Following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, this weekend’s programmes are subject to changes. Channel 4 has announced Prince Philip documentaries for both Saturday and Sunday evenings (see below). BBC1 and BBC2’s schedules are also expected to be subject to last-minute alterations.
Saturday’s TV and radio
Viewing guide, by Ben Dowell
Tupac Shakur: A Life in Ten Pictures
BBC2, 10pm
Last week our subject was Freddie Mercury. Now it’s the turn of a rather different musical legend to get the pictorial biopic treatment: the murdered gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur. The simple but hugely effective format remains the same, though, and once again the most interesting insights are gleaned from more intimate and private snaps, starting with what is probably the earliest photo of him as a baby being fed milk from a bottle by his mother, the one-time Black Panther activist Afeni Shakur. Other early pictures show her son cheerily entertaining his friends outside his Bronx home and others demonstrating his quiet determination as a performing arts school student in Baltimore. Obviously things get tastier with his move west to California, and one photo of the younger Tupac shows him bearing bruises from an alleged altercation with Oakland police after he was stopped for jaywalking, an incident that we are told fired his political radicalism. Standing out from the guns, girls and grim glamour is an unusually reflective shot of Tupac smoking that was taken by the photographer Chi Modu. However, the rapper’s pictorial history cannot escape the dangerous milieu that he inhabited and creatively engaged with, and this largely celebratory programme cannot avoid the facts of his lengthy jail sentence in 1994 for raping a 19-year-old woman in a hotel room. Shakur was bailed by his record company, signed a new recording deal and then his life abruptly ended. The final picture of him was snapped by a motorist at a busy road junction in Las Vegas, minutes before he was killed in a drive-by shooting, an unsolved crime that remains the subject of intense speculation to this day.
The Grand National Live
ITV, from 2pm
There won’t be much in the way of crowds at Aintree this year but at least there will be real horses. After the rather sorry spectacle of last year’s Covid-enforced computer-simulated virtual race — where the winner was Potters Corner, in case you have forgotten — the gee-gees proper will gallop off at 5.15pm in the world’s most famous steeplechase. Ed Chamberlin and Francesca Cumani host the build-up with expert contributions from pundits Tony McCoy, Mick Fitzgerald and Ruby Walsh with reporting from around the course from Rishi Persad, Oli Bell, Alice Plunkett and others.
His Royal Highness: The Duke of Edinburgh - Royal Obit
Channel 4, 7pm
Channel 4 has replaced its programming this evening with this documentary and the one following. In this film, Matt Frei meets those who knew Prince Philip.
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The Royal House of Windsor
Channel 4, 9pm
A repeat of episode three of the series, exploring how Prince Philip was frustrated by the demands of royal obligations and how they curtailed his naval career. Instead, however, he channelled his energy into becoming the Windsors’ most radical moderniser.
Bafta Film Awards Opening Night
BBC2, 8pm
Tonight’s curtain-raiser to what is being hailed as the most diverse Bafta awards shortlist to date is a shindig at the Royal Albert Hall, hosted by Clara Amfo, in which a panel of guests “discuss and celebrate the fascinating art of film-making this year”. There will still be nine Bafta masks handed out before tomorrow’s main ceremony, though, including the outstanding British contribution to cinema award. This goes to Noel Clarke, the writer, actor and director of the films Kidulthood, Adulthood and Brotherhood. Previous winners of the award include Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman, Mike Leigh, John Hurt and Kenneth Branagh.
Persona
Sky Documentaries/Now, 9pm
Personality tests are a big deal in the US and a £2 billion industry. They are also, according to this documentary, “ableist, racist, sexist and classist”. This film (subtitled The Dark Truth Behind Personality Tests) traces their origins to one of the most influential, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which originated more than 100 years ago and categorises people into 16 distinct types. This, it is argued, has shaped many damaging algorithmic employment judgments that have led to some people being labelled non-preferential workers or (as one contributor puts it) effectively condemned to walk around with an ‘L’ for Loser stuck to their forehead.
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
Tina
Sky/Now
This profile of Tina Turner is directed by Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin, whose 2011 sports film, Undefeated, about the struggles of a high-school American football team, won the Oscar for best documentary feature. There is an element of the sports doc to this film, with its billing as “the ultimate story of survival” and the narrative arc of Turner rebuilding her career from scratch after her traumatic marriage to Ike Turner. Known as the “Queen of Rock’n’Roll”, Turner has had a career spanning seven decades, including 16 years in a duo with Ike. Lindsay and Martin’s film follows the talking-heads format, with contributors including Oprah Winfrey and Angela Bassett, who portrayed Turner in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It, while Turner candidly discusses her troubled early life and many triumphs.
