The Big Red Nose Desert Trek
BBC One, 9pm
Nine celebrities hiked 107km in five days across the Kaisut Desert of Kenya to raise money for Comic Relief. They walked in temperatures that reached 48C (118F) and their efforts will save thousands of people from contracting eye diseases or going blind. The nine were Ronni Ancona, Craig David, Lorraine Kelly, Scott Mills, Olly Murs, Dermot O’Leary, Nadia Sawalha, Kara Tointon and Peter White, the BBC’s disability affairs correspondent, whose task was made doubly difficult by the fact that he is blind. But you don’t need to know who they are to feel their pain. O’Leary’s feet were covered in blisters and Murs soldiered on despite a nasty stomach bug. “I’ve done four marathons in my time,” said Kelly afterwards, “but this was harder than all of them. My feet are like raw mince.”
The British at Work
BBC Two, 9pm
Kirsty Young’s series on British postwar working practices reaches the darkest hour, the strike-prone 1970s. The brief and embarrassing “We’re Backing Britain” campaign soon petered out, only to be replaced by a return to all-out war in the workplace. In 1970 only 10 per cent of British bosses had any formal qualifications in management. In 1975, less than 2 per cent of women were managers compared with 33 per cent today. And in 1979, 30 million working days were lost because of strikes. No one summed up the class hatred with more bitterness than Philip Larkin, who wrote: “I want to see them starving/The so-called working class/Their wages yearly halving/Their women stewing grass.” But next week marks the arrival of Mrs Thatcher and a seismic shift in attitudes to work.
Monroe
ITV1, 9pm
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Monroe owes far more to the conventions of formulaic television than the complexities of life. It is filled with television characters rather than recognisable individuals, and everyone speaks in snappy dialogue rather than the language of the everyday. The intention is honourable — to present a streamlined and concentrated version of reality with all the boring parts taken out. But life’s not like that. “I’m not so insecure,” Sarah Parish’s heart surgeon tells James Nesbitt’s brain surgeon, “that I need to show off the size of my drill to every passing male.” That’s a scripted wisecrack, not a real one. Tonight’s episode involves two boys from a broken home who are brought in with gunshot wounds. Such things happen, but not like this.
Love Thy Neighbour
Channel 4, 9pm
If someone tells you they are a Druid, he or she is usually off to a bad start. One of the couples in tonight’s episode has spent 12 years living in a caravan in a field in Dorset. The pair belong to the pagan community. They play folk music and make Dark Age instruments. They don’t want to win the house on offer because, like, they’re not materialistic, and their competitive strategy is to pretend not to have a competitive strategy. According to the village doctor: “They probably have a slight job on their hands to convince people that they are nice and normal.” But the family they are up against may be a little too normal. He’s a salesman and a self-confessed Del Boy, and she’s all set to become the Victoria Beckham of Grassington. Not a great choice for the villagers then.