THE SECRET MILLIONAIRE
Channel 4, 9pm
It would be easy to be cynical about this new series and accuse the film-makers of trying to tap in to the Jamie Oliver-style strand of do-good, feel-good television. But their motives scarcely matter when tens of thousands of pounds are given away to people who need help. Each week, a wealthy individual lives incognito in a deprived community to work out where their philanthropy would have the most impact. Tonight, 26-year-old Ben Way — a personable multimillionaire in the IT sector with a passing resemblance to Michael J. Fox — spends ten days working in a youth club in Hackney, at the end of which he hands out three cheques for a total of £50,000. If this is crass manipulation, bring it on.
OZ AND JAMES’S BIG WINE ADVENTURE
BBC Two, 8.30pm
Oz Clarke and James May’s wine odyssey through France reaches the Languedoc Roussillon region where — rather like the two presenters — the reds are beefy and the whites are fruity. In tonight’s programme, Oz the effete tries to teach his Neanderthal travelling companion about the winemaking process, with mixed results. James crushes a few grapes with a dirty rake, adds a packet of yeast and some sugar stolen from the hotel, and sticks it in the back of the car for five days. The locals sample this Chateau Jaguar at a blind tasting, and for some reason they all prefer the £50 bottle of red. Oz, meanwhile, is on top form. “This isn’t fruit,” he says, savouring a wine, “so much as stones and herbs.”
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THE BRAIN HOSPITAL
BBC One, 9pm
Even on television, brain surgery does not guarantee a happy ending. In tonight’s episode of this powerful series, a former athlete has an operation through her nose to remove a tumour on the pituitary gland, a mother who suffers from crippling epilepsy has lesions cut from near the surface of her brain, and an actor undergoes pioneering photodynamic therapy that involves firing a laser deep into his brain to try to kill an aggressive tumour.
“It’s very dangerous surgery,” says one of the surgeons. “There’s always the risk that you can be paralysed by fear if you worry too much about what you’re doing.” Another surgeon, who encounters an unexpected problem during the operation, mutters: “The main thing is not to panic.” This, incidentally, is the same man who reckons brain surgeons are just ordinary people doing a job.
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EVICTED
BBC One, 10.40pm
The numbers alone ought to set off alarm bells. A homeless family spends an averageof 645 days in temporary accommodation (usually a hostel or a bed-and-breakfast) and there are more than 1.6 million families still on waiting lists for social housing. This sobering film, which follows three groups of children and their families, shows how much still needs to be done, 40 years after Cathy Come Home firstdrew public attention to the plight of the homeless. “It’s just horrible,” says one homeless mother. “Absolutely horrible. The worst nightmare you could think of.”
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BEST OF THE REST . . .
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10 YEARS YOUNGER
Channel 4, 8pm
The makeover show returns to follow four women in their quest to look their best this Christmas.
Multichannel choice
BEATLES’ BIGGEST SECRETS
Biography, 9pm
This 90-minute documentary (which was so unapproved by the Beatles’ trustees that the producers were not allowed to use any of their music) hears from the Fab Four’s old friends and family members about the drugs, feuds, sexual shenanigans and paternity suits that were apparently hushed up. Much of it is rehashing what is already public knowledge, but there are a few choice tidbits, and anyway, it is refreshing to see such a well-known story from a less airbrushed angle.
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LIVE PREMIERSHIP FOOTBALL
Sky Sports 2 (and HD), 7pm
Bolton Wanderers have had an excellent start to the season, but Chelsea could strike at their Champions League ambitions tonight.
RETURN TO LONESOME DOVE
BBC Four, 9pm
Fans of Lonesome Dove, which finished last week, will be cheered by this 1993 sequel. A word of warning, though — Robert Duvall’s Gus is dead and Jon Voight takes over from Tommy Lee Jones as Captain Call. Gone are Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane and Danny Glover, too. But in their place is a whole new storyline peopled by Reese Witherspoon, Dennis Haysbert and the late, great Oliver Reed.
30 DAYS
More4, 9pm
The debate over abortion is in a sorry shape in America. Some states have outlawed it, which means that pregnant women have to cross state lines to attend a clinic, most of which are picketed by hardline Christians trying to persuade the women to keep their babies or accusing them of murder. In the latest of Morgan Spurlock’s series the pro-choice receptionist of an abortion clinic moves into a Christian home for disadvantaged pregnant girls. It is an uneasy month.
Howard Hawks’s droll war comedy stars Cary Grant as a French officer who marries an American lieutenant (Ann Sheridan) and then faces problems getting through US immigration. Plus ça change, then. GABRIELLE STARKEY