THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GOOGLE
BBC Two, 7pm
In a fascinating Money Programme, the reporter Rajan Datar profiles Google, a company that has quadrupled in value since it was floated on the Nasdaq in August 2004. It now has a market capitalisation of $120 billion, and its two founders — Larry Page and Sergey Brin — are worth £6 billion each. Revenue is generated by advertisers paying the company every time a surfer clicks on their name, which means that they pay only for proven results. The programme shows some of the numerous ways in which it has improved people’s lives, as well as tackling some of the more contentious issues of copyright and privacy. Everyone’s search records, for example, can be recorded, archived, tracked and subpoenaed. Oops.
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30 MINUTES
Channel 4, 7.30pm
The 30 Minutes strand gives writers and broadcasters the opportunity to stand up on a soapbox and let rip. In the past, contributors have included Rowan Pelling describing the crisis in our maternity system; Rosie Boycott lambasting a culture obsessed with beauty and youth; and Nick Cohen challenging the Government to do something about junk-food advertising. Tonight Hardeep Singh Kholi tackles one of the most sensitive subjects of all. He challenges the need for Britain to have a Holocaust remembrance day, largely on the grounds that we do not have national days to commemorate other historical tragedies. It is thoughtful and provocative, even if you don’t agree with a word.
JUDGE JOHN DEED
BBC One, 8.30pm
All manner of bad things happen to Judge John Deed (Martin Shaw) tonight. His relationship with Jo (Jenny Seagrove) has reached an all-time low. He makes an ill-considered decision in court that has catastrophic consequences. He declares open war on the Home Office to safeguard the independence of the judiciary, and — in his most controversial decision to date — rules that “if we abandon religious faith in favour of science, we go one step nearer as a society to a brutal existence where nothing has any value unless it is proven”. Judge John Deed must be one of the few mavericks left who is brave enough, in Alastair Campbell’s phrase, to do God.
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TIMEWATCH
BBC Two, 9pm
Forensic pathology does not get much more absorbing than this. Timewatch follows an international team of experts as it examines two bodies that were found in a peat bog in central Ireland in an astonishing state of preservation. One of them, who would have been 6ft 6in, had been tortured, stabbed, beheaded and dismembered. The second body was a shorter man who used natural hair gel imported from France to make him appear taller. His skull had been smashed open. (As the scientist puts it: “The cheesy material there is compressed brain.”) It transpires that the bodies are more than 2,000 years old, and the amount of hard information the team is able to discover about the way they lived and died is nothing short of astounding.
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MULTICHANNEL TELEVISION
by Angus Batey
AFRICAN CUP OF NATIONS
Bitish Eurosport, from 4.30pm; BBC Three, 7pm
Loathed by Premiership coaches for depriving them of valuable players, the Cup of Nations, Africa’s biennial version of the European Championship, keeps getting bigger and better. This year the tournament takes place in Egypt, where Tunisia, the defending champions, are joined by World Cup qualifiers Togo, Angola, Ghana and Ivory Coast. BBC Three will be showing highlights, while British Eurosport covers every match live, starting with today’s opening ceremony and the first game, Egypt versus Libya.
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HOWARD HUGHES: HIS WOMEN AND HIS MOVIES
Biography Channel, 7pm
As Martin Scorsese proved with The Aviator, the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes remains an enduring enigma. Any delving into his notoriously obscure private life is bound to involve guesswork, but it is still a fascinating story.
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BETRAYAL: THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW
History Channel, 8pm
In 1944, the insurgents fighting the Nazis in Warsaw became Polish heroes. Their 63-day battle may have had profound geopolitical ramifications; but they were betrayed by their allies, as this film explains.
AMERICAN IDOL
ITV2, 8.30pm
We may be X Factor crazy in Britain, but in the US American Idol stills reigns supreme. Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy “Dawg” Jackson are back for a fifth helping, ready to sort more singing wheat from yelping chaff. The hopeless yodellings of the delusionally untalented that make up the early parts of these shows are always entertaining; there are two helpings tonight.
LEGENDS
BBC Four, 9pm
A profile of the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, whose work with Dizzy Gillespie revolutionised jazz in 1945 and the records he made remain both essential and influential. But he was also influential in darker matters, some followers believing that they might be able to play like Bird if they too took the heroin that hastened his death, in 1955, at the age of 34. Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning biopic, Bird, follows at 10pm.
RAIDER NATION: IRAQ ON THE FRONTLINE
Sky News, 9pm
This hour-long special was made by the Sky News correspondent Peter Sharp, who spent several weeks with a platoon of US Marines stationed in Iraq. A valuable balance to Sky’s imported drama Over There, Raider Nation echoes the recently released Jarhead, depicting soldiering as long bouts of will-sapping banality; but it does not pander to the Americans. The ridiculous inability to vault the language barrier and the difficulty of working with less skilled Iraqi soldiers are problem enough: when a Marine’s cartoon ridiculing locals is found in an Iraqi child’s exercise book, the job just gets harder.