ITV1, 9pm
Anybody suffering from royal fatigue after the seemingly endless celebrations for the Diamond Jubilee might want to look away now. No cliché is left unturned in this documentary that looks back at the first 30 years of the life of “the boy born to be King” — that’s if his grandmother ever gets off the throne. However you feel about the monarchy, Prince William is a likeable, unassuming chap who craves normality. His mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, was insistent that he and brother Harry would have an ordinary life — William was the first royal to go to a state nursery — but ordinary is the one thing he can never be. There is lovely footage of the not quite two-year-old Prince facing a crowd of photographers for the first time, but his relationship with the press would go on to be an uneasy one. “Don’t like ’tographers,” he told his dad, Prince Charles, on his first day at primary school. His parents’ split is covered (there is a story of William pushing tissues under the bathroom door, while his mother cried within) as is the death of Diana and his marriage to Kate Middleton. As the talking heads cue up to fawn over Wills, you can imagine the Prince at home, squirming in embarrassment. A reluctant King he may be, but he’ll make a good one.
Britain’s Lost Routes with Griff Rhys Jones
BBC One, 8pm
Griff Rhys Jones sets out on another epic adventure as he joins the crew of a Thames sailing barge to recreate the precarious journey that thousands of similar vessels once made as they brought produce including hay, beer, fish and even bricks from the east coast into London. Aboard The Dawn, a lovingly restored flat-bottomed boat designed to slide over the sand and mud banks off the coast of Essex, Rhys Jones loads up bales of hay and discovers the challenges of navigating a “stackie” that would once have supplied a horse-powered London with its bedding and fodder.
The House the 50s Built
Channel 4, 9pm
Tenuous Jubilee link alert! In this new series, the engineer Brendan Walker sets out to reveal the technology that took drab, post-war Britain and “launched it, under its new young Queen Elizabeth II, into a Technicolor-drenched world of the future.” Cut through the blarney and what you get is an entertaining room-by-room look at how inventions and innovations changed the way we live. Walker starts in the kitchen, setting the date to January 1, 1950, when women worked a 75-hour week, with the majority of that time spent in the kitchen. Gradually he introduces kitchen gadgets of the era — twin tub, fridge and food processor — revealing how they transformed family life.
Call the Midwife
BBC One, 9pm
When the first episode of this 1950s-set drama was shown in January it was watched by eight million viewers. That’s more than Downton Abbey’s debut and the kind of success that television executives dream about. It was ideal Sunday-night viewing — warm-hearted, family-friendly and gently nostalgic. “It’s not just that you’re All Foetus Great & Small,” said our reviewer Caitlin Moran at the time. “You’re also Heartbeat with nuns and a socialist agenda.” So, if you missed it first time round just pretend it’s Sunday and follow the novice midwife Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine) as she arrives in the hell hole that is the East End of London in the 1950s.
The Fruit’n’Veg Market: Inside New Spitalfields
BBC Two, 9.30pm
The fruit and vegetable trade was once a closed shop, dominated by the traditional British costermonger families. But then London changed as successive waves of immigration have brought many different cultures to the New Spitalfields Market in East London. Despite this fresh influx, the greengrocer trade is struggling. It’s adapt and survive, according to trader Peter Thomas who has worked at New Spitalfields since he was 15 and his dad sold potatoes. Now the market sells pretty much every single fruit and vegetable under the sun and this vibrant film shines a light on a world that is a microcosm of London itself.
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Digital choice by Abigail Radnor
Playhouse Presents: The Man
Sky Arts 1, 9pm
Some of the finest voices in the business join forces for this drama, penned by Sandi Toksvig. Stephen Fry’s boom, Skarsgård’s husky lilt and Zoë Wanamaker’s clipped tones create the perfect symphony of the manipulation their characters project. Hayley Atwell, whose dodgy Boston accent is explained away by her character’s British mother, plays a banker who finds out that the clients she has inherited from her father are unelected leaders of “The Group”, whose purpose is to maintain the power of the West. Discussing the agenda for the next day’s meeting, Atwell’s character is left questioning everything she believes.
