THE ALL STAR TALENT SHOW
Five, 8.30pm
This show claims to uncover “the hidden talents of some of the UK’s most famous faces”. If you include Carol Thatcher, Steadman Pearson from the 1980s band Five Star and the Sky News presenter Juliette Foster in that category, you won’t be disappointed. Andi Peters and Myleene Klass invite the B, C and D-listers to perform a range of variety acts before a panel of celebrity judges chaired by Julian Clary. Carol Thatcher does a 1920s flapper tap dance apparently, Steadman Pearson performs the death scene from Swan Lake and Emmerdale’s Malandra Burrows does a raunchy fire-eating routine. Actually it sounds like a Children in Need telethon, but with luck everyone will have their tongues stuck firmly in their cheeks.
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AFTERSUN
BBC One, 9pm
In David Nicholls’s play, the first of five new single comedy- dramas, a middle-aged couple, Jim and Sue (Peter Capaldi and Sarah Parish), are packed off to a Spanish villa as a surprise 20th wedding anniversary present from their grown-up children. All seems blissful until they discover they must share their pool with a beautiful young couple, pert Oxford graduate Esther (Anna Madeley) and her sexually athletic fiancé Felipe (Juan Pablo Di Pace). Awkwardness morphs into disaster as the interaction between the couples takes unexpected turns, and misunderstandings mingle with unwelcome home truths. When the emotional knives come out, there’s a hint of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-lite, but the script is beautifully deft and witty and never takes itself too seriously.
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REBUS
ITV1, 9pm
Ken Stott makes a welcome return as the raddled Edinburgh detective in the first of four adaptations of Ian Rankin’s novels. Rebus’s personal life is as dishevelled as his hair. His professional life is little better: his boss treats his hunches as nonsense and brings in a young careerist to assist in his latest investigation, the murder of a prostitute. For Rebus this is a reprise of an old, unsolved case that he is sure is the work of a former Edinburgh playboy- turned-Scottish MP. The mysterious arrival of an illustrated notebook, written in code, provides a typically enigmatic Rankin clue. The question is, which is more grimly atmospheric: Edinburgh or Ken Stott’s face?
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THE SHIELD
Five, 11.05pm
As the raw LA cop show approaches the climax of its fifth series it has lost little of its original energy. The cocktail of ingredients remains unpleasantly potent as corrupt local politics affects the tangled power struggles in the precinct, and Vic and his team play an elaborate game of chess with gang leaders and internal affairs investigators, in an attempt to get their colleague Lemonhead a short “safe” sentence in a plea bargain. Even social issues impinge when a homophobic Christian fundamentalist starts killing gay men. There are a few upright characters of course, but, like most episodes, this one sometimes feels like a Jacobean revenge tragedy.
MULTICHANNEL CHOICE
By Angus Batey
LIVE EURO TOUR GOLF
Sky Sports 1, 10.30am
Live golfing action from day two of the Omega European Masters tournament at Crans-sur- Sierre Golf Club in Switzerland, where Michelle Wie has been invited to play alongside the men.
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JAKE GYLLENHAAL
Biography Channel, 6pm
We know quite a lot about the actor Jake Gyllenhaal: Paul Newman taught him how to drive; his work in Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead was widely acclaimed; he had a relationship with Kirsten Dunst; and he has a similarly talented sister, Maggie. This profile covers all that, but also reveals perhaps the biggest mystery of all: how to pronounce his surname (soft ‘g’, and ‘hall’ as in “village hall”, if you were wondering).
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VANISHINGS
History Channel, 7.30pm
In 1961, Michael Rockefeller, a scion of the American oil family, travelled to New Guinea. An ethnographer on a field trip with a museum, he was on board a canoe with a Dutch compatriot when it capsized. Despite extensive searches, Rockefeller was never seen again. In the years since, several theories have been put forward to explain his disappearance, among them the notions that he drowned, was killed by cannibals, or is still alive. This programme investigates the claims.
NEW TRICKS
UKTV Drama, 9pm
The second series of the BBC police drama starring Amanda Redman, Dennis Waterman, James Bolam and Alun Armstrong comes to multichannel in double-bill doses from tonight. In the first episode, guest-starring Anita Dobson and Jenny Agutter, the veteran cops investigate the 1980 death of a barrister; in the second, Keith Allen guests as the team re-investigate an attack on an Indian woman.
CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION
Living TV, 9pm/10pm
The sixth series of the hugely popular CSI, the original, Las Vegas-set series that spawned the Miami and New York spin-offs, starts tonight. The teams were divided into two shifts last series, but they are reunited here as they attempt to get to the bottom of several crimes — an explosion in a trailer park and a murdered stripper among them. The first part of the new series is showing as the second half of a double bill (at 10pm), with the end of series five beforehand (at 9pm).
LOVE WITH ARTHUR LEE AT GLASTONBURY 2003
BBC Four, 10.30pm
Syd Barrett’s death in July dominated the press, but when another icon of 1960s psychedelia died last month there was less fanfare. Arthur Lee’s band, Love, gave the decade one of its defining albums, Forever Changes, and though he spent the 1980s as a recluse and ended the 1990s in prison, Lee put a new Love line-up together this decade. Their last Glastonbury gig makes a fine tribute.