Sunday

Travails with their aunt
The Durrells (ITV, 8pm)
Louisa is forced to confront the conditions she and her children are living in when she receives news that her Aunt Hermione is coming to stay at their villa. “Gerry’s turned this place into a zoo. No other family has to walk a pelican,” complains Larry; but his mood improves when his girlfriend, Nancy, disembarks from the ferry. Storytellers from Austen and Dickens to Wodehouse and Durrell have all loved interfering aunts, perhaps because they are less complicatedly monstrous than mothers, and Barbara Flynn is excellent as the visiting meddler.

Making tracks
Paul Merton’s Secret Stations (C4, 8pm)
The comedian’s father was a train driver on the London Underground but, as Merton explains in this meander around Britain’s request stops, his own love of rail travel is conditional on there being a view out the window. However, where Michael Portillo is guided by Bradshaw’s Handbook, Merton dips in and out of the network in a manner that will not easily be replicated by fellow travellers: he visits the Highlands by sleeper, a low-level nuclear waste repository in Cumbria and a Cornish wishing well.

Day in the life
A Night On Earth — Africa (Discovery, 8pm)
Four young wildebeest are being followed in Channel 5’s The Great African Migration; here the central figure is a baby elephant making a different trek in flight from drought. His mother must protect him from predators and teach him survival skills as she leads her clan from waterhole to waterhole. Excellent photography, using a camera that provides high-quality night-time images, is complemented by the commentary’s insights into elephant behaviour — though perhaps it goes a little too far in claiming to know their thoughts.

A family divided
Undercover (BBC1, 9pm)
Seemingly with plenty of time on her hands, Maya (Sophie Okonedo) heads off to America once more to argue against the execution of Rudy. There she meets someone whose testimony could transform his case, only to have this breakthrough jeopardised by a conversation in a London park 4,500 miles away. It is a setback for which Nick (Adrian Lester) is not directly responsible, but which increases her suspicions about him. The result, at last, is a confrontation between them once she returns: its stars’ performances are this drama’s biggest assets, yet only now are they being given really powerful scenes together.

By any other name ...
Redefining Juliet (BBC4, 10pm)
This traces the making of a production of Romeo and Juliet with multiple Juliets, all played by actresses who don’t fit traditional ideas of the role. Storm uses a wheelchair, Eleanor is plus-size and has alopecia, Frankie has dwarfism and Lara is deaf. As in last year’s film about Warwick Davis’s Reduced Height Theatre Company, sequences in which the performers talk about their own experiences are interwoven with footage of rehearsals as the first night approaches.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart

Sport choice
Football Swansea v Liverpool (BT Sport 1, 11.15am); Manchester United v Leicester City, Southampton v Manchester City (Sky Sports 1, 1pm); Valencia v Villarreal (Sky Sports 3, 7.25pm)
F1: Russia (Sky Sports F1, 11.30am); Highlights (C4, 6pm)
Racing (C4, 1.30pm)

Radio pick of the day
Drama On 3 (R3, 9pm)
The heavens continue their loves with Eve Best, Danny Sapani and Shaun Dooley in The Winter’s Tale — although, as always with Shakespeare, a simple introduction would have helped. The Listening Service (R3, 5pm) is not just a pun (its presenter is Tom Service, a Radio 3 regular) but the long-awaited sequel to Pied Piper, the inquisitive, explorative series for younger listeners in the 1970s. Joanna Lumley celebrates her 70th birthday today by choosing the music on David Mellor (Classic FM, 7pm).
Paul Donovan

You say
Come on, You Sayers, less emphasis on presenters’ appearance, please. I’m told I look like a pangolin, and it has never held me back in life.
Letty James

Can anyone suggest a way of watching Line of Duty, Marcella and Scott & Bailey in the same week without getting confused?
Ray Chapman

Police drama overload. Is this the one where the guy’s an undercover cop? Or the one in which she has blackouts? Oh, hang on. This is the one about child sex abuse at a boys’ home.
Jim Baggott

This week I watched an episode of Line of Duty, followed by one of Undercover. One is compelling, well written and well acted; the other has Adrian Lester in it.
Andrew White

Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk

FILM CHOICE

Drive Angry (2011) C5, 11.10pm

Drive Angry (2011)
C5, 11.10pm
There is something to offend everyone — child-sacrificing Satanists included — in Patrick Lussier’s explosive trash-fest, which has Nicolas Cage’s demonic revenger break out of hell to pursue a diabolical sect leader. If your knee does not instinctively jerk at gratuitous nudity, violence and muscle cars, it is unwholesome fun.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009)
C5, 4.30pm
Animation king Pixar was left eating its heart out by this fantasy from rival Sony about an inventor whose gizmo for turning water into food malfunctions amid a meteorological banquet. While the film is an imaginative visual feast, it runs on a slightly limited diet of gags. Dir: Phil Lord

Elysium (2013)
C5, 9pm
Lacking the visionary power and political barb of his bravura debut, District 9, director Neill Blomkamp’s follow-up sci-fi thriller instead defaults, albeit with effectively bone-crunching action, to the brawn of Matt Damon, playing a dying member of Earth’s underclass who battles nefarious forces to storm a hi-tech Eden of the elite that orbits the planet.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
BBC2, 11pm
Chronicling the 1,500-mile journey across the outback made by a trio of mixed-race Aborigine girls taken from their kin by the government, Phillip Noyce’s 1930s drama gives sentimentality a wide berth and features a study in reptilian cold-bloodedness by Kenneth Branagh, playing a eugenicist politician.

Previews by Trevor Lewis

Manchester United v Leicester City (Sky Sports 1, 2.05pm)

MATT WEST/REX FEATURES

LIVE FOOTBALL
Premier League Manchester United v Leicester City (Sky Sports 1, 2.05pm)