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Land of Hope and Glory: British Country Life
BBC Two, 9pm
The films of Jane Treays, director of Inside Claridges, go from strength to strength. In her latest three-part series, she looks at life in the British countryside through the prism of Country Life magazine. The magazine is the bible of the middle and upper classes, and at least to some degree it peddles a fantasy of rural life — complete with a frontispiece devoted to the society girl with pearls. “My job,” says the editor Mark Hedges, “is to provide something that the readers want to read, and no more and no less than that.” The great strength of all Treays’s films is that she never sneers. “Actually there’s nothing nicer,” says Judith Hussey of the Old Rectory, Manston, as she opens her garden to the public, “than a delicious cake, a cup of tea and a pretty garden to look at. It’s so essentially English. And when the weather is good, it’s just heaven.” Country houses are also part of the fabric of history. “Not to enjoy the past,” says the magazine’s architectural editor John Goodall, “seems to me like not enjoying music or not wanting to learn another language.” There is, however, a much darker side to the countryside. Last year, 38,000 cows had to be slaughtered because of the outbreak of TB, and farmers argue that the disease is being spread by badgers and an ill-informed reluctance to cull them. People have committed suicide, families have broken up and the future of the dairy industry is under threat. Alongside the abundance of ripe characters in this glorious film lurks anxiety and anger.
Perfect Pianists at the BBC
BBC Four, 8pm
For dazzling virtuosity and sheer exhilaration, this programme would be hard to beat. David Owen Norris trawls through the BBC archives and introduces excerpts from some of the greatest piano recitals of the past 60 years. It includes Horowitz and Rubinstein playing in their 80s; Alfred Brendel with plasters on his fingers making the piano sing as he plays Schubert; Glenn Gould talking inspired nonsense and alarming Humphrey Burton; Lang Lang raising the roof of the Albert Hall; and Mitsuko Uchida giving Beethoven all she’s got. The passion, energy and skill on display beggars belief.
Gardeners’ World
BBC Two, 8.30pm
At the start of a new series, the team — Monty Don, Joe Swift and Carol Klein — set out their stall for the coming year and look back at the destruction wrought by flooding. It is not all gloom and doom, though. Two years ago a garden in Kent was totally submerged under brackish water, but now — through a combination of hard work, luck and expertise — it has been restored to its former glory. Meanwhile, Klein admires snowdrops and cyclamen flourishing on an exposed Welsh hillside, and Swift sets out to find a tree for every occasion.
Shetland
BBC One, 9pm
Forget the fiendishly complicated plot. Far more memorable is the spirit of place that gives Shetland such a distinctive atmosphere and differentiates it from dozens of other murder mysteries. There is also Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez — quiet, alert, melancholic, solitary and terminally suspicious. Most memorable of all, though, is Alison O’Donnell’s performance as “Tosh” MacIntosh, who avoided all the clichés and showed the devastating psychological impact of rape and the near-impossibility of getting justice. “We both know what a court case would be like,” she tells Perez. “It wouldn’t make me feel any better.”
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Broken Biscuits
BBC One, 10.35pm
This wonderful comedy-drama, written by Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, features a series of apparently inconsequential vignettes involving five separate groups of people. A hen-pecked husband and his wife discuss their problems with a fire alarm, for example, or a young man tries to summon up the courage to talk to a girl in the pub. Each vignette is beautifully observed and performed by the likes of Alison Steadman, Alun Armstrong, Timothy West and Stephanie Cole. And towards the end, you suddenly start to see how all the stories fit together. It is a small jewel.
Catch-up TV
The Jinx
Sky, available now
Before Making a Murderer came HBO’s The Jinx. In September 2001, a boy out fishing discovered a legless, armless, headless torso in Galveston, Texas. Eventually the police discovered other body parts in black bin liners and traced the murder victim back to a sordid boarding house. His body had been dismembered in a room rented by a middle-aged deaf-mute woman. Only the woman wasn’t a woman and she wasn’t a deaf mute. She was Robert Durst, the multimillionaire scion of a New York real-estate dynasty. Moreover, Durst had already been suspected of involvement in the disappearance of his first wife. “I had no idea what I was I stepping into,” says Detective Cody Cazalas of the Galveston police. “If had, I’m not sure I would have stepped in so willingly.” David Chater
Films of the day
Lambert & Stamp (15, 2015)
Sky Arts, 10pm
In many ways, Lambert & Stamp is the ultimate mismatched buddy movie. The difference is this fascinating documentary is true. Kit Lambert was a multilingual, Oxbridge-educated toff with a taste for opera. Christopher Stamp was the hip, working-class younger brother of the actor Terence. Both were aspiring film-makers and this mutual interest brought them together. They had a plan to make a film about a rock band. This, almost coincidentally, led to them managing a 1960s mod group known as the Hi Numbers. They renamed them The Who and the rest is rock history. What’s intriguing is how these two visionaries shaped the music and pop culture of the era. (117min) Wendy Ide
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The Warriors (18, 1979)
Film4, 11pm
The gangs of 1970s New York do battle in the director Walter Hill’s pulpy classic, a contemporary update of Xenophon’s ancient Greek saga Anabasis. Framed for murder after the collapse of a city-wide gang summit, the Coney Island-based Warriors become marked men and must fight their way home across hostile turf. Featuring a mostly unknown cast, including the future Sex and the City co-star James Remar, Hill’s trashy but much-admired teen fable enjoys enough of a cult reputation to excuse its cartoonish characters and risible dialogue. (93min) Stephen Dalton
Coming to America (15, 1988)
Channel 4, 1.20am
Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) has just turned 21, and in line with family tradition, he is about to enter into an arranged marriage with a woman he has never met. But Akeem has other ideas. With his trusty retainer Semmi (Arsenio Hall), Akeem rebels against his overbearing father and travels to Queens, New York, to find a wife for himself. You get the impression that the whole purpose of this irrepressible film, directed by John Landis, is to serve as a showcase for Murphy’s exuberant talents — the actor plays three other roles. The dance routine performed by the royal dancers before presenting Akeem’s queen-to-be is a high-tempo rendition of the dance from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which was also directed by Landis. (116min) WI
Radio choice by John Bungey
Glad to Be Grey
Radio 4, 11am
Mary Beard refuses to submit to the slatherings of make-up and hair-dye that TV customarily expects of older women. As a result she has been the victim of some staggeringly unpleasant comments in the press and from internet trolls. As a woman quite happy to glory in the looks that 60 years of living have bestowed on her, the classical scholar sets out to investigate why so many women and some men do colour their hair. This starts with a frank exchange at the hair salon. Mary: “If I walked into your salon and said I think I need something doing to my hair . . .” Hairdresser: “Then I would definitely say yes.” The programme researchers apparently had trouble finding men to speak up for hair dye (if only they’d got Donald Trump), but it sparks some lively discussions on the rights and wrongs of trying to deny cosmetically what old father time has done to us.
The Full Works Concert
Classic FM, 8pm
The station once again puts its programming in the hands of a loyal listener, presumably giving Classic FM staffers a chance to put their feet up. Phelim McIntyre from Liphook, Hampshire, compiles his ideal concert. Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks is followed by George Butterworth’s The Banks of the Green Willow. The John Wilson Orchestra play Richard Rodgers’s Carousel Waltz and proceedings close with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma as soloist in John Williams’s Seven Years in Tibet.