Freddie Flintoff Goes Wild
Discovery, 9pm
Wherever Flintoff goes, he takes his humbled charm with him. Even gripped in a headlock by a Masai warrior holding a fearsome looking club to his neck, Flintoff responds with an “Oooh, ‘ello” and a giggle. Ostensibly this episode follows Flintoff as he tries to track the wildebeest migration in Tanzania, but this week it’s less about animals and more about his interaction with humans, namely proving his masculinity to the Masai tribe who host him. He proves he is man enough by undertaking rituals involving killing a goat with his “burr” hands and drinking the blood of said goat — a tough scene for carnivores, let alone vegetarians.
Drama Prisoners of War
Sky Arts 1, 9.30pm
There are no plot twists, no shocks or sudden surprises in tonight’s episode. What you get instead is an hour of searing emotional honesty. The two wives — the one who remained faithful and the one who didn’t — confront one another. The sister of the dead prisoner wants desperately to know what happened to him and whether or not he suffered. And one of the former POWs meets a distraught protester whose wife and daughter were murdered and whose killer walked free in the prisoner exchange. It is an hour of unrivalled intensity. David Chater
Live at the Electric
BBC Three, 9.30pm
Russell Kane returns with this comedy cocktail of stand-up and sketches. Sticking to a regular format and featuring the same acts as last week, it gives upcoming comedy talent a solid platform to showcase their talents. All-female sketch group Lady Garden’s take on appropriate office attire shakes things up while stand up Joe Wilkinson resembling an overgrown tawny owl in a bad suit, is a master of disgruntled awkwardness.
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Film choice, by Wendy Ide
Le Quattro Volte (2010)
Film4, 11am
Michelangelo Frammartino’s dialogue-free, quietly profound Italian film meditates upon cycles of life and features some of the most impressively nuanced goat performances you are ever likely to see. The film is divided into four chapters: human, animal, vegetable and mineral. The first is the story of an elderly goat herd; the second, a young goat; the third, a tree; and the fourth, a pile of smouldering charcoal. It has slapstick, pathos and a dazzling single shot setpiece involving a religious parade, a dog and, yes, goats. It’s a sublime movie which, in its unassuming way, touches upon themes every bit as weighty as those of Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or-winning folly, The Tree of Life. (88min)
Cedar Rapids (2011)
Sky Movies Indie, 10pm
Given that this film was produced by Alexander Payne and directed by Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck), both well-versed in brutally unflinching observational humour, this is an unexpectedly mild-mannered film. The protagonist, naïve insurance salesman Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), leaves his small town for the first time to hit heady heights of a regional business conference. He’s a fish so far out of water it’s as if he’s in the middle of a giant evolutionary leap. He’s a dweeb but he’s an inherently good person — which curtails the fun that could be had at his expense. John C. Reilly plays the obnoxious oaf who shows Tim the ropes. (87min)
Proof (2005)
BBC One, 11.35pm
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Catherine, the daughter of a dead mathematics genius whose genetic legacy from her father may be his gift for calculus or the mental instability that plagued his later life. Brittle, difficult Catherine clearly has issues that stem from long before her stint as his caregiver forced her to give up her maths degree. She’s in the habit of punctuating her solitude with long chats with her dead dad. The cast list is impressive — it’s never hard to lure A-list actors with this kind of material and lunatic mathematicians are a proven hit with the academy. Jake Gyllenhaal, Anthony Hopkins and Hope Davis co-star. (100min)
GoodFellas (1990)
ITV4, 11.30pm
Undoubtedly one of the highpoints of Martin Scorsese’s career, this adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book, Wiseguy, is magnificent. We are invited to become tourists in a world in which outsiders get shot in the foot or worse if they take a wrong step. Ray Liotta is Henry Hill, a half-Sicilian, half-Irish kid who grew up in awe of the wiseguys in his tough neighbourhood. Henry’s journey up through the ranks of the organised crime syndicate is accompanied by a storming soundtrack and a psychopathic friend and colleague (Joe Pesci, who won an Oscar for his chilling performance). (146min)