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Film choice, by Ed Potton
Inception (12, 2010)
ITV, 10.45pm
The British director Christopher Nolan’s high-concept science-fiction thriller is a jaw-dropping spectacle and yet in some ways it feels like a wasted opportunity. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a man who steals ideas by entering the minds of people while they sleep. Nolan is exploring dreams — the possibilities are endless. Which is why it’s a little disappointing that so much of the film feels like a generic CGI action movie, albeit a high-class one. Still, it’s a fascinating film and you have to admire the scale of Nolan’s vision. As usual, Nolan compiles a superb ensemble cast, which includes Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Pete Postlethwaite. (148min) Wendy Ide
Z for Zachariah (12, 2015)
BBC1, 11.50pm
At a certain stage in a sex-symbol actress’s career she will go frumpy in pursuit of serious acclaim (think Charlize Theron in Monster), and here it’s the turn of Margot Robbie, playing the distinctly unglamorous survivor of a nuclear holocaust. The only problem is that hardly anyone saw the film on its cinema release (total gross in the US was about £100,000). How infuriating to go full dowdy and for nobody to see it. She believes herself to be the last survivor of the human race, but then her simple life is disrupted by the appearance of two further survivors. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine also star in a solid sci-fi drama based on Robert C O’Brien’s novel. The film’s “love triangle” is a significant deviation because in the novel there are only two protagonists. (94min)
Radio choice, by Debra Craine
Duran Duran at 40
Radio 2, 9pm
Claudia Winkleman first encountered Duran Duran when the Birmingham band performed their debut single Planet Earth on Top of the Pops in 1981, and ever since she has been a big fan. In this two-part special (the second part is on April 17) she looks back at the past four decades of their career — more than 100 million records, two Brit awards, two Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Winkleman chats to Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor to uncover the stories behind their hits.
Sunday’s TV and radio
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Viewing guide, by Joe Clay
The British Academy Film Awards
BBC1, 7pm
After last night’s warm-up event, tonight it is the main ceremony, hosted by Dermot O’Leary and Edith Bowman at the Royal Albert Hall in London. They are joined by a small group of presenters in person, with others tuning in from Los Angeles. All nominees will join virtually, alongside the entirely virtual audience. This year the Bafta voters have delivered their organisation’s most diverse shortlist and tonight we will find out if those nominations will be turned into actual awards. Pippa Harris, the deputy chairwoman of Bafta, said that changes the academy had made to the voting process had “helped level the playing field and simply allowed the work to be judged on merit”. According to Kevin Maher, The Times’s chief film critic, this year’s list represents a “breakneck volte-face from last year’s male-dominated whitewash to this year’s female-friendly diversity party”. Four of the six nominees in each of the acting categories are from ethnic minority backgrounds, while four of the nominated directors are women. Nomadland, a road movie starring Frances McDormand as a transient worker, and Rocks, a British coming-of-age film about inner-city schoolgirls, received the most nominations, with seven each. Sarah Gavron, the British director of Rocks, is up against Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao, Shannon Murphy and Jasmila Zbanic in the best director category along with two men, Thomas Vinterberg and Lee Isaac Chung. In the best film category The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins, is up against The Mauritanian, Nomadland, Promising Young Woman (directed by Emerald Fennell, who plays Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown) and the Netflix original The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Climate Change: Ade on the Frontline
BBC2, 8pm
In a new three-part series Ade Adepitan visits some of the countries most affected by climate change. He starts in the Solomon Islands, where entire islands are vanishing because of rising sea levels. On the Great Barrier Reef in Australia he finds out about the “feminisation” of green turtles, while on the mainland he faces the terror of a raging bushfire. However, it’s not just an exercise in doom-mongering. Adepitan finds hope when he visits Tasmania, a region that is entirely powered by renewable energy. He also reveals the little things that we can do to “end this cycle of self harm”.
