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Frontline Doctors: Winter Migrant Crisis
BBC One, 9pm
In this immensely powerful programme, the twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken find out what conditions are like for the thousands of refugees trying to find safe haven in Europe during the coldest time of the year. The brothers are doctors rather than politicians, and they do not pretend to have any answers. What they do have, apart from their medical training, is compassion — and in circumstances as miserable as this, compassion goes a long way. Their first stop is Lesbos, where about 3,000 refugees arrive every day. The dinghies are weighed down in the water, the outboard motors are unreliable and their lifejackets are useless. Many refugees suffer from hypothermia, frostbite, respiratory infections and severe psychological trauma, but their difficulties have only just begun. Having been ferried to Athens — where families disembark at Piraeus without one piece of luggage between them — they are taken by bus to the border with Macedonia where, if they are lucky, they begin the tortuous journey across Europe. Some of the least fortunate end up in The Jungle in Calais or, worse still, the spillover tent city near Dunkirk, where there are 300 children under 10 living in unimaginable squalor. A baby with measles lies in a tent filled with sodden bedding, but the mother is too frightened to leave her other children and take him to hospital. What singles out this crisis from so many other humanitarian catastrophes is that most of the help comes from volunteers rather than government bodies or NGOs. “If this was my family in this situation,” says Chris, “I would not be able to cope.”
This Farming Life
BBC Two, 7pm
Six million viewers watch Countryfile and now on Fridays, Jane Treays’s sympathetic series (Land of Hope and Glory, BBC Two, 9pm) gives countryfolk a powerful platform. This Farming Life is another series that sets out to show the everyday reality of a way of life that is often romanticised or misunderstood. It follows five families working the land in Scotland, ranging from a former barrister turned crofter in the Western Isles to a family running a profitable 4,000-acre farm in the Highlands. Theirs is a life of hard graft, fresh air, unreliable weather and immeasurable beauty.
The Return of Flying Scotsman
BBC Four, 8.30pm
Some of the aerial shots here of the newly restored Flying Scotsman as it powers along countryside lines and viaducts are mesmerising. Since it was built in 1923, this locomotive has been the darling of the UK’s railways, as known for its well-stocked cocktail bar and cinema on board as it has for being the first train to break the 100mph barrier. With the train back on the tracks after ten years and a £4 million revamp, this documentary looks back at the history and career of a truly magnificent machine.
The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story
BBC Two, 9pm
Despite its nods to Hollywood, the series gives a fascinating insight into the workings of the American criminal justice system as it applies to the rich and famous — from the selection of attorneys to the strategy they adopt, the image they present, the juries they select and the courtroom tactics they employ. “When we face the prelim judge,” says defence attorney Robert Shapiro (John Travolta), “we want to come out swinging. We concede to nothing. If Marcia Clark wants to go to the bathroom, we object. If they say the sky is blue — hearsay. Nothing will be admitted without challenge.”
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Davina McCall: Life at the Extreme
ITV, 9pm
Davina McCall travels to the middle of the Atlantic to see how mammals can survive in the deep. Or more to the point, how she can survive in the deep. First she goes freediving. “Let your mind go with the fish,” the instructor tells her, “and everything will be fine.” Er, really? Next she goes 1,000m down to the ocean floor in a submersible, and for that she had hypnotherapy beforehand. Finally, she goes swimming with a sperm whale, but by now she is beyond fear. If its tail had flipped she says, “there was nothing I could do”.
Vinyl
Sky Atlantic, 9pm
Vinyl — which has been renewed by HBO for a second series — is still the most stylish, vicious and electrifying series on television. The sale of the record company has fallen apart; the troops are in revolt; the boss’s coke habit is producing one long nose bleed; his wife is consulting a divorce lawyer; and the police are closing in. A set up that began badly and rapidly got worse is now desperate, while a therapist encourages the warring couple to hit their sofa with a tennis racket. Like The Sopranos,Vinyl uses a stylised realism — recognisable, exaggerated and bleakly comic.
