CRITIC’S CHOICE
Pick of the day
Six Wives (BBC1, 9pm; BBC1 Scotland, 11.40pm)
Three down means three to go as Lucy Worsley’s concluding programme covers the years from 1540-7, when the obese, diseased Henry VIII was in his fifties but looked much older. With her dressing-up and am-dram urges satisfied by playing a royal maid in dramatised scenes, the historian is on her best form for some time as she continues to demolish myths about his brides — ironically myths most prominently peddled (in The Tudors) by ... the BBC.
She is not alone, though, in suggesting that Anne of Cleves was smart and may have been attractive. Fresher is her take on Catherine Howard, detecting a “darker story” behind her promiscuity; and Worsley challenges a received image again in portraying Katherine Parr as anything but docile — although she may lose some female fans when she summarises the standard view of Katherine as “having a dowdy, nursy image”.
John Dugdale
High roads and low roads
One For The Road In The Highlands (BBC3, from 10am)
The comedian Seann Walsh never tires of telling Mark Simmons, his friend and support act, that he has been on Live at the Apollo as they travel round the Highlands and islands of Scotland playing a series of tiny gigs to audiences who don’t seem as impressed as they should be that he has come all this way. Here, the director, Lindsay Hughes, has made a real-life The Trip without the comic stardust of Rob Brydon or Steve Coogan, a delightful little film about a fragile ego and an eternally designated driver.
Heartwarming help
The Big Life Fix (BBC2, 9pm)
This is the final episode of a series that combines the big-hearted generosity of shows such as DIY SOS with the technical ingenuity of The Great Egg Race and Tomorrow’s World. The robustly charming Simon Reeve provides the human link between the inventors and those who need their help and in tonight’s show he meets two brothers with cystic fibrosis, whose mum is tired of nagging them to do their breathing exercises, a little girl who needs a helmet, and a young mum whose partial sight is beginning to trap her at home.
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Money talks
In Plain Sight (ITV, 9pm)
The intensity and suspense that has been missing from the 1950s crime drama arrives at last in its final part. Already the likely killer of a missing young woman, Peter Manuel (Martin Compston) commits three more murders and makes his first mistake by stealing money from a victim — notes he then spends and that allow him to be traced. Spotting the blunder, William Muncie (Douglas Henshall) has him arrested and taunts him in the interview room, exploiting both the psychopath’s bogus self-image as a tough guy and his love of publicity.
Best seat in the house?
Timeless (E4, 9pm)
After their trip to the Hindenburg disaster last week, the time-travellers are sent to Washington DC on April 14, 1865, where the era-hopping Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic) is again trying to meddle with America’s past. While Wyatt (Matt Lanter) and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) pose as Union soldiers, Lucy (Abigail Spencer) wangles a date in a box next to Abraham Lincoln’s at the theatre, putting her in a position to alter history by preventing the president’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth — if she chooses to do so.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Radio pick of the day
Nadiya’s Festive Family Feast (R2, 8pm)
Nadiya Hussain, whose career has gone into the stratosphere since she won Bake Off last year, cooks salmon kedgeree, gingerbread cake and other dishes in a two-hour special recorded at her home in Milton Keynes: all the recipes are on the Radio 2 website. Earlier, and live from St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, Afternoon On 3 (R3, 2pm) has the BBC Singers offering carols and readings for today’s winter solstice; and In Tune (R3, 4.30pm) is the annual, fun-filled, festive edition live from Broadcasting House.
Paul Donovan
FILM CHOICE
A Prophet (2009)
(Film 4, 12.45am)
Even while it abides by the regulations of prison movies — in telling of a new inmate (Tahar Rahim) climbing the pecking order — this French film exerts a powerful grip. It becomes all the more compelling in moments when it breaks out of genre conventions. Dir: Jacques Audiard
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Jerry Maguire (1996)
(Sky Cinema Greats, 3.15pm/2.55am)
In a day devoted to Tom Cruise films on Sky Cinema Greats, the star’s most likeable performance is the one he gives in Cameron Crowe’s romantic comic drama about a big-money sports agent who sets out to become a better person. The role flatters its actor brazenly, and he responds with eager-beaver peppiness.
Ma Ma (2015)
(Sky Cinema Premiere, 9.45pm)
This Spanish weepie is fortunate to have Penelope Cruz in its lead role: a woman enduring a trio of grave misfortunes, including a serious threat to her health. Julio Medem’s film introduces this brave character to another troubled soul (Luis Tosar) to create a welter of soppy misery, soundtracked with lots of slow piano-playing, yet Cruz’s charisma helps her to stand firm and give a bright performance — her best work in recent years.
The Ides Of March (2011)
(BBC4, 10pm)
If the year has not yet given you your fill of American politics, you might be tempted by this drama about presidential hopefuls using dirty tricks. Its leading spokesmen are Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney (who also directed).
Edward Porter