Viewing guide, by David Chater
Sound of Musicals with Neil Brand
BBC Four, 9pm
Even if someone deliberately set out to make a tedious programme about the evolution of musicals from West Side Story to A Chorus Line, it would be almost impossible. This was a golden age, when the monumental silliness of Salad Days and The Boyfriend was blown out of the water by the demanding genius of Stephen Sondheim. In the second part of his series, Neil Brand has the joyous task of not only describing how musicals grew up, but of deconstructing some of the greatest showstopping numbers. He begins with the Big Daddy of them all, West Side Story, which tackled racism and gang warfare in an exhilarating mix of the symphonic and the streetwise. Even now, watching a 30-second clip of the “Cool” dance is enough to make you forget to breathe. Robert Lindsay gives a magnificent performance of Fagin Reviewing the Situation, in which he paints every word from Lionel Bart’s masterpiece in vibrant oils, and the song Tradition, which underpinned Fiddler on the Roof and made a story of Jewish struggle resonate with every culture in the world that was based on a family unit with a sense of tradition. It was in 1969, though, with Company, that Sondheim — bored of telling stories chronologically — introduced the concept musical, dense with angular sounds, off-kilter tempos and subverted melodies, which emphasised style and theme over plot. And finally, there was the most successful concept musical of them all — A Chorus Line — which turned a group-therapy session about dancers’ anxieties into the longest-running show on Broadway.
Room 101
BBC One, 8.30pm
Frank Skinner’s guests tonight are David Mitchell, Anita Rani and Judy Murray — Andy’s mum. Mitchell doesn’t like people who get annoyed when you don’t remember who they are, but most of all he hates sugar lumps. He really hates them. “Can you imagine,” he splutters with rabid intensity, “anything more diabolical?” Compared with that, the other guests come across as monuments of calm and sweet reasonableness. Murray does not like unnecessary motorway signs or sniffing (“I don’t want to know what’s going on up that nose”), but Rani sweeps the board with her dislike of clutter and stuff.
Tina & Bobby
ITV, 9pm
After England’s World Cup triumph of 1966, everything starts to unravel for the golden couple (Michelle Keegan and Lorne MacFadyen). The pair are besieged by the press and deluged with offers for every conceivable form of commercial sponsorship. Tina Moore’s mother — the still point in her turning world — dies suddenly from a brain tumour. Bobby’s long-running feud with the West Ham manager Ron Greenwood continues unabated; he is accused falsely of shoplifting a bracelet in a hotel jewellery store in Bogota; and his family is subject to kidnap threats. It is what Tina calls “all that crazy stuff”.
President Trump
PBS America, 9pm
You don’t need to be a wishy-washy liberal to be appalled by what this documentary says about Donald Trump and the background that made him the person he is today. He grew up in an affluent household where the world was divided into winners and losers. “If you had to pick three stereotypes that are probably tap-dancing in Donald’s mind and imagination,” says the author of TrumpNation Timothy O’Brien, “they are Clint Eastwood, James Bond and Hugh Hefner.” The man who dreads humiliation and shame was ridiculed by President Obama at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011 — and thereafter it got personal.
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Hello Quo
BBC Four, 10pm
Showing as a tribute to Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt, who died in December, Alan G Parker’s 2012 documentary looks back at the rock band’s five decades in the business, during which they notched 22 UK Top Ten hits and sold more than 120 million albums. “Every frigging news reel in the world carried us,” grumbles founder member Francis Rossi, in what is an often candid film. Rossi, along with Parfitt and the bassist Alan Lancaster, tell the tale of how they formed and grew, while fellow rock stalwarts, such as Brian May and Paul Weller, add their two-penneth. Joe Clay
Catch-up TV, by David Chater
Undercover
UKTV Play, to January 31
Sometimes silly — very, very silly — can be good. In this 2015 comedy series, Daniel Rigby plays an undercover police officer who is hopeless as a policeman and even more inept at pretending to be a criminal. His job is to infiltrate a vicious Armenian crime family who are as likely to kill one another over a 12-piece dinner set (with matching wine glasses) as they are over a consignment of drugs or diamonds. Everyone is a panto character taking part in a broad farce, but the comic acting is accomplished — particularly Ryan Sampson as an outstanding idiot among a constellation of buffoons — and the whole thing is driven along by a contagious sense of fun. There’s a lot to be said for good-humoured idiocy in small doses.
Film choice, by Wendy Ide
Lincoln (12, 2012)
Film4, 9pm
Steven Spielberg’s chunk of American history is weighty, serious-minded and immensely satisfying. Beginning with the casting of Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of President Lincoln, Spielberg has left nothing to chance. The film gives an account of a crucial piece of legislation — the 13th amendment — and the political gamesmanship and behind-the-scenes manoeuvring that led to it being passed by the House of Representatives. Day-Lewis is extraordinary, conveying the intellectual fluency, diplomacy and charisma of the man, but underscoring it with an engagingly bumbling humour. (150min)
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Alice Through the Looking Glass (PG, 2016)
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm
This sequel was always going to be something of a stretch. The best material from the Lewis Carroll novel on which it is based was excavated, in 2010, by Tim Burton. In the original, Alice ventured into Wonderland and fought the Jabberwock. In this movie Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland, meets up with her old friend the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and discovers that he’s feeling depressed because he has remembered how his father never approved of his design skills. So she decides to steal a time-machine that will allow her to go back to the Mad Hatter’s childhood. On the positive side, Wasikowska is as dependable as ever and Helena Bonham Carter’s profoundly expressive face, blown up, mega-size, for the Red Queen, remains hugely compelling. (113min) Kevin Maher
End of Watch (15, 2012)
Film4, 11.50pm
David Ayer, the writer-director of Suicide Squad, created this abrasive and brilliant LA cop drama, which hinges on two exceptional performances. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña play Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, LAPD partners on one of the toughest beats in the US and brothers tied by the badge, the banter and the blood spilt. They share the same no-holds barred approach to law enforcement. Their gung-ho approach brings them into the cross hairs of a Mexican drug cartel that is expanding its operations. Ayer’s approach is formally daring: he uses found footage that adds to the bristling tension and aggression of the action. (109min)
Radio choice, by Catherine Nixey
The Full Works Concert
Classic FM, 8pm
Even musically, Britain isn’t that appealing as a holiday destination. This week Classic FM has been travelling the globe in search of music from the places that Britons like to go on holiday. So on Tuesday there was Bizet, Ravel and France; yesterday there was Italy and Vivaldi . . . And today we come to Blighty — Ralph Vaughan Williams and what one critic infamously called “cow-pat music”. Which although crushing does conjure up something of the spirit of the great British holiday. Still, Classic FM is the sort of station to make the most of things and so also on the programme there is Arthur Sullivan (Pirates of Penzance), Benjamin Britten’s 4 Sea Interludes and Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs. The excellent Catherine Bott presents.
Any Questions?
Radio 4, 8pm
John F Kennedy’s was one of the finest. George Washington’s was one of the shortest. What will Donald Trump’s inauguration address hold? It seems unlikely that it will have anything as resonant as Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you . . .” Still, Trump is a man who has been nothing if not full of surprises, so he may yet amaze us with a blast of brilliant oratory. Most of Radio 4’s programmes will have been too early to catch much of the excitement of the inauguration of the 45th president, so tune in to this instead for some preliminary picking over the bones of the day.