For full TV listings for the week, see our comprehensive TV guide
Viewing guide, by Joe Clay
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Netflix
Avatar: The Last Airbender started life as an influential animated series on Nickelodeon. It ran for three series from 2005 to 2008, attracting millions of viewers and spawning numerous spin-offs, including comics, graphic novels, video games and a critically mauled 2010 movie adaptation from M Night Shyamalan. It’s best to put that abomination to one side when approaching this live-action series, which has had millions of dollars lavished on its eight episodes. However, alarm bells started ringing when the original creators of the series, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, quit the production citing “creative differences”. This left Albert Kim as the showrunner and he has talked up the series, calling it “a remix” of the original, not “a cover”, that has been designed to appeal to Game of Thrones fans. A bit of background — Avatar is set in a war-torn Asian and Arctic-inspired world in which some people can telekinetically manipulate one of the four elements — water, earth, fire or air — through a practice known as “bending”, inspired by Chinese martial arts. The only individual who can bend all four elements, the “Avatar”, is responsible for maintaining harmony among the world’s four nations, while also serving as the link between the physical world and the spirit world. The present “Avatar” is a 12-year-old boy, Aang (played by Gordon Cormier), who is tasked with the responsibility of ending the ambitions of the militaristic Fire Nation, led by the Darth Vaderesque Fire Lord Ozai (Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim), to conquer the world. The special effects and world-building are mightily impressive, with the writers preserving the cartoon’s thoughtful mythology and endearingly goofy tone, amid an avalanche of impressive CGI and portentous plotting.
The Family Stallone
Paramount+
Another peek behind the curtain of life with Sylvester Stallone and his family — his wife, Jennifer Flavin Stallone, and their alliterative daughters, Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet. The first series was notable for completely whitewashing over Stallone’s marriage problems (Jennifer filed for divorce at one point, but the pair reconciled), so the tag of “reality show” is pushing it a bit. It’s more a vehicle for Sly to help make his offspring famous, and in the first episode Scarlet’s new boyfriend comes to town and he struggles to win Dad’s approval, while in episode two Sly goes under the knife to fix a long-standing back problem.
Murdered at Home: Tonight
ITV1, 8.30pm
In the UK between two and three women are murdered by a partner or former partner every week, while annually about 1.4 million women are victims of domestic abuse. The government is considering new legislation to tackle violence against women, with campaigners saying sentences are too lenient for men who murder women at home. At present, if a killer uses a weapon found in the home the tariff is 15 years, while a woman murdered in a park by a weapon brought from elsewhere would get 25 years. With a public consultation on domestic homicide sentencing ending on March 4, the reporter Julie Etchingham asks whose side is the law on.
Gymnastics: A Culture of Abuse?
ITV1, 9pm
In June 2022 the Whyte Review was published, an independent investigation that found numerous cases of mistreatment in UK gymnastics. In response the sport’s governing body, British Gymnastics, introduced a 40-point action plan that “seeks to put gymnasts and their welfare at the heart of the sport”. It says it is making progress and gymnastics is changing, but for many it’s a case of too little too late. This troubling documentary follows the fight for justice by former British gymnasts who say they were physically, emotionally or sexually abused as children by their coaches.
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Norman Jewison: Hollywood Veteran
BBC4, 9.40pm
The Hollywood director, who died last month, is captured in conversation with the BBC film journalist Tom Brook in an edition of HardTalk from 2005. As well as his glittering career (his films have won 12 Oscars), Jewison talks to Brook about the changes he’s seen in Hollywood during his long career and why he called his autobiography This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me. The interview is sandwiched between two of Jewison’s most famous films — 1973’s Jesus Christ Superstar (8pm) and 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof (10.05pm, see Film choice).
Catch-up TV, by Ben Dowell
Tell Them You Love Me
Sky/Now
When Derrick Johnson was a baby he was listless and in time he was diagnosed as being nonverbal with cerebral palsy. Life was tough for his mother, Daisy, especially after Derrick’s father walked out on her. Then Anna Stubblefield, a university philosophy professor and disability-rights campaigner, seemed to turn on a light in Derrick’s ability to communicate. Their relationship developed, then became sexual, leading to a trial that provides this documentary with some compelling courtroom scenes and a moral debate that is still raging. The director Nick August-Perna and the executive producer Louis Theroux’s troubling, engrossing and profoundly sad film is skilfully, sometimes painfully, even-handed. If this film has a flaw it is the lack of footage of Derrick and Stubblefield together, which means that we rely a lot on second-hand testimony, reconstructions and court transcripts.
Film choice, by Kevin Maher
The Kid Detective (15, 2020)
Film4, 9pm
The debut feature of the writer-director Evan Morgan is a meticulously constructed slow-burn thriller that’s defined by some bold narrative twists and an alarming lurch towards the darkness. It follows the misfortunes of a semi-alcoholic thirtysomething deadbeat called Abe (Adam Brody), who lives in the small American town of Willowbrook and was once, as the title suggests, a celebrated preteen private eye. Abe is given one last shot at redemption when he is unexpectedly “hired” (no money is involved) by a distraught teenager, Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), to find the person who recently murdered her boyfriend. The case that unfolds is classic noir territory. (97min)
Fiddler on the Roof (U, 1971)
BBC4, 10.05pm
The evergreen musical classic, showing in tribute to the director Norman Jewison, who died in January, stars Topol as the Jewish milkman seeking to marry off his troublesome daughters in 19th-century Russia. Topol, Israel’s best-known actor, played Tevye the singing milkman on stage and screen, delivering an unforgettable and barnstorming (literally — see the If I Were a Rich Man number) performance in the film. But he missed out on the best actor Academy Award to Gene Hackman (The French Connection), with John Williams picking up one of the three Oscars awarded to the film for his score. Jewison was brought in to direct the film because the studio believed he was Jewish. His first words to the executives upon meeting them were: “You know I’m not Jewish, right?” (181min) Joe Clay
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
In Our Time
Radio 4, 9am
Today’s subject is the 1527 sack of Rome, a pivotal moment in history with repercussions for all of Europe, including religious and political life in this one. The capture of the city by the mutinous troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V led to a power shift away from the Pope. Ultimately this meant that Henry VIII could not have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. And we know where that all led. Melvyn Bragg’s panel are the academics Catherine Fletcher, Stephen Bowd and Jessica Goethals.
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Looking for something else to watch? Try our critics’ round-up of the latest best shows to stream in the UK.
Or consult our platform-specific guides to the best Netflix TV shows, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows, the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer plus the best shows to watch on Sky and Now.
Or how about discovering our critics’ favourite hidden gem TV shows to stream?