MYTHBUSTERS
BBC Two, 7.30pm
This series continues in the spirit of Rough Science, with the two excitable Americans setting up experiments to investigate various urban myths. Apart from their Wow! Gee! Isn’t this fun! manner, the problem is that the myths they set out to challenge are obscure in the extreme. Does anybody in the UK think electric-eel-skin wallets wipe information off credit cards? And how many builders carry their bricks in a wooden barrel? But the point of the programme is to present science in an entertaining and accessible way, so perhaps one shouldn’t cavil. And in fairness, they do provide an answer to that crucial question — will you die if you pee on an electrified rail? (The answer: only if you are a wet horse.)
OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS
BBC One, 8.30pm
Lynn Faulds Wood, the former presenter of Watchdog who survived cancer to become a leading campaigner on health issues, joins Esther Rantzen to expose scams. The style of the programme is self-consciously hip and some viewers may find it difficult to watch Rantzen so soon after her embarrassing performance in Excuse My French. Nevertheless, any programme that tracks down charlatans selling miracle pills claiming to “pop fat and cellulite cells like bubblewrap” deserves a wide audience. How many times do experts need to repeat that the only way to lose weight safely is to eat fewer calories and take more exercise? There is no such thing as a fat-busting pill — not even at £17.99 a pop.
BUS PASS BOOB JOBS
Channel 4, 9pm
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A documentary about the over-sixties and over-seventies who opt to have cosmetic surgery looked set to be the nastiest programme of the week. Instead, it is the saddest. All three people featured here are trying to fill an emotional vacuum in their lives: one wants to recapture the glamour of her youth; another has been devastated by the sudden break-up of her marriage; and the third, an old showbiz trooper, is looking back on a lifetime of broken relationships. “These things I’m doing,” he says, “are trying to prop up something that you know is missing somewhere . . . When you get it, it’s not going to solve the thing.” This programme, unlike the surgery, does achieve something worthwhile — it transforms repulsion into sympathy.
TIME TRUMPET
BBC Two, 10pm
Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet contains some wonderful jokes, and — like Monty Python’s Flying Circus all those years ago — it has the strange effect of making TV elsewhere seem ridiculous. The ageing celebrities in the year 2031 look back on the events of 2012. This was the year that the BBC tried to give the news a broader appeal by having Clare Balding report on the bombing of Iran; when the police arrested Scary Spice as part of the War on Terror; and Channel 4 broadcast the heart-wrenching documentary The Girl with the Voice of Boris Johnson. But the future is even worse. By 2031, Guantanamo Bay has its own shops, its own school for the inmates’ children and its own television station.
MULTICHANNEL CHOICE
by Angus Batey
BEAR EVIDENCE
National Geographic, 7pm
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The discovery that bears are helped into hibernation by a hormone, and that they emerge in better shape than before, has potentially massive ramifications. If the hormone can be made to work on humans, deep space exploration becomes more possible, and battlefield casualties could have better chances of survival. This programme looks at the discovery, and tries to assess its potential importance.
LIVE USPGA CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF
Sky Sports 2, 7pm
The last of the year’s majors begins tonight at the Medinah Country Club in Illinois. Last year’s winner, Phil Mickelson, faces a challenge from the Open winner, Tiger Woods, his playing partner on the opening day.
LIVE SPANISH FOOTBALL
Sky Sports 1, 9pm
Even the Spanish league, traditionally the last to finish among the major European football seasons, is about to begin. The Super Cup pitches Spain’s reigning league champions against the cup holders in a pre-season sizing-up ritual. Tonight, it has extra spice, as it pits Barcelona against city rivals Espanyol.
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ENGINEERING DISASTERS
History Channel, 9pm
As the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina looms, this programme looks at the catastrophic failure of the New Orleans levee system and other engineering problems that contributed to the destructive aftermath of the storm, such as the city’s inadequate pumping facilities and the supposedly hurricane-proof Superdome roof. Why did the system collapse, and what can be done to protect the city in the future?
CHARLIE BROOKER’S SCREEN WIPE
BBC Four, 10pm
In the last of this series, a special edition for the America Visions season, Brooker turns his caustic eye on transatlantic television. He attempts to divine different national traits in British and American TV tastes by comparing shows from either side of the pond, and is aided and abetted in his quest by The Daily Show’s Lewis Black and Conversations with My Agent star Rob Long.
WELCOME TO MY WORLD
BBC Three, 10.30pm
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In Dart Tarts, the writer Jacques Peretti takes an affectionate look at the sport he loved as a child, and at some of its colourful characters. Looming large in a cast of eccentrics is Bob Potter, the owner of Lakeside, the venue for the UK’s most high-profile darts tournaments, and the man upon whom Peter Kay based the Brian Potter character in Phoenix Nights. But Peretti also looks at some of the sport’s losers, such as Rabid Squirrels, Britain’s worst darts team.
DEADWOOD
Sky One, 11pm
The camp elders call another strategy meeting to deal with the dastardly Hearst, while illness holds up work on Langrishe’s theatre.