Midsomer Murders
ITV, 8pm
The Stitcher Society is a rehab centre for people recovering from heart bypass surgery, with activities including kendo, the Japanese martial art involving bamboo shinai sticks. However, when a local outcast, who was cleared of murder years previously, is welcomed into the club by its owner, Reuben Tooms (Silas Carson), it doesn’t go down well. The next morning Reuben is found dead on the village green with a sharpened shinai stick jammed into his stomach. It’s up to DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) to work out what is going on, with Keith Allen and John Thomson joining in the murderous fun.
Line of Duty
BBC1, 9pm
Before this series of Jed Mercurio’s crime thriller started Martin Compston, who plays Steve Arnott, promised on Twitter a bombshell of a plot twist in episode four. He wasn’t lying. It’s taken a while to get there, but tonight we have lift off with an episode that delivers a succession of game changing scenes and action-packed set pieces worthy of the brand. The twists keep coming right until the credits roll, after which social media will surely be aflame with discussion, speculation and theories. And the fact we have to wait a week to find out what happens next makes it even more delicious.
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The Real Prince Philip: A Royal Officer
Channel 4, 9pm
This film emphasises the role the Duke’s military experiences played in his later achievements, suggesting that his admirable ethos of ‘service’ and ‘duty’ was forged during his naval career. It charts the journey of a man who triumphed in a diversity of roles, whether as head boy of Gordonstoun, naval cadet, commander of World War II frigates, royal fiancée, consort to the Queen, patron of charities, or founder of one of the most recognisable youth organisations in the world. The film draws upon a rare interview with the Duke on his Second World War experiences.
Catch-up TV, by Ben Dowell
Unforgotten
ITV Hub
The fourth and probably the best series of Chris Lang’s classy police procedural begins with a frustrated DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) desperate to quit policing and facing the added pressures of the worsening condition of her dementia-stricken dad. But to get her payoff she has been asked to stay on for three more months, which is just enough time to team up with her appropriately named sidekick DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) for one more challenge. As ever, there are multiple suspects in this cold case, with our corpse belonging to a dodgy bloke called Matthew Walsh, who has been found (headless) in a freezer. Walsh also had a paper Marathon chocolate wrapper in his pocket, suggesting that his demise preceded the other crime of renaming the bar Snickers. Ben Dowell
Film choice, by Kevin Maher
Queen of Katwe (PG, 2016)
BBC1, 2.35pm
Before The Queen’s Gambit there was Queen of Katwe. Based on a true story, it follows a chess prodigy, Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), who appears in the unlikely surroundings of the slum of Katwe in Uganda and beats everyone at the game. Phiona can’t read but she can checkmate. This Disney drama avoids patronising sentimentality with an uplifting and punchy look at the conflicts faced by 14-year-old Phiona, whose ambition is to become a grandmaster in Moscow. She is nurtured by her teacher Robert Katende (a gentle David Oyelowo). Lupita Nyong’o plays Phiona’s mother, a pillar of strength, and the costumes are a swirl of colour among the slums. Mira Nair directs and, despite its obvious trajectory, the film is full of small truths and surprises. (117min) Kate Muir
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My Cousin Rachel (12, 2017)
Channel 4, 10.55pm
Roger Michell’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel is a gothic thriller with dreamy Hitchcockian undertones and regular emotional wallops. Sam Claflin plays the 19th-century orphan turned Cornish estate owner Philip. He loves Cornwall and nature, and is uninspired by education and city life. He has no interest in women and loves only his benefactor and ostensibly adoptive father, Ambrose Ashley (an off-screen presence in faraway Italy). When Philip learns that Ambrose has died suddenly, and possibly at the hands of Ambrose’s devious new half-Italian, half-Cornish wife, Rachel (Rachel Weisz), and that this same wife is making her way from Italy to Cornwall, the stage is set for a monumental smack-down between the prissy self-righteous heir and the grieving yet possibly homicidal widow. It doesn’t disappoint. (105min)
Radio choice, by Debra Craine
The Magic Mountain
Radio 4, 3pm
Thomas Mann’s epic 1924 novel The Magic Mountain is considered one of the masterpieces of German literature. A dark, satiric comedy, it’s set in a tuberculosis sanatorium in the snowbound Swiss Alps in the days before the Great War. A young engineer, Hugh Casthorpe, goes to visit his sick cousin there but finds that he cannot leave. Is it because he has a respiratory disease and needs the cure, or because he has fallen in love with another patient, a beautiful married woman? Dramatised by Robin Brooks, this three-part adaptation stars Luke Thallon as Casthorpe.