For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by Ben Dowell
Too Close
ITV, 9pm
This dark and rewarding three-part drama begins with a heart-pumping moment of suicidal recklessness as our central character, Connie (Denise Gough), drives her car into the sea with two children in the back seat. She claims to have forgotten everything but her actions result in her facing serious criminal charges and urgent psychological assessment. This is overseen by Emma Robertson (Emily Watson), whose husband doesn’t want her to take on a case that has become a tabloid cause célèbre and threatens him in ways he probably does not foresee. During their intense sessions together Connie picks at the threads of Emma’s life with such skill and precision that you sometimes wonder who is the shrink and who the patient. Based on the novel by Natalie Daniels (the pen name of Clara Salaman), this is about as far from escapist viewing as you could imagine. There’s no doubting this drama’s skill at unlocking and interrogating middle-class certainties, which (except for a rather overblown dinner party scene) are examined with unsparing psychological precision. The performances are first-rate too, and Watson is on particularly dazzling form. It’s well structured, with the flashbacks allowing us to reflect on Connie’s former life as an attractive middle-class London mother whose unravelling seems to coincide with the moment she meets her new neighbour, Ness (Thalissa Teixeira). Do they become lovers? How has Connie’s control been lost so dramatically? Whatever the answer, something terribly wrong has taken place and an excellent twist at the end of episode one sets the hares racing for the next two instalments on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Jamie: Keep Cooking Family Favourites
Channel 4, 8.30pm
Jamie Oliver went on Instagram recently to reveal how cooking has helped his family to get through the pandemic. “Cooking is a great way to take some time out, it’s therapeutic,” he revealed. You can try family therapy the Oliver way tonight as he continues to share some of his favourite recipes that use simple ingredients but pack a serious punch in the flavour department. First up is a dish his kids adore — a baked sausage casserole with potato dumplings. He also knocks up a warm aubergine salad. Joe Clay
Super Hummingbirds
PBS America, 8.35pm
“Hummingbirds seem to spring from the imagination,” the slightly overdone American-accented narration trills to this natural history documentary, but don’t let that put you off. They really are the beautiful and magical creatures that this lovely film says they are, although of course such is the speed with which they flit around the place, a lot of our analysis of their movements requires some super-slow-motion filming. The excellent camerawork also captures what happens inside a flower when a hummingbird drinks, as well as when it mates, lays eggs and even fights.
Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World
BBC1, 9pm
“People say a lot of things about me,” Greta Thunberg says at the start of this mesmerising three-part look at a year of her environmental campaigning. “People call me a brat, an idiot . . . People think I am an angry teenager who screams at world leaders.” In fact, it is her quiet determination and intelligence that impress most and also explain her huge global profile since she organised a school strike against climate change in her native Sweden. We also meet her engaging father, who has to deal with those rather more localised anxieties of being her parent.
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24 Hours in Police Custody
Channel 4, 9pm
Another fantastically involving examination of police work finds Bedfordshire officers called to the scene of an attack on a man who has been left badly injured at home. The investigating officer Alicia Lawrence realises that she knows the victim because she had met him a few days before when he came into Luton police station, seemingly happy and healthy but also sparking worries about his welfare. “I knew it would come to this,” Lawrence says, words that become more haunting when the man dies of his injuries.
The Truth About Police Stop and Search
Channel 4, 10pm
The former footballer Jermaine Jenas leads this investigation into why black men are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than white men in England and Wales. Featuring footage from some black males who wore cameras to record their experiences, this programme shows in detail how some of these interactions with the police played out, as Jenas presents an emotional plea for the British public to understand the scale of the issue, as well as its social, psychological and personal consequences.
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
Brotherhood: The Inner Life of Monks
BBC iPlayer
Mount St Bernard Abbey, a monastery near Coalville in Leicestershire, was founded in 1835. It is now a community of just 25 men, more than half of them over 80. This thoughtful film takes us inside the monastery, following the monks as they go about their daily rituals and reflect on their spirituality and the sacrifices involved in a life devoted to God. The men, who are from all over the world, are preparing to open the first Trappist brewery in the UK. Its success is key to the financial future of St Bernard’s, but the beer is really a sideshow compared with these men’s expressions of devotion. And without new recruits, no amount of money will keep it going.
Film choice, by Wendy Ide
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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (12, 2003)
Film4, 9pm
An old-fashioned adventure movie in the best sense of the term, this adaptation of two novels by Patrick O’Brian is as satisfying as an epic yarn as it is as an intimate study of male friendship and courage. Russell Crowe plays Captain Jack Aubrey, a man’s man and pioneer of the high seas. Crowe’s abrasive charm works well when juxtaposed with Paul Bettany’s more bookish turn as the ship’s doctor. The backdrop is the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars; the action comes courtesy of the daring pursuit of a French frigate by Captain Aubrey’s doughty little ship, HMS Surprise. In O’Brian’s books Aubrey is a music lover who plays the violin, and Crowe learnt to play the instrument for the film, a task he described as the hardest thing he has done. (138min)
Submarine (15, 2010)
Film4, 1.55am
The directorial debut of the IT Crowd actor Richard Ayoade is a gentle pleasure that neatly sidesteps the whimsy that could so easily have sunk it. This is a film that owes an obvious debt to the arch, self-conscious style of Wes Anderson, but there is something achingly heartfelt and vulnerable about Ayoade’s storytelling that Anderson rarely achieves. Craig Roberts is engaging as 15-year-old Oliver Tate, a boy with two ambitions: the first, to rebuild his parent’s crumbling marriage; the second, to lose his virginity before his next birthday. Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor are particularly strong as Oliver’s struggling parents; Yasmin Paige takes on the role of Oliver’s charismatic but dangerous dream girl, Jordana. (97min)
Radio choice, by Debra Craine
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym
Radio 4, 9.45am
Every morning this week Hattie Morahan reads from Paula Byrne’s whirlwind new biography of Barbara Pym, a novelist described by The Times as “our great observer and chronicler of the minutiae of disappointment”. Her novels, most of which were published in the 1950s, often charted the impact of social change on the lives of British women at home and in public, but Pym fell out of favour in the 1960s and it wasn’t until the late 1970s that she began to enjoy widespread acclaim for her witty and poignant books.