For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by Alexi Duggins
Fake or Fortune?
BBC1, 9pm
It’s episode two of the ninth series in which the presenter Fiona Bruce and international art dealer Philip Mould attempt to track down “lost works by great artists”. This week, the Sherlocks of the gallery world scrutinise a small “oil on canvas” called Arab at Prayer, supposedly created by the 19th-century French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. The pair plunge themselves into an investigation that has a personal relationship at its heart. Is the painting the genuine work that it was believed to be when bought for nearly $6,500 by its owner, a Gérôme aficionado? Or is it the forgery that it’s written off as by the owner’s (now deceased) friend, the one-time leading Gérôme expert Professor Gerald Ackerman? Bruce and Mould stroll past dagger-filled cabinets in London’s Wallace Collection to look at a forgery with distinct similarities. Bruce pores over French-language catalogues in Cambridge libraries and heads to a London mosque to meet an authority in Islamic art history. Mould, however, conducts video interviews with Gérôme experts from his stone-walled Oxfordshire home while asking a Courtauld specialist to subject the painting to the kind of x-ray treatment normally reserved for hospital patients. As ever, it’s a gripping, twisty tale of the difficulty of authenticating art, helmed engagingly by the presenters. In particular Mould — the spitting image of Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk, if he’d gone into art history. He lavishes deep enthusiasm on Barnsley-based sketches. He becomes utterly fascinated with tiny brushstrokes. There’s an understated drama to this show, largely thanks to the way that it vibrates with Mould’s quiet energy.
Cooking with Paris
Netflix
It’s not often that new cookery series have trailers that ask the question: “Can she cook?” But then they’re rarely helmed by the celebrity socialite Paris Hilton. The answer is most likely to be “no”, with this show coming off the back of a viral YouTube video in which Hilton made a lasagne in fingerless satin gloves and complained about how “annoying” it is to perform complex kitchen tasks like steaming pasta and grating cheese. Hopefully the celebrity guests that join Hilton each episode to wrestle with recipes will provide entertainment, if not culinary insight.
Live Test Cricket
Sky Main Event/Now, 10am
England’s five Test series against India — the side ranked no 2 in the world — begins today at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. The big news is the all-rounder Ben Stokes withdrawing from the squad to focus on his mental health. As the captain Joe Root said, all everyone wants is for Stokes to be OK, but there are repercussions for the balance of the team. Sam Curran is the likely beneficiary of Stokes’s absence, with the bowler Ollie Robinson returning to the squad after being handed an eight-match suspension for posting racist and sexist tweets in 2012. Joe Clay
Lucan
ITV, 9pm
On November 7, 1974, Sandra Rivett was found dead from head injuries at 46 Lower Belgrave Street in London. So began one of the great mysteries of British history. Rivett was the nanny of the children of Lord Lucan, who is believed to have committed the murder, but disappeared that night and hasn’t been seen since. Jeff Pope’s two-part drama, first shown in 2013, is based on the book The Gamblers by John Pearson. Rory Kinnear is superb as the flamboyant aristocrat, portraying him as a rich dimwit, alcoholic adulterer and hopeless gambler; better still is Christopher Eccleston as Lucan’s manipulative friend, the zoo owner John Aspinall. Joe Clay
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This Way Up
Channel 4, 10pm
Afro-Caribbean vibes abound tonight, as Aine (Aisling Bea) helps out at a Justice for Windrush fundraiser. Reggae plays, Jamaican flags are draped from walls and people make loud complaints about the food stand’s “white man portions”, while she tries to hide her newly missing tooth. As ever, it’s a tour de force of dredging belly laughs from the undercurrent of existential anxiety that flows throughout this programme. At one point, Bea even wrings a smile from a discussion on post-depression rehabilitation. “I love following steps,” she says with a grin. “Me and the Macarena!”
Catch-up TV, by Ben Dowell
French & Saunders: Funny Women
UKTV Play
The comedy double act return to their famous all-white sitting room, the setting for their much-missed sketch show, to lark around and watch clips of their favourite female comedians. It’s a simple format, somewhat lazily executed by the pair, who try self-consciously to make a virtue of their slack connecting material, which often involves Dawn French shouting the name of the next clip. However, the comedy they showcase is wonderful, with classic clips alongside many gems you may not have seen before from Victoria Wood, Ruby Wax, Joan Rivers, Miranda Hart, Lucille Ball, Beryl Reid, Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres and Roseanne Barr.
Film choice
Rams (15, 2015)
Film4, 1.15am
Rams is a gorgeous, tender and unexpectedly moving film about the most unlikely of subjects: sheep farming in Iceland. The real drama revolves around two brothers in their sixties, Gummi (Sigurdur Sigurjonsson) and Kiddi (Theodor Juliusson). They are sheep farmers, yet have been estranged for more than 40 years. Disaster strikes when Kiddi’s prize ram gets scrapie, leading to a slaughter order for all the sheep in the valley. How the brothers react is what initially gives the sense of narrative urgency. Yet it is the emotional places to which the writer-director Grimur Hakonarson pushes these two curmudgeons that gives the film such power. A remake set in Western Australia, starring Sam Neill and Michael Caton as the brothers, was released last year. (89min) Kevin Maher
Grandma (15, 2015)
Channel 4, 1.25am
Lily Tomlin is terrifyingly eccentric playing a ballbreaker of a grandmother. She goes into battle to raise $630 to pay for an abortion for her teenage granddaughter Sage (a stroppy Julia Garner). Tomlin plays Elle, a poverty-stricken poet who has just broken up with her younger girlfriend, Olivia (Judy Greer), whom she considers a “footnote” after a 38-year relationship with Violet. Eventually, grandmother and granddaughter are forced to fess up to Sage’s mother, Judy (Marcia Gay Harden, who is on nuclear-nasty form). The revelations come gently, but this movie, from the About a Boy director Paul Weitz, is subtle and surprising. (75min) Kate Muir
Radio choice, by Debra Craine
The Exchange
Radio 4, 8pm
What happens when two people who share a common experience meet for the first time? Saima Razzaq and Teddy Prout both had to make a choice about their faith when they came out as gay. Prout was a teenage Evangelical Christian when he came out but started to question his beliefs when his church tried to “cure” him by “praying away the gay”. Razzaq, a British Pakistani who came out in her twenties, was surprised to find that being Muslim and lesbian was not a big deal for most of her Birmingham community. Catherine Carr takes them through their personal experiences as they exchange gifts which reveal their stories.