CRITIC’S CHOICE
Pick of the day
The Real Marigold On Tour (BBC2, 9pm)
This strand’s first series sent eight celebrity pensioners to India to experience its potential as a cheap retirement destination. Before the second run begins, this two-part special sends four of that crew out on new adventures in ageing. Tonight, Bobby George, Wayne Sleep, Miriam Margolyes and Rosemary Shrager head to Florida to explore its famous retirement communities: one a country club for the super-rich, the other a more modest village stuffed with self-improvement activities.
Politics raises its head as the Brits visit a gun shop and make the mistake of discussing Donald Trump, but they also find their preconceptions challenged by the manicured lawns and golf buggies. The four’s interactions are delightful — especially between George and Margolyes — but, most importantly, the film places ageing front and centre for once, refusing to airbrush its pains or opportunities.
Victoria Segal
Once bitten ...
There’s A Croc In My Kitchen (C5, 8pm)
“To be honest, they are absolutely bloody dangerous,” says Andre, eyeing the wolf hybrids she keeps at her home. She is one of 5,000 Britons with a licence to own the kind of pets that would enjoy playing fetch with your femur. There is a lynx in Herts; a croc in Kent; there is even a pet komodo dragon, its bacteria-riddled mouth failing to deter its owners from letting it put its tongue up their nostrils. The humans who defrost rats and pet servals could be the true exotics here, however.
Hugh do you do?
Walliams & Friend (BBC1, 10pm)
This week’s guest is Hugh Bonneville, in a sketch show that might make viewers nostalgic for the choppy editing and quickfire punchlines of The Fast Show. A routine about a TV quiz with two presenters speaking at once no doubt presented an interesting technical challenge to the pair as performers but, unfortunately, it doesn’t contain any jokes. Bonneville trots out a wicked impersonation of Downton’s Elizabeth McGovern, but he can’t overcome the lack of laughs.
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Video nasty
Inside No 9 (BBC2, 10pm)
Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith begin the third series with this pitch-perfect recreation of a Tales of the Unexpected-style TV drama, filmed on authentic 1970s equipment. When the Devonshire family (Pemberton, Jessica Raine and Rula Lenska) arrive at the Alpine lodge where they are spending December 1977, the caretaker (Shearsmith) tells them stories about goatish child-stealing demon Krampus, heralding terrifying nocturnal visitations. Switch off two minutes before the end, though: the fabulous styling gives way to a gratuitously nasty conclusion, a bad misjudgment from such a talented writing team.
A walk through history
Pompeii (ITV, 10.45pm)
These days, Michael Buerk might not be the first person one would think of to present a high-tech recreation of how the city buried by Vesuvius in AD79 would have looked prior to the eruption, but he makes a good fist of walking through shattered buildings as they resurrect themselves in CGI form all around him. It is the human stories that are the most compelling, with Buerk going in search of the “fish sauce king”, Umbricius Scaurus, and visiting the city’s brothel, something no documentary on Pompeii can do without.
Victoria Segal and Helen Stewart
Radio pick of the day
Soul Music (R4, 11.30am)
Auld Lang Syne is elevated in this lovely montage from a drunken blur on New Year’s Day to a toast to friendship — the words in old Scots mean Time Remembered with Fondness — and to a ballad written by Robert Burns about human brotherhood. However, it can also be traced to an 18th-century song about impotence, rather apt given its later association with copious amounts of alcohol. A quiet, reflective but admirably unsentimental programme about loss and memory, beautifully produced by Maggie Ayre.
Paul Donovan
FILM CHOICE
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)
(Sky Cinema Premiere, 1.40pm/7.15pm)
The latest film about the ursine warrior is the same old stuff — meaning that it is well animated and moderately funny — but it adds lots of new pandas, including cute cubs. Co-dirs: Alessandro Carloni, Jennifer Yuh Nelson
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Spectre (2015)
(Sky Cinema Greats, 11am/8pm)
After the slight course correction made in 2012’s Skyfall, the latest Bond movie carried on in the fresh style: striking a balance between modernity and tradition. The latter influence is evident in the film’s deployment of a certain villain (played by Christoph Waltz) against Daniel Craig’s 007. Dir: Sam Mendes
The Heroes Of Telemark (1965)
(BBC2, 1.05pm)
The final film completed by the director Anthony Mann is a Second World War movie (roughly based on a true story) that shows his talent for depicting impressive landscapes: snowy Norwegian expanses appear in all their grandeur. It is here that resistance fighters (including Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris) try to disable a crucial Nazi factory, their efforts yielding a slow but steady adventure yarn.
Mr Peabody And Sherman (2014)
(BBC1, 3.50pm)
A cartoon about a genius dog and his adopted human son, Rob Minkoff’s film respects both the intelligence of its characters — in a story celebrating their love of learning — and that of its viewers: its hectic jokes are quite witty.
Edward Porter
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