For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by James Jackson
WeCrashed
Apple TV
After Inventing Anna (the Netflix series about the socialite scammer Anna Sorokin) and The Dropout (the Disney+ drama about Elizabeth Holmes) here is another real-life drama depicting hubris running amok. This one is the story of WeWork, the office space company that, until just a few years ago, promised a new vision of our working lives — flexible desk rentals in open-plan warehouses where freelancers could enjoy a free beer while sharing start-up stories at the nightly happy hour. At its height, a few years ago, the business was valued at $47 billion. Of course, as the cute title suggests, things collapsed in staggering fashion. By 2019 the business was nearly bankrupt. What went wrong? Allow a slick, often amusing mini-series to tell you over six episodes. Presiding over it all is a compellingly wired turn by Jared Leto as Andrew Neumann, the larger-than-life WeWork founder. Neumann, an Israeli-American entrepreneur and born salesman, was scrabbling around pitching non-starter business ideas until he hit on his lightbulb idea in the late 2000s. It’s a magnetic performance, which Leto’s fellow Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway has to work hard to keep up with. She plays his wife, Rebekah — a (deep breath) Buddhist yoga teacher, sometime actress, cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow and aspiring business mogul. Because this is also a love story: we see how Andrew wooed Rebekah, then how the pair hit gold, throwing lavish parties and spouting high-flown philosophies of changing the world for the better. It’s just that . . . wasn’t WeWork a tad overvalued?
Top Boy
Netflix
Much how Black Mirror enjoyed an afterlife on Netflix after originating on Channel 4, so Top Boy is bigger than ever. Rightly acclaimed, too, for being almost a British Wire in some regards. This is the second series of the east London gangland-drugs drama (the fourth if you count the C4 ones) and once again it’s not just about knives and guns — rather, it’s happy to linger in its more brooding moments, depicting families as well as street dialogue between the dealers as Dushane (Ashley Walters) looks to recruit rival Jamie (Micheal Ward) to consolidate an empire with links to Spain and Morocco. You don’t feel things will end well. It’s very smart, very classy drama.
Comic Relief 2022
BBC1, 7pm
The comedy fundraiser is back — so what high jinks can we expect this time? Celebrities rehearsing to be opera singers; Matt Lucas and David Walliams reviving their cult sketch show Rock Profiles (with bizarre takes on Adele and Lady Gaga); a Ghosts special guest-starring Kylie Minogue; Jack Whitehall’s mini-golf challenge; and perhaps most tantalisingly, French and Saunders in a Repair Shop skit. Plus Lenny Henry, David Tennant and co in the studio linking it all together. Donations in the usual ways, the simplest of which is texting the word FIVE, TEN, TWENTY, THIRTY or FORTY to 70702.
Grayson’s Art Club
Channel 4, 8pm
Grayson’s Art Club hit just the right note of feelgood communality during lockdown 1.0, two years ago. Can the show do the same now that society is back to normal? No reason why not, especially when Bill Bailey pops up at the studio of Grayson Perry and his wife Philippa to offer his hirsute comedic touch to things. As ever, the Perrys will be urging the British public to get creative and make art of their own, with tonight’s opening episode on the theme of love. Grayson will select his favourite public submissions. Moreover, we are promised that Ai Weiwei will make an appearance.
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Earth’s Great Rivers II
BBC2, 9pm
The pin-sharp camerawork in the opening montage of swooshing rivers around the world is so breathtaking it almost feels like a plasma-screen demo at your local Currys. From there things settle down into a very satisfying overview of the Zambezi, and one that’s wonderfully restful too thanks to David Oyelowo’s smooth narration. We follow this mighty river across endless plains as it fuels the migration of 30,000 wildebeest and turns villages into islands accessible only by boat. And then there are the mighty Victoria Falls.
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
Trigger Point
ITV Hub
Daniel Brierley’s thriller, “from the makers of Line of Duty and The Bodyguard”, stars Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester as Lana “Wash” Washington and Joel “Nut” Nutkins, members of the Metropolitan Police’s bomb disposal squad. On a sweltering day during a summer heatwave the pair are called out to a London housing estate to investigate a potential bomb factory in a block of flats. As you would expect from a set-up that revolves around bombs, the stakes are ludicrously high. Every situation is life and death. And when Jed Mercurio’s name is in the credits, a shocking twist is never far away. It is rather one-note at first, but Brierley had enough dramatic tricks up his sleeve to maintain momentum and a second series has been confirmed by ITV.
Film choice, by Kevin Maher
Lady Bird (15, 2017)
BBC3, 9.15pm
The writer-director Greta Gerwig mines her childhood for Lady Bird, a sweet yet substantial comedy drama with Saoirse Ronan in the “Gerwig role”. Ronan’s character, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, attends a girls’ Catholic high school in Sacramento in the Noughties, just as Gerwig did, and, like her, pines for a life on the East Coast, “where writers live in the woods”. The film, which was nominated for five Oscars, is especially good on Lady Bird’s relationship with her parents, contrasting the uncomplicated love she has for her kind, depressive father, portrayed by the playwright Tracy Letts, with the much more turbulent but deeper bond she has with her mother (Laurie Metcalf). (90min) Ed Potton
Why Him? (15, 2016)
Channel 4, 12.10am
This is a guffaw-inducing comedy from the Meet the Parents writer John Hamburg, who brazenly cannibalises his material with mostly pleasing results. The narrative template once again is “resentful father encounters potential son-in-law over the holiday period, during which madcap comedy and embarrassment ensues”. The territorial father is a print-factory boss called Ned Fleming (Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad), while the antagonist is Laird Mayhew (James Franco), a tattooed Silicon Valley multimillionaire. Laird plans to propose to Ned’s daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) on Christmas Eve, so he has only days to convince the paterfamilias that there is moral value beneath his playboy lifestyle. (111min)
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
The Museums That Make Us
Radio 4, 1.45pm
This regional take on Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects concludes the present run of ten episodes (before we resume next month) on the south coast, where the former director of the British Museum marvels at the “extravagant, exotic, erotic oriental pleasure palace” of the Brighton Pavilion. Choosing one object that best illustrates the venue’s civic purpose and the way it relates to its local audience is Hedley Swain the chief executive of the Pavilion’s trust. MacGregor’s eye for detail and clear evocation of what he is seeing remains marvellous as he considers the city’s tendency towards the “outrageous”.