Viewing guide, by David Chater
Zero Days: Nuclear Cyber Sabotage — Storyville
BBC Four, 9pm
Yet again, Storyville provides the programme of the week. Directed by Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning director of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Taxi to the Dark Side, Zero Days is a meticulously researched documentary about cyberwar that exercises a grip more ferocious than any thriller. Specifically it tells the story of Stuxnet, a cyberworm believed to have been created by the Americans and the Israelis — assisted by intelligence from GCHQ — that was designed to disrupt the Iranian nuclear programme at Natanz. Stuxnet was an immensely sophisticated, dense and bug-free piece of malware that could spread through systems even without anyone double-clicking. It would infiltrate “programmable logic controllers” (PLCs), the gizmos that operate like mini-computers and control physical equipment such as pumps, valves and motors, and — in the case of the Iranian nuclear programme — was able to control the critical speed at which the uranium enrichment centrifuges spin. Too fast and they will explode. Too slow and they will wobble and fall apart. Part of the scary genius of this malware is that the centrifuge operators are led to believe that everything is functioning normally — and the perpetrators are difficult to identify. More than six years after Stuxnet came to light in 2010, no organisation or nation state has admitted it was responsible, but authorisation for the use of a cyberweapon by the Americans has to be signed off by President Obama. The overriding point that Gibney makes — quite apart from telling a thrilling and topical story — is that the secrecy surrounding cyberweapons prevents a sensible public discussion about their use.
President Trump’s Dirty Secrets: Dispatches
Channel 4, 8pm
The man who famously tweeted that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive” is soon to become one of the most powerful men in the world. Antony Barnett travels to the US to discover more about Team Trump and its links to the fossil-fuel industry, and the threat this poses to America’s Clean Air Act and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Tonight’s Panorama (BBC One, 8.30pm) examines Trump’s ambiguous relationship with Russia in Trump: The Kremlin Candidate? And all this before he has even moved into the Oval Office.
Silent Witness
BBC One, 9pm
The body of a young woman is found floating face down in the Thames near the Royal Albert Dock. She disappeared a couple of hours after she was last seen alive. There has been no significant skin slippage — whatever that means — but there is a serious head injury to the frontal region, which could have happened before or after she entered the water. Her wrists had been bound with heavy-duty tape and her body was covered with yellowing marks caused by rat bites. And BBC One would like to wish you all a happy new year.
The Halcyon
ITV, 9pm
It’s 1940. France has fallen and bombs are falling outside the hotel. Freddie, the brave young fighter pilot, is determined to make a difference. “There’s no space for fear in the cockpit,” he says. Meanwhile, his true love, the newly promoted assistant manager Emma Garland, keeps saying the wrong things at the wrong time because she can’t stop thinking about Freddie. And then there’s the Jewish refugee sick with worry about his family, and a wicked French count who looks like a giant billiard ball and molests chambermaids. Never a dull moment. Never a convincing one.
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Britain’s Ancient Capital: Secrets of Orkney
BBC Two, 9pm
This is the final episode of a series that has challenged much of what is known about prehistory in Britain. Already it has suggested that the ancient Orcadian culture predated the pyramids and provided the inspiration for Stonehenge. Now the four presenters — Neil Oliver, Chris Packham, Andy Torbet and Dr Shini Somara — go in search of the earliest stone circle. They test the sophistication of Stone Age technology and set out to discover why this ancient society came to an abrupt end. “It boggles the mind,” says Oliver. “It beggars belief.”
Catch-up TV, by Chris Bennion
Life in Polar Bear Town with Gordon Buchanan
BBC iPlayer, to January 30
The town of Churchill in northern Canada has a population of 700. However, each autumn its numbers swell to 1,700 — but these tourists walk on four legs and don’t tend to buy souvenirs. Gordon Buchanan, left, heads to the town, which lies on the shores of Hudson Bay, to get a close look at these urban polar bears. As the bears wait for the sea ice to form so that they can begin hunting seals, the townsfolk have to bearproof the place as best they can. They’ve been successful so far — there hasn’t been a human killed by a bear in Churchill since 1983. You’ll never complain about foxes again.
Film choice, by Wendy Ide
The Ladykillers (U, 1955)
Film4, 5.25pm
Alexander Mackendrick’s peerless crime caper is one of the most entertaining of all the Ealing comedies. Alec Guinness stars as Professor Marcus, the leader of a group of amateur musicians who rehearse in a room rented from a sweet-natured elderly widow (Katie Johnson). Except the rehearsal story is a merely ruse to provide cover for a heist that the men are planning. Unfortunately, the unwitting old lady arouses the suspicion of the jumpy criminal band and they resolve to eliminate her. Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green also star in this deliciously dark comic masterpiece. (91min)
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Airplane! (PG, 1980)
Film4, 7.15pm
Don’t let anyone tell you that this marvellous disaster spoof from Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker has aged badly. Sure, one or two of the more un-PC gags plant it firmly in 1980, but the writing and performances are comic masterclasses. Robert Hays out-deadpans them all as the traumatised flying ace, Ted Striker, who must land an out-of-control Boeing 707. Julie Hagerty is his ex-girlfriend and flight attendant on the doomed plane. Each reel is packed with umpteen visual gags, while the script is so joke-heavy it could sink a battleship. Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges make hay with dialogue that today’s comedy writers can only dream of creating. (87min) Chris Bennion
The Place Beyond the Pines (15, 2012)
Film4, 1.15am
A triptych of interwoven stories, this satisfyingly complex drama is the most ambitious work to date from the American director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine). The focus of the first section is Luke (Ryan Gosling, bleached, tattooed and smouldering in leather). Luke is a free-spirited stunt motorcycle rider who makes the fateful decision to commit a crime to help to support the child he didn’t know he had. This puts him on a collision course with the second main character, cop Avery (Bradley Cooper, a revelatory performance at the time). The final section takes place 15 years later. Avery is running for office; his son and Luke’s inadvertently meet and strike up a friendship. (140min)
Radio choice, by Catherine Nixey
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Radio 4, 4.30pm
Ever wondered why, when you carry a cup of tea it seems so keen to slop out of your cup and on to the floor? Here, the physicist Helen Czerski, author of a book about the very same, explains why (it’s to do with your walking rate, apparently). Czerski is great and interesting, as is fellow guest, the engineer Danielle George. However, The Infinite Monkey Cage always manages to be infinitely annoying. With the exception of programmes such as More or Less, there seems to be an institutional unease within the BBC for science programmes. So often these programmes have the aura of a geek trying desperately hard to be cool. Why, for instance, do they feel the need to season the panel of a science show with a guest comedian? The science is fascinating. The comedians are not.
Little Women
Radio 4, 10.45am
If you last read this as a child, it may come as a shock to realise how unbearably wholesome it is. In this first episode it is Christmas, so the March family amuse themselves by taking gruel to starving neighbours, having pious thoughts and rejoicing in the present that Marmee has bought for them: a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress “to read and learn from and treasure”. Is it wrong to hope that one of them develops a crack habit? Narrator Jo provides a little edge as she longs “to be a boy and play boys’ games”. Today she’d have been packed off to the gender reassignment clinic.