For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by Joe Clay
Joanna Lumley’s Great Cities of the World
ITV, 9pm
Floating high over gay Paris in a hot-air balloon is ITV’s traveller du jour, the incroyable Joanna Lumley, for the start of a new series in which she visits three of the world’s most popular cities, starting with the French capital. For Lummers, “it is the buzz and the energy of the people that make a place”, so she is going in search of just that, learning about history and cultural traditions along the way. “Gosh, this city just tears your heart,” she gushes from her lofty vantage point, cracking open a bottle of Bolly, Patsy-style. As a young model in the 1960s Lumley found “the Parisian spirit of nonchalance and confidence intoxicating”, and she takes lessons in how to be Parisian from the French comedian Olivier Giraud. Turns out it’s all about being rude, wearing black and pouting. After a fun start she gets serious, paying tribute to the writer Victor Hugo at Notre Dame, the most symbolic monument of the capital, where she is invited by the architect Philippe Villeneuve to observe the remarkable transformation it has undergone since the devastating fire of 2019. She also finds herself in the middle of a protest, where she meets a civil servant in marigolds marching for women’s rights. In search of glamour she heads to Didier Ludot’s infamous designer boutique to pick up a Chanel jacket that she wears to meet the Guinness family heiress Daphne Guinness. Keeping it street, Lumley hangs out with a gang of breakdancers and concludes her trip with a peek backstage at the Moulin Rouge, synonymous with “Paris’s reputation for the pursuit of pleasure, and a little bit of naughtiness”. Oh là là.
Perfect House, Secret Location
Channel 4, 8pm
Steve Jones is the host of this new series in which couples are helped to find their perfect house, with the twist being that they have no idea where that will be. The series’ motto is that “where we live is less important than how we live” (provided that you can WFH), and the first to embark on a mystery tour around the UK are Steffi and Jimmy McGeoghan, who want a house with sufficient space for their three young children and Steffi’s mum, Siby. They are shown four properties, but when they find out where they are will they still want to do a deal?
The Directors
Sky Arts/Now, 8pm
The American director Jonathan Demme, who died in 2017, is revered by pop music fans for the exemplary 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, which as a document of a live performance has yet to be bettered. For everyone else, he is associated with directing The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won an Oscar. In tonight’s edition of The Directors the assembled talking heads pay tribute to Demme, who is widely regarded as one of the nicest, most thoroughly decent men in Hollywood, although he faced accusations of homophobia for The Silence of the Lambs’ depiction of its cross-dressing killer.
Phoenix Rising
Sky Documentaries, 9pm
This shattering documentary was one of the highlights of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It details the alleged abuse that the Westworld actress Evan Rachel Wood suffered for years during her relationship with the rock star Marilyn Manson (which he denies), from initial coercion to physical and sexual violence, including being reportedly plied with absinthe and openly abused during the filming of the music promo for Heart-Shaped Glasses. “He studied how to manipulate people,” Wood’s mother, Sara, says. “He groomed her. He’s a predator.” It’s hard-hitting material. Continues tomorrow. Kevin Maher
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Strangeways Riot: 25 Days of Mayhem
Channel 5, 9pm
On April 1, 1990, a riot broke out in the chapel at Strangeways prison in Manchester. It spread through the jail, culminating in a rooftop protest. By the time order was restored 25 days later, one prisoner had died and 47 had been injured, along with 147 prison officers. Over the next two nights the story of these brutal events is told by those who lived through it. Episode one follows the dramatic first day, from the violent outbreak during Sunday morning service to the Battle for E Wing, in which prison officers fought with prisoners armed with scaffolding poles and knives.
Catch-up TV, by Toby Earle
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes
Sky/Now
The devastation of Chernobyl remains impossible to comprehend. This is a horror film — there is no other way to describe the content of the jaw-dropping and distressing archive footage from the event and its aftermath, which affected an unborn generation. The award-winning film-maker James Jones has married rare and previously unseen material with the audio testimony of those who were present, including a firefighter’s wife, a Russian general and a nuclear engineer. Many sequences induce a cold terror; there are the men in pitiful safety equipment shovelling nuclear fuel off the roof, the horrifying effects of radiation poisoning and the carefree attitude of one soldier. “This talk about radiation is nonsense, guys, we’re healthy,” he declares, laughing.
Film choice, by Kevin Maher
Kind Hearts and Coronets (U, 1949)
Sky Arts, 9pm
They had it good in 1949. In a two-month period, Ealing Studios released Whisky Galore!, Passport to Pimlico and this, easily the best and the most demented of its iconic output. Alec Guinness deserves all the praise for playing nine members of the upper-crust D’Ascoyne family. His vocal variation and commitment to character are wildly impressive: as grandfather, son or aunt he never once condescends to the role. The family are all targeted by a disgruntled heir, Louis Mazzini (a droll Dennis Price), who picks them off, one by one (the arrow to suffragette Lady Agatha’s balloon is a high point of absurdity). A black comedy, with beautiful writing — the screenplay, co-written by Robert Hamer, its director, is a joy — and flawlessly silly film-making. (104min)
Iris (15, 2001)
BBC4, 10.55pm
Kate Winslet and Judi Dench play the young and old Iris Murdoch in this deeply affecting adaptation of Elegy for Iris, the memoir written by the author’s husband, John Bayley. Hugh Bonneville plays the young Bayley, a nerdish dolt who is, understandably, blown away by the free-spirited Murdoch when they meet at Oxford. However, the film is dominated by an Oscar-winning performance from Jim Broadbent as the older Bayley. As Murdoch is devastated by Alzheimer’s, Bayley struggles with being the carer to his beloved all-but-mute wife while trying to reconcile himself with the knowledge that she was never entirely or exclusively his, in body or soul. In a neat touch, Timothy and Samuel West play the old and young versions of Maurice, an old flame of Murdoch. Richard Eyre directs. (87min) Chris Bennion
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
The Forum
World Service, 10.06am
The story of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet who can talk and walk and wants to be a boy and not a toy, has been told many times. But, as Bridget Kendall demonstrates in this programme, his origins are largely unknown outside Italy and couldn’t be more different from his portrayal in the 1940 Disney film. The original novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio by the 19th-century writer Carlo Collodi, is much darker, and originally ended with Pinocchio’s execution. The text provided a model, which is still used today, for a more standardised form of the Italian language when the country unified. But why, Kendall asks, has the original been forgotten?