TV choice
CHALLENGER: COUNTDOWN TO DISASTER
Channel 4, 9pm
Never mind the inevitable clumsy dramatisations, this is a clear docudrama that describes in painful detail what went wrong on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in the skies above Florida. The shuttle was never the reliable workhorse it was made out to be. Built from two million components, it had already had problems with cracked turbine blades, faulty heat exchangers and weaknesses in the landing gear. One scientist likens it to a patient in intensive care. The programme documents the increasingly desperate and angry efforts by the engineer Roger Boisjoly to alert Nasa to the fault in the rocket boosters. “It was like I was talking to a solid piece of granite,” he says.
THE CULTURE SHOW
BBC Two, 7pm/11.20pm
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Another packed edition of The Culture Show. The novelist Sarah Waters discusses her latest novel, The Night Watch, due to be published next month. Werner Herzog talks about his latest documentary, Grizzly Man, which tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, a maverick expert on bears who was eaten by a grizzly in Alaska. “The director,” wrote the film critic of The New York Times, “has a fondness for stories about men who journey into the heart of darkness, both without and within. Treadwell’s journey was no less bold or reckless than earlier Herzogian tales — and certainly no less enthralling.” Also, Andrew Graham Dixon reports on the Tate exhibition Gothic Nightmares.
HOTEL BABYLON
BBC One, 9pm
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In tonight’s episode of this frothy entertainment, the daughter of a Russian oligarch wants to get married to anyone so as to become a British citizen. The hotel has only a matter of days in which to find her a husband, convince her father that the relationship is genuine and organise the wedding. They are only too delighted to do so, because it means kickbacks from all the wedding suppliers — assuming, of course, it all goes to plan and no one is caught.
There is also a sub-plot about a long-term guest suffering from obsessive- compulsive disorder. I sat po-faced in front of the television, thinking: “I’m not sure OCD is a joking matter.” But the programme-makers were way ahead of me.
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HORIZON
BBC Two, 9pm
On August 29, Hurricane Katrina turned New Orleans into the Venice from Hell. Six months on, Horizon follows a team of scientists as they look closely at what happened and what the future may hold for the city.
New Orleans continues to sink. Sea levels are rising. The size and frequency of hurricanes is on the increase and the coastline that protects it from storms is gradually disappearing into the ocean. Should the city even be rebuilt? “We have to realise,” says Dr Shea Penland, a coastal geologist at New Orleans University, “that there are boundaries that have been given to us that we must respect, and our technology cannot be 100 per cent successful all of the time. Natural selection is a theory that is being played out in South Louisiana right now.”
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BEST OF THE REST . . .
HOUSE
Five, 10pm
Dr House is on particularly mean form as he treats Dr Cuddy’s injured handyman.
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Page 2: Multichannel choice ()
Multichannel choice
MONKEY
ITV4, 6pm
Another chance to see the cult series that delighted and bemused a generation of children in the 1970s, with its bizarre Buddhist tales about three spirits controlled by a confusingly pretty monk on horseback. Worth watching for the gravity- defying fight scenes alone.
BILL MURRAY
Biography, 6pm
Murray’s career seems to have been on a ten-year cycle. He peaked in 1984 with Ghost Busters and 1993 with Groundhog Day, then ducked beneath the radar for another decade before popping up in The Royal Tenenbaums and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. This profile examines his story, focusing on whether Murray is finally ready for an Oscar. Just don’t mention Garfield.
JUDGEMENT DAY
Artsworld, 9.30pm
Tim Marlow is in fire and brimstone territory with this overview of some pretty terrifying religious art.
INSPECTOR MORSE
ITV3, 10pm
In the week that Kevin Whately returns as an older, sadder Lewis this episode from the second series, back in 1988, is an opportunity to remember him as the eager young thing whose straitlaced ways so frustrated his curmudgeonly partner (John Thaw). Between sipping whiskey-laced coffee at crime scenes and trying to get Lewis to join him in the pub, Morse looks into the seemingly dead-end case of a missing schoolgirl. Watch out for Liz Hurley and Julia Sawalha as class-mates being quizzed by Morse and Lewis.
COUNTER CULTURE
BBC Four, 10pm
Tyler Brûlée’s shopping odyssey visits Italy to investigate the unusual blend of Marxism and high fashion that underpins the old-fashioned dynasties of Prada and Tod. GS
Daytime choice
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, b/w)
TCM, 3.05pm
Based on a story by James M. Cain, Billy Wilder’s impeccably cynical melodrama is a fatalistic tale of love and betrayal between a bored tycoon’s wife (Barbara Stanwyck) and her gullible insurance agent lover (Fred MacMurray). (107min) SD