WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
BBC One, 9pm
This week’s episode of the ancestry-tracing series featuring Robert Lindsay is not one of the most dramatic, but as always it is the social history that brings it to life. Rejecting the heat and noise of the local steelworks, Lindsay left Derbyshire for Rada and an acting career. Now he rediscovers his working-class roots in Ilkeston, learning that he had two unknown aunts who died in childhood. But the most powerful sequence comes when he finds the wreck of a landing-craft in the clear waters off Gallipoli, possibly the one from which his grandfather was rescued after the ill-fated 1915 campaign.
Advertisement
AL-QAEDA: TURNING THE TERRORISTS
BBC Two 9pm
Concluding his two-part investigation into the al-Qaeda threat, Peter Taylor visits South-East Asia to report on what seems a successful campaign to roll up jihadi groups. The region had become like Afghanistan, attracting militants form around the world including the UK. Taylor negotiates unprecedented access to Nasir Abas, a senior commander of Jemaah Islamiya, the group responsible for the Bali bombing, who has been “turned” by the authorities, provided a wealth of intelligence and now tries to persuade captured terrorists to change their ways. One of his students, now a prisoner in the Philippines, has also turned supergrass, giving information about networks, some of them in Britain. This time the dire warnings come with a hint of a possible way forward.
LOSING IT
ITV1, 9pm
This is a title with at least three possible meanings: losing one’s job, perhaps, losing one’s grip on life, but mainly losing a testicle. Yes, this comedy drama takes a wry look at the problem of testicular cancer in middle-aged men. Martin Clunes plays Phil MacNaughtan, a vulnerably ageing creative in an advertising agency now run by the aggressively shallow Leo (James Lance) and married to a long-suffering probation officer, Nancy (Holly Aird). The discovery of a malignant lump in an intimate place sends his life into meltdown as he struggles to keep working through surgery and increasingly painful radio-therapy. Expect plenty of amusing touches including several advert-based fantasy sequences.
Advertisement
IAN WRIGHT’S UNFIT KIDS
Channel 4, 9pm
The former England striker- turned-television presenter Ian Wright tries to do for schoolchildren’s fitness what Jamie Oliver did for their food. The difference is that he is working with a group of only eight overweight and unfit North London kids in a special after-school fitness club and, so far at least, there is no signof an overall plan to change government policy. The narrative arc of these shows usually involves the crusading presenter finding the struggle so difficult that they almost give up, and this time the disheartening problems are fully apparent in episode one. Apart from the discomfort and boredom of physical exercise, each child is wrestling with their own demons, their bad habits reinforced by indulgent parents.
Advertisement
MULTICHANNEL CHOICE
By Gabrielle Starkey
LIVE PRO40 LEAGUE CRICKET
Sky Sports 1 (and HD), 4pm/Sky Sports 3 (and HD), 7pm
Shane Warne’s Hampshire take on Worcester in a League Two match at the Rose Bowl.
Advertisement
LIVE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL
Sky Sports 2, 6pm/Sky Sports Xtra, 7.30pm
Sky begins its live Champions League coverage with one of the ties of the first round: the Battle of Britain at Old Trafford between the Scottish champions Celtic and Manchester United, who, surprisingly, have never met before in European competition.
Over on Sky Sports Xtra, last year’s beaten finalists Arsenal start their campaign in the AOL Arena against Hamburg. Both matches kick off at 7.45pm.
Advertisement
POIROT
ITV3, 8pm
Agatha Christie’s dapper detective gets hot under the collar in Egypt, where Sir John Willard, the leader of a group of adventurers, has dropped dead of a heart attack just moments after opening the tomb of a great king. As rumours of a curse begin to circulate, Poirot searches for a more earthly explanation.
GALLERY TOURS
Artsworld (and HD), 8pm
Emilia Fox is at the Hong Kong Museum of Art this week, investigating the influence of colonialism on the collection’s painting and sculpture.
HORIZON: HUNT FOR THE SUPERTWISTER
UKTV Documentary, 9pm
Supertwisters, as the name suggests, are no ordinary storms. They are powerful tornados that appear out of nowhere and kill hundreds of people each year. But storm-chasing scientists now think they have a way of predicting when and where the twisters will appear. Horizon explains all.
9/11: THE FALLING MAN
More4, 9pm
The “falling man” was the name given to the photograph of a man jumping to his death from the World Trade Centre. It appeared in newspapers all over the world, but then disappeared. The picture that gave the most vivid sense of the horror of 9/11 was replaced by images of heroism and defiance, and it seemed to become the photograph that nobody wanted to remember.
This powerful and distressing documentary, first shown on Channel 4 in March, is the story behind it — the man who took it, the papers that published it and the attempts to discover the identity of the victim.
JODIE KIDD’S FASHION AVENUE 2
Discovery Travel & Living, 10pm
With London Fashion Week around the corner, Jodie Kidd kicks off her new series of shopping advice. In Barcelona she tours the trendy, boutique-filled El Born area with the British designer Richard Capstick, looking for something — anything — to flatter her 6ft frame. If nothing else, it’s heartening to see a supermodel having trouble finding anything to fit.