CRITICS’ CHOICE
War on the home front
Stacey Dooley Investigates: Russia’s War On Women (BBC3, from 10am)
Dooley looks more like a teenage backpacker than an investigative journalist, with her long fair hair never far from being tossed, her shocked eyes and her smiling white teeth. She has spent time embedded with, among others, female Yazidi fighters battling Isis, but her apparent youth — in fact, she is 30 — and vulnerability is her strength as a programme-maker, so she does not attract the attention of the security services as she travels around Russia learning how a change in the law now permits certain forms of domestic violence. As of last year, if men batter their wives in a way that does not necessitate a hospital visit, the police do not have to act. Shelters offer few beds and government benefits provide barely enough to eat. Listing the achievements of women in Russia, though, Dooley’s inexperience reveals itself: under Putin, young feminists have learnt the hard way their rights are not set in stone.
Helen Stewart
A Stitch In Time (BBC4, 8.30pm)
Never interested in dressing for comfort, Amber Butchart this week explores the 14th- century armour of Edward of Woodstock, aka the Black Prince, whose tomb is in Canterbury Cathedral. A riot of experimental tailoring follows, as Ninya Mikhaila and her team try to recreate the prince’s jupon, or overcoat, and discover how little it has in common with modern military camouflage. (VS)
Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic, 9pm/10pm)
The third series of the Neapolitan mafia story opens with Don Pietro (Fortunato Cerlino, currently Vespasian in Britannia), felled by the bullet of his former favourite. He had dominated this drama, despite being imprisoned for much of it, but now a power vacuum threatens to destabilise the Naples underworld and, possibly, the show. Can his divisive son, Genny (Salvatore Esposito), step up at last? (HS)
Hate Thy Neighbour (Viceland, 9pm)
Berkeley University is famously an academic hotbed of liberal politics, but that’s not quite the story Jamali Maddix discovers when he visits the campus in California to witness the impact a “free speech” event featuring dolt-right jester Milo Yiannopoulos is having on the institution. Maddix handles all sides with an easy, glad-handing amiability that opens up conversation, but he is no Louis Theroux. (VS)
Murder In Paradise (C5, 10pm)
Andy Bush, a Bristol jeweller known as “the king of bling”, was on holiday in Spain when he was shot three times and killed. He was wealthy and his lifestyle glamorous (it’s not everyone who owns a gold-plated Hummer), so the case attracted attention. This documentary examines the events of April 2014, when he and his young girlfriend realised they were not alone in their holiday villa. (HS)
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FILM CHOICE
A Walk In The Woods (2015)
Film 4, 9pm
Bill Bryson was in his forties when he walked the Appalachian Trail (a long, scenic American hike) with a friend and wrote a book about the journey, but Robert Redford does not try to fake middle age in his performance in this adaptation. Instead, he and Nick Nolte plod through a codger comedy about the mishaps and lessons of a couple of old strollers. It takes you on an easy wander along a broadly predictable route. Dir: Ken Kwapis
Win Win (2011)
C4, 1.55am
Starring Paul Giamatti as a lawyer and part-time high-school wrestling coach forced to grapple with the results of his shabby deceits, Tom McCarthy’s subdued film hopes to be both funny and poignant, but it fails to achieve twofold success in line with its title: its story is too pat to be affecting. That still leaves the comedy side of things, however, and the movie scores there, having lots of fruitful characters.
Edward Porter
Radio pick of the day
Behind The Scenes (Radio 4, 9am)
Marin Alsop, the first woman to conduct the Last Night of the Proms, is this week’s profile, as Susan Marling watches her prepare for a new season with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Joanna Lumley is on Jo Wiley (R2, 8pm), choosing musical highlights from her acting career; and gothic punk dandy the Damned’s Dave Vanian, is the guest of Stuart Maconie (6 Music, 1pm).
Andrew Male
Sports choice
WTA Tennis St Petersburg (BT Sport 1, 10am)
German Masters Snooker (Eurosport 1, 12.45pm/6.45pm)
Football Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United (BT Sport 1, 7.15pm)
U19s Cricket World Cup (SSME, 12 midnight)
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You say
I avoid Saturday-night programmes because of the screaming, whooping audiences. Now they are infiltrating weekday shows such as Room 101 (BBC1). Is there no escape from them?
Gordon Staples
Not so long ago, Peter Morgan would have had his head chopped off for the impertinence of The Crown (Netflix), but for the Queen to hear the news of the assassination of President Kennedy in broad daylight, when it was after 6.30pm on a late November evening, stretches credulity in this royal soap just a little too far.
Charles Foster
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