardly seems like the best use of their in-your-face talent. Tonight, punk-rock magician Brian Brushwood, digital conjuror Simon Pierro, traditional act Kyle Knight & Mistie and comic Handsome Jack compete to outsmart the masters.
Lonesome Pine
The Night Manager (BBC1, 9pm)
After two weeks of intriguing preamble, the spy series at last gets more or less under way, as Roper (Hugh Laurie) decides on whether or not to make use of Pine (Tom Hiddleston) in his business. If the undercover agent is asked to work for the arms dealer, it will position him perfectly to leak secrets to Burr (Olivia Colman); in the meantime, he can do little more than observe Roper’s entourage, who are mostly miserable.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Sport choice
Football Celtic v Morton (Sky Sports 2, 11.30am); Crystal Palace v Liverpool, WBA v Man United (Sky Sports 1, 12.30pm)
Darts (ITV4, 12.45pm/7pm)
Davis Cup Tennis (BBC1, 1pm)
Women’s Football (BBC1, 11.35pm) Germany v England
Radio pick of the day
Words And Music (R3, 5.30pm)
Rosalie Craig and James D’Arcy read letters, both real (by Scott of the Antarctic and others) and fictional, in an epistolary edition. Martha Lane Fox, the IT entrepreneur who nearly died after breaking 26 bones in a car crash, chooses Chopin and Judy Garland in a life-enhancing Private Passions (R3, 12 noon). Sunday Feature (R3, 6.45pm) goes to Venice to tell the remarkable story of the first ghetto — not, in this Italian city, a grim place of persecution, but a vibrant Jewish island sanctuary founded in 1516.
Paul Donovan
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You say
Carol Kirkwood brightens up every morning she is on and has done for nearly 20 years.
Charles Harrison
Carol’s sunny disposition is something I look forward to each time she broadcasts; it makes my day regardless of the weather, and I am enchanted by her smile.
Reg Seggar
Carol Kirkwood is a beautiful, intelligent, talented lady who, despite the weather, always brightens up my day and that of countless others.
Sandy Strachan
Whatever the weather she imparts sunshine on to my mornings.
John Wilson
With all the bad weather she lifts everyone up and keeps them going. She is a diamond on TV in everything she does.
Roger Butler
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FILM CHOICE
Star Trek IV — The Voyage Home (1986)
C5, 6pm
Trekkies largely have a soft spot for the series’s most whimsical offering, which ostensibly returns Kirk and co to the 20th century to save two whales, though the real fun is the crew’s fish-out-of-water antics in California, a place that appears more Martian than Mars. Dir: Leonard Nimoy
Moonraker (1979)
ITV, 4.15pm
Some purists view Lewis Gilbert’s space-age James Bond as one giant leap backwards for the franchise, which seemingly decided the world was not enough for 007 and sent him into orbit after a villain. While Roger Moore’s hero and the special effects rise to the occasion, the script stays on terra firma.
Shifty (2008)
BBC2, 11.40pm
Eran Creevy’s unusually pensive urban drama reunites two pals who are worlds apart — one career-minded, the other a drug dealer — yet bound by visibly frayed loyalties. The film is flawlessly acted and mercifully short on “gangsta” trappings, but some supporting characters feel a touch hackneyed.
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An Officer And A Gentleman (1982)
C4, 11.40pm
Taylor Hackford’s enjoyably corny romantic drama sees Richard Gere go from white trash to white knight by way of a gruelling navy training course. The Oscar-winning Louis Gossett Jr’s scary drill instructor is a high point, the power ballad Up Where We Belong a low note.
Previews by Trevor Lewis
Live football
Celtic v Morton (Sky Sports 2, 11.30am); Crystal Palace v Liverpool, WBA v Man United (Sky Sports 1, 12.30pm)