MONKEYS, RATS AND ME: ANIMAL TESTING
BBC Two, 9pm
This long documentary follows the protests that have been taking place on the streets of Oxford since 2004 against the university’s new £18 million animal experimentation lab. The site was protected by strict security, workmen were forced to wear balaclavas to conceal their identities, and the protesters even went so far as to target a firm that supplied parts to one of the cranes on site. The protesters claim that scientists are torturing animals, whereas the few scientists who are willing to respond say that the animals suffer no pain and the protesters have adopted a campaign of intimidation that is undemocratic. The film examines both sides of the debate before coming down — hesitantly and squeamishly — on the side of vivisection.
JACKANORY
BBC One, 4.30pm
The storytelling programme returns for two weeks and two stories. Today (continuing Wednesday and Friday), John Sessions reads Muddle-Earth.
Advertisement
DISPATCHES: BRITAIN’S HEALTHCARE LOTTERY
Channel 4, 8pm
The NHS postcode lottery means that waiting times, availability of treatment and quality of service depend on where you live. Jon Snow points out the inequities of the system; he talks to the junior Health Minister, Andy Burnham, who tells him that such differences are integral to the NHS; and he follows three individuals who — having been refused the best available treatment — are fighting the authorities. The point of the programme is to boost patient power and encourage people not to take “no” for an answer. As such, it is highly effective.
Advertisement
DISAPPEARING BRITAIN
Five, 9pm
Ricky Tomlinson, a passionately committed socialist of the old school, pays tribute to Britain’s miners. “It’s as if we want to forget that we once had a coal industry,” he says. Travelling to the site of closed mines, which have now been reduced to what he calls “acres and acres and acres of bugger all”, Tomlinson talks to retired miners about the hardships they endured and the camaraderie they enjoyed.
The work was punishing and dangerous. Women did hard labour at the coalface. Housing conditions were often abysmal. But local communities were bound together by intense loyalty and humour, and — even now — mines such as Tower in South Wales continue the fight against the collapse of the industry.
Advertisement
SKINT
BBC One, 10.45pm
The considerable achievement of this fly-on-the-wall documentary, which is part of a short season by the BBC to highlight poverty and homelessness, is that it manages to show the individuals behind the statistics. Everyone featured in the programme has his or her problems, which doesn’t in any way negate their humanity. They are lively, intelligent and sympathetic people who are doing the best they can in impossible circumstances. “People think life on benefits is easy,” says one man. “Believe me, it’s not.”
Advertisement
BEST OF THE REST . . .
Advertisement
MONARCHY BY DAVID STARKEY
Channel 4, 9pm
How, in just 25 years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, England transformed itself into Great Britain.
Multichannel choice
RANDOM QUEST
BBC Four, 10pm
The centrepiece to the Science Fiction Britannia season is this elegant but slightly ponderous drama, adapted from a short story by John Wyndham, about a man who slips into another dimension. Sam West and Kate Ashfield struggle to breathe life into what is essentially a BBC version of Life on Mars, but far more interested in ideas than action. That said, it does make great use of London locations to describe two technologically diverse worlds, and it keeps a surprisingly emotional punch for the end.
DAWSON’S CREEK
Five Life, 7pm
With This Life back on our screens, it feels like the right time to welcome another acclaimed old friend from the 1990s, whose attractive characters tackled a whole range of thorny adolescent dramas over its five-year run. In tonight’s pilot episode, 15-year-old Dawson (James Van Der Beek) falls for new girl Jen (Michelle Williams), stirring up a jealous streak in his tomboy friend Joey (Katie Holmes).
THE MARTIANS AND US
BBC Four, 9pm
It’s all over — literally — as this commendably in-depth history of British science fiction writing bows out with a look at disaster scenarios. Inspired by the use of poison gas during First World War, the author M. P. Shiel imagined a world laid waste in The Purple Cloud, kick- starting a century of terrifying fictional catastrophes, from world-swamping floods to plagues, nuclear war and deadly walking plants.
TOTALLY VIRAL
UKTV G2, 10.30pm
This new series of internet clippings focuses on the often hilarious short films that whizz between e-mail inboxes, such as the footage of office workers leaping over desks in an improvised olympics.
Daytime choice
TAKE HOME CHEF
Discovery Real Time, 11am
The rather dashing Australian chef Curtis Stone starts a new series in which he persuades a supermarket shopper to take him home so that he can whip up an alternative feast with the contents of his or her basket. GABRIELLE STARKEY