TV choice
HAMBURG CELL
Channel 4, 9pm
Antonia Bird’s ambitious film sets out to do something that is well nigh impossible — to dramatise the psychological process that led the 9/11 hijackers to embrace martyrdom. Great pains have been taken to ensure that the facts and chronology are correct and to try to humanise the terrorists. But when it comes to establishing motive, the script resorts to the hoary rhetoric of fanaticism. (“We will no longer be humiliated. Jihad is my duty.”) The most effective moments are vignettes rooted in Western culture — the professional courtesy of a US highway patrolman, for example, giving a speeding ticket to a terrorist — but that is not really what the film is about. DC
WHAT AM I LIKE? THE PERSONALITY TEST
BBC One, 8pm
Nick Knowles introduces a programme in which three psychologists test 100 members of the public to determine what personality type they are. Viewers at home can join in, either by answering questions with pen and paper or hitting the red button on their digital console. The experts’ predictions are right more often than not — but certain personality types may find two hours of all this a bit wearing.
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DOC MARTIN
ITV1, 9pm
A new comedy-drama starring Martin Clunes as a London surgeon who comes to work as a GP in a small Cornish community. The theme is a familiar one: the outsider dealing with a different way of life and coping with idiosyncratic locals. But what gives it an edge and makes it worth watching is Clunes’s performance as the surgeon. He seems visibly relieved to shed his cuddly image; his surgeon is abrasive, tactless and entirely lacking in a bedside manner. “How are you finding us?” he asks a local. “Irritating!” comes the heartfelt reply. See feature.
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GREATEST CHAT SHOW TV MOMENTS
Five, 9pm
As introduced by Rebecca Loos, whose awfulness as a presenter deserves recognition. See Watercooler. DC
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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: LANGAN IN IRAQ
BBC Two, 11.20pm
The journalist Sean Langan gains access to both sides of the war in Iraq in this remarkable film, which reveals that the conflict is far from over, no matter what George W. Bush says. As well as talking to the ordinary people on the streets of Iraq, Langan meets the resistance fighters and the US soldiers themselves, who came to bring freedom but are now fearful and even hateful of the Iraqi people. It is the stark, human face of the Iraqi conflict — one that illustrates clearly the problems that lie ahead. MM
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Multichannel choice
CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM
E4, 11.10pm
The Seinfeld creator Larry David’s Los Angeles-set comedy was among the best buys BBC Four ever made. Now it’s been poached from under their noses by E4 who, typically enough, have shoved it into an infuriatingly late slot. However, there’s no sign of a drop in quality. Devotees will already be familiar with the show’s vérité, semi-improvised style and David’s fussily misanthropic character: tonight’s episode — the first in the third series — begins with him investing in a restaurant with the actor Ted Danson, and ends with an emergency visit to his dentist. As usual, it is David’s flair for faux pas that allow a minor social disaster to mushroom around him. JJ
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
UKTV Documentary, 11pm
“I spend my life travelling and seeing nothing at all,” admits Michael Palin as he prepares to follow in the fictional footsteps of Phileas Fogg by circumnavigating the globe in just three months. His whistle-stop BBC series from 1989 opens viewers’ eyes to the world’s most fascinating places and demonstrates what an inspired travelling companion Palin is. With an armful of vaccinations and some useful advice from Alan Whicker, he begins his trip in some style, heading for Venice aboard the elegant Orient Express. Palin had better make the most of such splendour because episodes later on this week see him coming down to earth with a bump.
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LEOPARDS OF BOLLYWOOD
National Geographic, 10pm
Bombay, India’s financial and Bollywood movie capital, is having to face up to its primordial fears as attacks by leopards increase at an alarming rate. The city’s population of 16 million has spread into the surrounding Sanjay Gandhi National Park and into the beasts’ territory. In the past three years, 33 people have been killed by leopards, who now seem to see humans as legitimate prey. This grisly report, far more exciting and scary than any Bollywood plotline, looks at what is being done.
THE RESORT
Sky Travel, 10pm
Yet another reality TV series, this time a cross between Big Brother and DIY SOS, with a hint of Castaway thrown in, begins a seven-week run. The idyllic Fijian island of Malolo proves to be a fool’s paradise for a bunch of Aussie twentysomethings who are given 13 weeks to transform a run-down resort into a four-star hotel. One Barbie clone arrives on the island wearing a towering pair of fuchsia pink stilettos, while a man who believes he is God’s gift to women spends more time ogling their bikini-clad bodies than getting down to the hard graft. It really is for reality TV fans only. AF