The Insider, Channel 4, 7.30pm
This has to be the way forward, surely. The businessman and environmental campaigner Mark Constantine argues that we, the consumer, must start campaigning against excessive packaging. Ninety eight per cent of people in the UK, it seems, believe that manufacturers and retailers should do more to reduce excessive packaging on the grounds that it is wasteful, destructive, expensive and unnecessary. It produces six million tonnes of wrappers, bottles, boxes and jars every year and adds £500 a year to the average family’s food bill. He argues that we should follow the lead of the Women’s Institute, which has put packaging at the top of its campaigning agenda and targeted the five worst examples. But nothing is going to change unless we kick up a fuss.
BBC Proms 2007, BBC Two, 8pm
Nobody could accuse the Proms of getting off to a lukewarm start. It begins with William Walton’s roistering Portsmouth Point overture, which he started to compose at the home of the Sitwells in 1925 after inspiration came to him atop a double-decker bus. Not many people know that. Elgar’s Cello Concerto, played by Paul Watkins, follows. Although now acknowledged as one of the great landmarks of British music, its premiere in 1919 was an underrehearsed catastrophe, with the critic Ernest Newman writing: “The orchestra made a public exhibition of its miserable self.” The concert ends with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, which caused such a sensation when performed in 1824 at the Karntnertortheater in Vienna that the police had to intervene to stop the ovations.
Lenny Henry: So Much Things to Say, BBC One, 10.35pm
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It is unfortunate that no preview discs were available for this programme, because the output of Lenny Henry is so variable. As a stand-up comedian, he can be sensationally good – and this one-man show sounds a lot more than just promising. In it, he juxtaposes Tony Blair’s reaction to the Iraq war with the reactions of an Anglo-Caribbean family living in Willesden. Five years ago, in a similar one-man show, Henry demonstrated his dazzling gifts for observation, speed, detail and mimicry – all of which was underpinned by a deep humanity. If this is even half as good, it ought to be wonderful.
The Shield, Five, 11pm
This is one of those tremendous series that keeps getting better the longer it goes on, although – it has to be said – tonight’s episode should come with a sizeable health warning. The rogue cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) is hell-bent on finding the man who killed a member of his strike team. What he doesn’t realise is that the killer is another member of his own team, so he ends up like a rabid dog chasing his own tail. Or, as another character puts it: “Vic is dealing with things in his own way.” His way involves stringing up a suspect in a rundown shack and torturing him with a ferocity that is hard to stomach.