DON’T GET ME STARTED
Five, 7.15pm
The comedian Stewart Lee wrote the script for Jerry Springer: The Musical and was vehemently attacked for it. So it’s no great surprise that his turn on Five’s soap-box slot is entitled “What’s Wrong with Blasphemy?” Legally, the term applies only to the teachings of the Church of England in Britain, but in a climate where vocal minorities from other religions are protesting violently when they believe their faith has been insulted, Lee fears that there is a real threat to free speech. The polemic addresses what has become a significant headache in a liberal secular democracy. Lee argues with lucidity that if we lose the right to criticise religions by reasoned argument or satire, we are in big trouble.
JILL DANDO’S MURDER: THE NEW EVIDENCE
BBC One, 9pm
The apparently motiveless murder of the popular Holiday and Crimewatch presenter on her Fulham doorstep in April 1999 remains one of the most perplexing crimes of the past decade. Who would want to kill this charming young woman and why? After a police investigation on an unprecedented scale, Barry George was convicted of her murder in 2001. The case rested on minutely detailed and complex forensic analysis, much of which is outlined in the Case Closed section of the BBC’s crime website. George was refused leave to appeal in 2002, yet forensic evidence has turned out to be unreliable in the past. This Panorama special claims to have uncovered new evidence that casts doubt on his guilt.
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LOST CITIES OF THE ANCIENTS
BBC Two, 9pm
This intriguing three-part archaeology series began last night with Ramesses the Great’s lost capital of Piramesse. Tonight we cross to northern Peru for The Cursed Valley of the Pyramids, which looks at a series of three cities of giant pyramids built from baked mud bricks by a people named after the Lambayeque valley where they lived. The usual re-enactments and computer graphics give a tantalising whiff of a complex but vulnerable civilisation, which probably resorted to mass human sacrifice when threatened, first by climatic disaster and finally by the fall of their Inca overlords to the Conquistadors. The series concludes tomorrow with Hattusha, the capital of the first Hittites, whose empire was greater than that of Egypt.
THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ISLAM
Channel 4, 11pm
Don’t be misled by the title. This is not a serious attempt to explain Islam to anyone. It’s really a frothy reality-cum-lifestyle show with Bob Geldof’s teenage daughter Peaches travelling to Morocco to meet Muslim girls and try on their clothes. When she visits a desert Koran school and a retreat high in the Atlas mountains for people who feel they have been possessed by djins, it becomes like Paris Hilton mucking out the steers. Presumably viewers of Peaches’ age who know nothing about the religion might pick up the odd tidbit between the posing and squealing. Tomorrow night’s show, in which the actor Paul Nicholls explores Hinduism, is slightly more informative and a lot more fun.
MULTICHANNEL CHOICE
by Gabrielle Starkey
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CARTOONITO
Cartoon Network Too, from 6am
Since the demise of Tots TV and their “sac magic”, French has been a little-heard language in children’s shows. This new strand, featuring colourful French characters, aims to familiarise toddlers with all things Gallic.
MATCH OF THE DAY LIVE: WALES v BRAZIL
BBC Three, 7pm
Just three days after their Euro 2008 qualifier defeat against the Czech Republic, John Toshack’s side take on Brazil, who beat Argentian 3-0 on Sunday, in a friendly at White Hart Lane.
MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE
BBC Four, 9pm
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Music’s most eclectically nominated prize has a number of big names in the shortlist this year: Muse, Arctic Monkeys, Hot Chip, Editors and even a solo Thom Yorke (can he pick up the award Radiohead have never lifted?). But it has often been the case that the coolest, most obscure act slouches off with the trophy, so Sway, a rising UK hip-hop star, could well upset the favourites.
SADDAM’S ROAD TO HELL
More4, 9pm
Tonight and tomorrow More4 are showing three films on the subject of Iraq. The first, timed nicely to coincide with the start of Saddam Hussein’s second trial, documents an extraordinary journey across the wartorn country, collecting evidence of the former dictator’s mass murder of Kurdish men and boys in the early years of his rule.
HOW THE WEST WAS MADE
History Channel, 9pm
No, not the American Wild West. but the beautiful English West Country. The photographer Chris Chapman starts this new history series in Torquay, where early farmers lived in cave dwellings 500,000 years ago.
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HEARTS AND MINDS
More4, 10pm
Peter Davis’s Oscar- winning 1974 documentary about the conflicting attitudes behind the Vietnam War remains surprisingly relevant. By simply bringing together testimony from proud former US soldiers, bombed Vietnam villagers and military commanders from both sides it shows how Cold War paranoia and imperialist arrogance led to the invasion of a country that, ironically, had looked to the US for deliverance from France.
THE EVIDENCE
FX, 10pm
Featuring a classy cast (Rob Estes, Orlando Jones, Martin Landau) and an interesting twist (the evidence and crime are shown at the start of each episode), this new San Francisco cop show begins well, but soon descends into a routine procedural, only enlivened by Estes and Jones’s sparky double-act.
DEADLIEST CATCH 2
Discovery, 10pm
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The adrenalin is pumping as the Alaskan crab fishermen put to sea for a new season of dangerous, macho graft.