Catch-up TV
First Contact: Lost Tribes of the Amazon
All4, until March 24
Last June, four men emerged from deep in the Amazon rainforest on the Brazilian border with Peru to be greeted by a group of anthropologists who could barely understand a word they said. They were among the last people on the planet to have never had contact with the outside world. Angus Macqueen’s film reports on why they suddenly appeared and what became of them, and describes the conflict between the lost tribes — driven out by loggers and drug traffickers — and local villagers. “There’s no point in us wanting them to stay the same,” says the anthropologist José Carlos Meirelles. “Of course they’ll discover the world and change. Is it dangerous? Yes. Will it cause trouble? Yes.” David Chater
Films of the day
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The Long Memory (PG, 1952, b/w)
Film4, 11am
A measured British thriller about crime and punishment, The Long Memory stars John Mills as an embittered former convict fresh from serving 12 years for a murder he did not commit. While seeking revenge against the femme fatale who put him behind bars, an encounter with a postwar refugee (Eva Bergh) throws him off course. Can this woman persuade him to give up his dream of revenge and start a new life with her? Or to put it more succinctly, “To kiss or to kill?” as the poster’s tagline had it. All in all, an evocative example of British film noir. (96min) Stephen Dalton
A Good Day to Die Hard (12, 2013)
Film4, 9pm
This is the fifth in the series of films featuring John McClane (Bruce Willis), the no-nonsense New York cop with a habit of finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. This episode sees McClane somewhat out of his depth in Moscow, where his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney), is in deep trouble with the authorities. However, the explosive action that follows him around suggests that Jack is not only a chip off the old block, he’s also not all he seems. Father and son join forces in a ludicrously convoluted plot, fending off double-crossing Russians with their fists and using helicopters as deadly weapons. It is probably the least coherent of the Die Hard films, but anyone with an appetite for over-the-top action will be well-nourished. (98min) Wendy Ide
The Hunt for Red October (PG, 1990)
Syfy, 9pm
The first Die Hard film was directed by John McTiernan and he followed that with this adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel — and missed out on the opportunity to direct Die Hard 2 because of it. Sean Connery, complete with Scottish accent, plays the captain of a high-tech Russian submarine, the Red October, which veers into American waters. But is he hoping to defect? Or to start a new world war? The CIA believes the latter and the Russians give them no cause to doubt it. Only agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) believes that the captain has something other than global annihilation on his mind. To prove it, he must infiltrate the Russian submarine, in this tense sub-aqua thriller. Film fact: Connery’s hairpiece was rumoured to cost $20,000. (129min) WI
Radio choice by John Bungey
Loretta Lynn
Radio 2, 10pm
The DJ “Whispering” Bob Harris has had a colourful career. He has survived drunken interviews with dissolute 1970s rock stars, cancer scares, getting bopped by a Sex Pistol, being cool, being uncool . . . Now here he is, aged 69, sounding completely delighted to be at Hurricane Mills Ranch, Tennessee, the home of another great survivor, the country-singer Loretta Lynn. The daughter, famously of a coal-miner, married at 13, and there is much to talk about from a 65-year career. Lynn embodies the tradition of strong independent women in country music, not least when commenting on social issues. Her 1975 hit The Pill was credited with changing attitudes far more than government contraceptive advice with lines such as: “This old maternity dress I’ve got is goin’ in the garbage/ The clothes I’m wearin’ from now on won’t take up so much yardage.”
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Seamus Heaney’s Aeneid Book VI
Radio 4, 9.45am
Ian McKellen lends his most robust tones to Seamus Heaney’s final work. In the last months of his life the poet was working on a translation of Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father. The story, which is broadcast all this week, captivated Heaney from his schooldays. He began translating passages in the 1980s and was finalising the work right up until the summer of his death in 2013.