HOW CLEAN ARE THE F*LTHY FULFORDS?
Channel 4, 8pm
Who, exactly, is exploiting whom? Neil Hamilton stood in front of the television cameras on Johnny Vegas’s show and let people dump fish on top of him. Now Francis Fulford — the cheerful, braying dinosaur who became a TV celebrity because no one could believe people like that still exist — plays the clown for Kim and Aggie. In return, he gets a spring-clean and a healthy cheque. Just as soap operas have replaced village gossip, the Hamiltons and the Fulfords have become the new freaks at the fairground. Unfortunately, that makes us the paying mob.
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CUTTING EDGE: THE BLACK WIDOW
Channel 4, 9pm
There are certain telltale signs that suggest a marriage is in trouble. If a wife feeds her husband curry thickened with prescription drugs, they should probably seek counselling. If she stabs him with a knife and hits him repeatedly in the face with a metal baseball bat — that’s another giveaway. And if she ever asks if the waste-disposal unit can handle bones, chances are their relationship is going through a bad patch. This Cutting Edge tells the story of Dena Thompson, who — after a 20-year career involving fraud, theft, bigamy and baseball bats — is serving a life sentence for murder. To describe her behaviour as “unbelievable” doesn’t even come close.
IMAGINE: FRIDA KAHLO
BBC One, 10.40pm; Wales, 11.10pm
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To coincide with an extensive exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s paintings at Tate Modern, Alan Yentob presents a portrait of the Mexican artist whose work was as colourful and extreme as her life. Carlos Fuentes described her paintings as a powerful reminder that magic realism is an everyday reality in Latin America, and that her art was born out of the turbulence of Mexican history as much as the pain of her own life. Yentob travels to Mexico in search of the feminist icon and secular martyr who wrote, in the final entry of her diary: “I hope the end is joyful. And I hope never to come back.”
NIP/TUCK
Channel 4, 10.55pm
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In tonight’s episode almost all of the characters are fixated on ageing. While Sean and Julia try to deal with their eight-year-old daughter reaching puberty, a woman demands a knee-lift on the ground that the ability to wear short skirts will see her through the trials of life. “Beauty,” she says, “is my strength and my armour.” And therein lies the difference between Nip/Tuck and Six Feet Under. Both are beautifully acted and produced, and both are dark and funny and well-observed. But one is based on a refusal to face up to life, while the other confronts the everyday reality of death. Nip/Tuck will always be rooted in the trivial, whereas Six Feet Under is unassumingly profound.
MULTICHANNEL CHOICE
By Angus Batey
The fast-moving world of Twenty20 cup competition enters its second full week as Sussex, with just one win this season, have home advantage over Surrey, who have lost just once.
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M*A*S*H
Biography Channel, 8pm
Richard Hooker’s novel about a mobile Army hospital unit during the Korean War was originally adapted for the big screen by Robert Altman in 1970, but it was brought to a wider audience two years later when it became a television series that ran for 251 episodes over 11 years. Here is the story of Hawkeye, Hotlips, Radar and co and how they became some of the most popular characters on television.
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LIGHT FANTASTIC
BBC Four, 9pm/1.45am
In the second programme examining optics, Simon Schaffer shows how inventions unrelated to an understanding of light would lead to new ideas and philosophies. For instance, a telescope invented to aid Venetian soldiers was used by Galileo to prove that the Earth orbited the Sun. It is hard to avoid the temptation to call this series “illuminating”, so we won’t even try.
U2 UNCOVERED
ITV2, 9pm
When U2 played at the City of Manchester Stadium on June 1, they were under surveillance for this special film, first shown late last night on ITV1, which provides footage from the gig intercut with backstage insights and a Cat Deeley interview with the band. The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton have learnt to live with Bono and his political crusading hogging the headlines in recent years and, while the release of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb put the focus back on the music, this latest world tour is proving to be another platform for the singer’s impassioned beliefs.
SECRET WORLD OF THEME PARKS
Sky Travel, 9pm
Life is cut-throat in the theme-park business, with easily-bored customers demanding ever-greater stimulation. This programme goes in search of the newest thrills, and includes a ride based on the Incredible Hulk and a park in Florida where parts of the Serengeti have been re-created for travel-shy Americans.
THE L WORD
Living TV, 10pm
The Los Angeles lesbians are joined by guest star Sandra Bernhard, who plays an intimidating professor at Jenny’s writing group.