Critics’ choice
Pick of the day
No Offence (C4, 9pm)
Serious storylines featuring Dinah (Elaine Cassidy) and Joy (Alexandra Roach) are offset in this third episode by a funny subplot about a senile gunman and a peculiar paramedic. The tonal mix that is the hallmark of Paul Abbott’s dramas is reserved for the key scene: a deadly earnest showdown between Viv (Joanna Scanlan) and Nora (Rakie Ayola), but with the vice queen fielding a distractingly unusual legal team and the detective coached by an eccentric psychologist called Dr Peep.
No Offence has gone from being female-led in series one to female-dominated in series two, with both of Viv’s main antagonists (external and in-house) now women and almost all the action involving her or her sidekicks. Few will object to that in itself, as its actresses are on terrific form, but it does mean that Will Mellor and Paul Ritter’s characters have so far been sidelined.
John Dugdale
Feeling blue
The Great Interior Design Challenge (BBC2, 8pm)
This is the second semi final in a trio of shows over as many days (the final is tomorrow) and the two competitors are challenged with tarting up living and dining rooms in thatched cottages designed by Sir Edward Lutyens. “Rustic charm done by an obsessive master architect,” says presenter Tom Dyckhoff of their chocolate-box style but, fear not, the contestants aren’t allowed to touch the outside. By coincidence, they both choose blue as the colour theme for their interior designs. “It’s brave,” says judge Kelly Hoppen, with a straight face.
Load of old rabbit
Midsomer Murders (ITV, 8pm)
The series rounds off with a whodunit centred on an annual pet show run by the chatelaine (Susan Hampshire) of a stately home. The most coveted award is the one for best rabbit, with the result that bunnies are everywhere when Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) inspects the first corpse — the killer seems to have deliberately released them. Sara Crowe, Sean Gallagher, Aisling Loftus and Steve Pemberton are among those defying the old adage about never working with animals, which on this evidence is shrewd advice: one rabbit does a better double take than any of the human stars.
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Tragic numbers game
Hospital (BBC2, 9pm)
In this timely episode, the horrors of “blocked beds” become all too clear as nearly all 297 at St Mary’s are occupied. It is common for the hospital to run at 99% capacity and to have only one or two beds spare but, with none available, life-saving surgeries are being cancelled as there is nowhere for patients to recover. Doctors speak of their frustration at not being able to do the best for their patients and ghoulish conversations are overheard, such as when one medic asks about spaces coming up that day in intensive care. “That won’t change later, will it? There’s no one who’s going to succumb?”
Teenage kicks recalled
The Reassembler (BBC4, 9pm)
James May reassembles a portable record player, a device he calls “something of a revolutionary artefact”, since by allowing kids to listen to music in their bedrooms (instead of with parents) it helped bring about the emergence of the teenager. Though relatively simple to fit together again, and so of little interest in itself, his Dansette Bermuda from 1963 (the same age as May) prompts droll memories of growing up, playing singles and wooing girls in the 1970s, but the comic highlight comes when, after performing countless delicate tasks impeccably, he bungles the challenge of swigging his tea without spilling it or spluttering.
The only way is talking
In Therapy: Lauren Goodger (C5, 10pm)
So chequered and bizarre is Lauren Goodger’s romantic history that even those who have never heard of her or The Only Way Is Essex (she was in the original cast, along with her then boyfriend, Mark Wright, and recently rejoined it) will find this session with the psychotherapist Mandy Saligari riveting. Saligari deftly delves into Goodger’s troubled childhood as being at the root of her relationships with men, suggesting that she equates jealous, controlling behaviour with love and that Towie’s blurring of reality and fiction is no recipe for emotional security; but the shrink is understandably disconcerted to learn that Goodger’s current boyfriend is in prison.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Sport choice
Australian Open Tennis (Eurosport, 6am/12 midnight)
Masters Snooker (BBC2, 1pm/11.15pm)
Africa Cup Of Nations Gabon v Burkina Faso (Eurosport, 3.45pm) Cameroon v Guinea-Bissau (Eurosport, 6.45pm)
FA Cup Replay Plymouth Argyle v Liverpool (BT Sport 2, 7pm)
Squash (BT Sport 1, 10pm)
Radio pick of the day
The Documentary: Trump Tweet By Tweet (BBC World Service, 7.30pm)
Katty Kay, who will be part of BBC1’s live coverage on Friday afternoon of Donald Trump’s inauguration, delves into his obsession with tweeting – on all manner of subjects. America also occupies The Full Works Concert (Classic FM, 8pm), with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Barber, Copland, Amy Beach and Scott Joplin up against Scarlatti and other 17th- and 18th-century composers performed live at St John’s, Smith Square, for In Concert (R3, 7.30m).
Paul Donovan
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You say
It is time Midsomer Murders (ITV) was axed. The new series with Neil Dudgeon lacks all the spark that made the previous series with John Nettles so enjoyable. The plots, acting and scripts in the present series are feeble and ridiculous. Neil Dudgeon looks as if he wishes he was somewhere else.
Bill Coleman
The location may be exotic but there is no fun in Death In Paradise (BBC1) when the leftovers from Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War and Jim’s Inn aren’t lurking in the bushes. Spot the stars of yesteryear is the game that keeps our household entertained for hours.
Chris Clark
I stood the first 20 minutes of the new Sherlock (BBC1). What utter pretentious crap. The writers and actors really do believe their own publicity.
Jeremy Haworth
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
Film choice
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The Way Way Back (2013)
Film 4, 6.55pm
The holiday this comedy’s shy 14-year-old hero (Liam James) spends in a coastal town — with his mother (Toni Collette) and her obnoxious boyfriend (Steve Carell) — may be full of jolting new experiences for him, but for viewers au fait with coming-of-age stories it is a pleasant stay in familiar surroundings. Co-dirs: Nat Faxon, Jim Rash
The Wonders (2014)
Sky Cinema Premiere, 10pm
Alice Rohrwacher’s drama about a rural Italian family has a fresh, artisanal sweetness akin to that of the clan’s stock-in-trade: honey produced using old-school methods. A storyline involving a bizarre television talent show for farmers brings a touch of Fellini-style shabby glamour to the proceedings (and provides a role for Monica Bellucci), but the film never grows exaggerated: its wonders are those of everyday life.
Edward Porter