For full TV listings for the week, see thetimes.co.uk/tvplanner
Viewing guide, by Joe Clay
Bent Coppers: Crossing the Line of Duty
BBC2, 9pm
Line of Duty fans joke about necking a drink every time Superintendent Ted Hastings, the head of the anticorruption unit in Jed Mercurio’s thriller, says “bent coppers”. If you were to attempt the same thing while watching this new documentary series you’d be paralytic after two minutes. It tells the story of the real-life AC-12 — the honest coppers of A10 branch who were tasked with hunting down their corrupt counterparts in the Metropolitan Police. “A bent detective is himself a wrongdoer,” says Sir Robert Mark from the archive. “He harms the whole fabric of public confidence in the police and he can look to no mercy at all from me.” Mark was the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972 to 1977, and made it his mission to clean up the Met. His motto was “a good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs”, which gives you an idea of how endemic corruption was in the CID during the 1970s. The first episode begins in 1969, when the British police were still considered the most trustworthy and effective force in the world. However, when Michael Perry, a petty south London criminal, tipped off The Times that he was being extorted for money by a detective in the Met, a secret network of corrupt coppers was exposed — a “firm in a firm”. They weren’t interested in fighting crime, but were instead looking to “take a drink”, slang for a cash-filled brown envelope. Styled a bit like a 1970s cop show, with a parping Sweeney-esque soundtrack, animated sequences and archive footage, this is an entertaining look at the story of the Times investigation that led to the Met cleaning up its act.
MasterChef
BBC1, 8pm
The wait to discover who is the nation’s best amateur cook has been longer than expected because of scheduling changes, but the MasterChef final is on tonight, the contenders Mike, Tom and Alexina hoping to prove their mettle in a contest involving three dishes that cap a fascinating six weeks of stove work. The standard for this year’s 17th series has been extremely high, as judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode have consistently pointed out, even if a surprising number of chefs seemed to struggle with that seemingly most gaffe-proof of dishes, the rack of lamb. Ben Dowell
The Great British Sewing Bee
BBC1, 9pm
From its new home on Trinity Buoy Wharf in east London, the therapeutic sewing contest returns with the fresh batch of contestants living together in a Covid-safe bubble. “The only risk to any of us is a poorly matched pattern,” says the host Joe Lycett. The sewers are the usual wholesome mix of retired dinner ladies and French trumpeters (that is not a Lycett innuendo) and week one is all about wardrobe staples. The pattern challenge is a shell-top (a classic sleeveless blouse); the transformation challenge involves turning old T-shirts into new garments; while the made-to-measure challenge is a buffet dress.
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Here Come the Gypsies!
Channel 5, 9pm
In its heyday in the early 2010s, Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding was watched by eight million, with audiences thrilling to its vulgar excesses and insights into the Traveller community. Channel 5 has picked up the baton but it is unlikely to attract such a large audience, with the world of the Gypsy no longer exercising such a powerful fascination. As well as exploring some of the staples of the life of a Romany Gypsy — horse trading, bare-knuckle fighting and fortune telling — tonight’s first episode also reveals how, now more than ever, the Gypsy life is at odds with that of the “settled” community.
Watergate
BBC4, 9pm/9.50pm
The recent publication of obituaries of the Watergate burglar Gordon Liddy may have whetted appetites for this repeat of the 1994 documentary series that chronicles the whole sorry saga. Made by a team including producer Paul Mitchell, the British journalist Mick Gold and the New York film-maker Norma Percy, it’s the definitive account — accordingly it won an Emmy for outstanding historical documentary. Tonight’s opening double bill looks at the 1972 break-in at the Watergate Office Building and the attempts by President Nixon to cover it up.
Lights Up: Buttercup
BBC4, 10.40pm
The Liverpool-based Congolese multidisciplinary artist Dorcas Sebuyange writes and stars in a new play from the theatre company 20 Stories High which explores themes of survival and coming to terms with childhood trauma. Sebuyange plays Fortune, a young woman who is live streaming an informal spoken word gig to her online followers. Using a mix of words, poems and memories, she shares her life story, from her childhood as a vulnerable girl in a bedroom in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to a bold young woman, partying and performing in Liverpool. But is the one person she really wants to hear her truth — her mother — listening in?
Catch-up TV, by Ben Dowell
Paloma Faith: As I Am
BBC iPlayer
“Mummy’s going to work,” a sad, flamboyantly dressed Paloma Faith says as her nanny whisks her crying child away. Work for the singer is an endless round of interviews, photoshoots, album recordings, concerts in front of 15,000 people and, of course, this film, which follows her over a year. Faith knows the power of publicity and she has rarely been a reticent presence on the music scene for the past decade or so. But this film works because of what it reveals about her trade, especially the way it treats a woman approaching 40 who has a child, hopes for another and worries that her next album could be her last. She’s nothing if not candid, speaking openly about her fertility, body image and why she needs the affirmation of fans.
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Film choice, by Chris Bennion
The Greatest Showman (PG, 2017)
Film4, 9pm
The Greatest Showman has truly earned the “p” word — it’s a bona fide phenomenon. Panned by the critics, Michael Gracey’s directorial debut didn’t just defy the odds, it ridiculed them. The cheesy musical, about the 19th-century circus impresario PT Barnum, gobbled up the box office, and the soundtrack album spent 11 consecutive weeks at No 1 in the UK. It even got an Oscar nomination. The film has taken more than $435 million at the box office. Critics, eh? What do they know? Hugh Jackman gives his all as Barnum, the impoverished American who became the godfather of the modern circus, with Michelle Williams as his wife, Charity, and Zac Efron as Phillip Carlyle, the playwright who becomes Barnum’s business partner. Give in. Roll up. Sing along. (102min)
Chef (15, 2014)
Channel 4, 1.50am
For years the chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau, who also writes and directs) has run the celebrated Los Angeles restaurant Gauloise, but when a blogger trashes his signature dishes (“Casper’s dramatic weight gain is best explained by the fact he is eating the food sent back by customers”) he flies into a rage that goes viral. Out of a job, Casper takes his media-savvy ten-year-old son (Emjay Anthony) on a road trip to Miami, where he does up a clapped-out catering truck. You can feel your arteries hardening as Casper slaps butter on the grill and fries white bread, marinated pork and cheese into a sweating crust. His son tweets their progress and the crowds come a-slavering. (114min) Kate Muir
Radio choice, by Debra Craine
The Compass: Water
BBC World Service, 8.06pm
This is the final episode of Alok Jha’s four-part series on water and its place at the heart of ecological crises, from drought to flooding. But, as Jha explains, water may offer solutions too. He witnesses nuclear fusion at an experimental reactor in England. Simple seawater provides the fuel for this futuristic technology with the potential to solve the world’s energy problems and eliminate fossil fuel power generation. And chemist Fernando Romo explains artificial photosynthesis, which allows humans to mimic plants, drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing energy in the process.