For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by Joe Clay
Kate & Koji
ITV, 9pm
The old-school sitcom from Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin (Outnumbered) returns for a second series. The first series starred Brenda Blethyn as Kate, the owner of a café in a seaside town (Herne Bay stands in for the fictional Seagate), who struck up an unlikely friendship with Koji (Jimmy Akingbola), an African asylum seeker. At first the pair didn’t get on — “There’s four things in life I hate,” Kate told her nephew (Blake Harrison). “Scroungers, foreigners, doctors and posh people, and he’s all four” — but as the series progressed they gradually found common ground, with Koji running an unofficial GP’s surgery from the café and even acting as Kate’s solicitor. Kate’s spikiness and Koji’s pomposity made them a classic mismatched double act and the series averaged about five million viewers across the run in 2020. For series two, Blethyn is returning to her role as Kate, while Okorie Chukwu (in his biggest role to date) is taking over as Koji from Akingbola, who is starring in the reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Also returning are Harrison as “Medium” Dan, and Barbara Flynn as Councillor Bone. As we rejoin the gang in the café, the local news programme is doing a segment on Kate and Medium, who have been nominated for “Seagate’s lockdown legends” award for delivering meals to people who were shielding during the pandemic. But then Kate finds out that her nemesis, Councillor Bone, is presenting the award and refuses to collect it. Who will have the last laugh? Chukwu is a seamless replacement for Akingbola and if you enjoyed the first series you won’t be disappointed by its return. And there are even a few half-decent gags about Covid.
Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives
Netflix
True crime docs about fraudsters are all the rage and here’s the latest one, another real-life tale that is stranger than fiction. Bad Vegan tells the story of how Sarma Melngailis, aka the Queen of Vegan Cuisine, became a fugitive. Melngailis disappeared in 2015, shortly after the employees of her successful raw food restaurants had walked out en masse, accusing her of not paying them. She was on the run with her husband, Anthony Strangis, who she would later claim had conned her out of millions having promised that he would expand her food empire and make her beloved pitbull immortal. I told you it was strange.
Computer Says No
BBC3, 8pm
If you’re applying for a job in the 21st century, your application could go through several stages before it is seen by a human. The journalist and former recruiter Daniel Henry is exploring this new world of hiring, where decisions are made by an algorithm. He learns how to tailor his CV so it isn’t rejected by software used to select applicants. He also meets applicants who didn’t get jobs in part due to a video interview that used facial analysis technology. Henry reveals how this software can often misinterpret race, gender and emotion, and he has advice on how to get a job in a tech-dominated world.
Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr
BBC1, 9pm
As the competition continues the nine remaining designers are checking in to a quintessential country house hotel, Wotton House in Surrey. After working in pairs last week, the contestants are flying solo and have been given one room each to transform. “This challenge is about putting your signature stamp on those rooms,” the judge Michelle Ogundehin says. But she also wants them to be “mindful of the incredible location and the classic eccentric Britishness of the location”. And she’s looking for a bit more “than just paint and paper”. It’s an exacting challenge for this talented group of amateurs.
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Bloods
Sky Comedy/Now, 10pm
Like Kate & Koji, the medical sitcom Bloods is reliant on the odd couple dynamic of its central pair of paramedics: Wendy (Jane Horrocks), a chatty Nottingham divorcee, and the streetwise London native Maleek (Samson Kayo). As it returns for a second series, Katherine Kelly joins the cast as a counsellor who is visiting the unit to help the staff with their mental health “after the shitshow of Covid” and immediately clashes with Lucy Punch’s humourless hub commander, Jo. And there is trouble for our central pair when they become involved in a hostage situation in a chicken shop.
Catch-up TV, by Ben Dowell
Rise of the Nazis: Dictators at War
BBC iPlayer
Three more episodes of the series that uses dramatic reconstructions and imaginatively chosen talking heads to penetrate the minds of key Second World War figures and analyse how their emotional make-up shaped events. With the conflict now in full flow, tales of Hitler’s vain and unpredictable nature are hardly likely to surprise anyone, but the story of him gazing at Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb in conquered Paris, declaring it the best day of his life, offers a telling insight. Among those offering insights into Stalin’s head is Garry Kasparov, the chess player turned activist, who knows about Russian strongmen. We also hear the former MI6 boss John Scarlett’s reflections on Stalin’s foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, whose attention to fine detail enraged Hitler, with enormous consequences.
Film choice, by Wendy Ide
The Godfather Trilogy (1972/1974/1990)
Sky Movies Select/Now, from 10.40am
Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia trilogy is showing today to mark the 50th anniversary of the original film’s cinema release in March 1972. It represented a benchmark, not just in crime movies but in American cinema as a whole. Marlon Brando is imperious as Vito Corleone, the mafia don whose grip on his business is threatened by the deadly ambitions of his rivals. In the sequel Robert De Niro takes over the role of Vito as the story explores the early years of the man who would become one of the most powerful crime bosses in New York. Coppola returned to the saga for the third and final time in 1990 to tell the story of the ailing Michael Corleone’s quest for legitimacy. (175min/202min/162min)
Rambo: Last Blood (18, 2019)
Channel 5, 10pm
This final film in the Rambo franchise is pure Trump. It’s set in Arizona, near the southern border, and depicts a world where clean-living teenage American virgins, such as Rambo’s adopted niece Gabrielle, are under constant threat from the evil, drug-dealing, torturing, sex-slaving, multiple-raping psychopaths who live just across the border. They are called Mexicans (thank God for that wall, which is lovingly photographed here). After a cursory opening, Gabrielle is kidnapped and sold into a Mexican mafia-led sex dungeon. Rambo flips and, to paraphrase an iconic line from the first instalment, he gives the Mexican mobsters a war that they cannot believe. He lures them to his ranch, which has been rigged with booby traps, then stabs, chops, decapitates, disembowels and blasts them to pieces. It’s like an 18-certificate Home Alone. (89min) Kevin Maher
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
Maureen & Friends
Radio 4, 11.30am
Maureen Lipman is not a woman short of opinions, or anecdotes from her many glorious years in showbusiness. So there’s no shortage of musings, monologues, duologues and amusing anecdotes about her life and popular culture in this second series. Recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Radio Theatre this first programme begins with a poem reflecting on the past two years. We also meet a far too chatty woman on a commuter train and a woman who is a whizz at crosswords. She is also joined by the actor Oliver Cotton and together they give life and opinions to various animals as well as their particular take on an awards ceremony — the “Daftas”.