Viewing guide, by Gabriel Tate
Eden: Paradise Lost
Channel 4, 10pm
In March 2016 a reality show-cum-social experiment began, in which 13 men and 10 women, selected for their particular sets of skills, were dispatched to a remote shoreline in the Scottish Highlands. They were to create a community more or less from scratch and live there for a year, cut off from the outside world and filmed only by fixed cameras, embedded camera crew and GoPros. Fast-forward to March 2017, and reports filtered out of a few bedraggled survivors finally leaving the camp into a world of Brexit, Donald Trump and prime minister Theresa May, amid rumours of a descent into near Lord of the Flies-type anarchy (inside the camp, that is). A year ago Channel 4 showed us how they got on in
the first months of the experiment (the community was dividing and one member walked out). Now we can finally see if those claims of anarchy were true. The action picks up again with the 23 down to 21. Hunting and fishing expeditions are afoot, offering potential respite from debilitating hunger and the consequent politicking and passive aggression. Neither activity goes entirely to plan and, while Anton (the one who went off to live in the woods) ploughs his own furrow, events take a turn that leaves the community on the verge of disintegration. Things get a little meta, and while the relative absence of women, from the narrative and the contributors to post-Eden interviews, is troubling, it is at least partially addressed in later episodes across the week. At the very least it has been a fascinating project and a pretty unedifying glimpse at the answer to the question posed in the pre-show publicity: what if we could start again?
The Bug Grub Couple
BBC One, 7.30pm
Dr Sarah Benyon and the chef Andy Holcroft run a zoo, gallery, research centre and restaurant serving insects in Pembrokeshire. The eatery potentially offers an environmentally friendly alternative to our national addiction to meat (and specifically beef), with insects needing little water and able to live off waste products; thus a bug burger is offered alongside traditional dishes. While chocolate crickets and scorpion lollypops are freely available on the streets of, say, Bangkok, Benyon and Holcroft find that preconceptions among the residents of St Davids take a little longer to wear down.
Animal Rescue Live: Supervet Special
Channel 4, 8pm
Inescapable on Channel 4 at the best of times, the “supervet’’ Noel Fitzpatrick is fronting a live animal-rescue show all this week from Newcastle Dog and Cat Shelter. Accompanied by Steve Jones and Kate Quilton, he’ll be asking viewers to find permanent homes for the animals that live there, from horses to parrots to pigs. If they succeed, the shelter will be empty by the end of the week. Leona Lewis will also be making an appearance, talking about her love (bleeding or otherwise) for shelter animals and her work on their behalf.
Man in an Orange Shirt
BBC Two, 9pm
History threatens to repeat itself in the concluding part of author Patrick Gale’s accomplished and often affecting first foray into screenwriting, as Flora (Vanessa Redgrave, the elderly incarnation of Joanna Vanderham) discovers her vet grandson Adam (Julian Morris) grappling with his own sexuality and falling slowly in love with a client (David Gyasi). Addressing, as so many of his novels do, the damage wrought by lies and secrecy, Gale fashions an ultimately uplifting story of gentle defiance, while Michael Samuels directs with restraint, and the uniformly excellent cast do the material full justice.
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Make or Break?
Channel 5, 10pm
Eight couples whose relationships are on the rocks have done the only sensible thing and called Channel 5 for assistance. They have been dispatched to a Mexican resort, where they will undergo a series of workshops, challenges and sex-therapy sessions designed to boost self-awareness and determine whether their partner is the right one for them. Which all sounds reasonable enough, except that all the couples are “on a break” and must swap partners every couple of days. What could possibly go wrong? Consider the post-Love Island gravy train rolling on, full steam ahead.
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
Storyville — Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government
BBC iPlayer, to August 22
Carne Ross was a British diplomat on the front line during some of the most tumultuous events of the past 20 years — 9/11, the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Iraq war. He prided himself on being a “ferocious negotiator”, but as time went on he realised that he was putting the needs of British security over the needs of ordinary people. This programme follows Ross’s rebellion against the establishment — via a farming collective in Spain to Occupy Wall Street and Syria — as he argues that anarchism offers a practical solution to democratic malaise.
Film choice, by Wendy Ide
The Heat (15, 2013)
Film4, 9pm
The director Paul Feig and the actress Melissa McCarthy have fine form together. As well as the excellent espionage pastiche Spy, they worked together on the hit Bridesmaids and last year’s Ghostbusters reboot. This film, a spin on the buddy cop movie, is also a lot of fun. One’s a by-the-book FBI high achiever, the other an unkempt slob with anger issues and a fridge full of weapons. It helps that the diametrically opposed cops are played by two of the finest comic actors in the business. Sandra Bullock is endearingly nerdy as the rising star, while McCarthy is Shannon Mullins, a foul-mouthed Boston street cop. (117min)
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American History X (15, 1998)
ITV4, 10pm
Edward Norton carries this muscular portrait of race hatred in America with a chilling performance and, if the rumours are to be believed, a hand in the direction after the commercials director Tony Kaye left the project. While the film’s gestation was undoubtedly a difficult one, the result is an undeniably powerful movie powered by the constantly simmering violence and anger of its characters. Norton plays Derek, a tightly wound white supremacist jailed for the murder of the black kids who tried to steal his car. Edward Furlong plays Danny, the younger brother who looks set to follow the same path. Derek emerges from prison a reformed character, but is he too late to save his brother? (119min)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (15, 2011)
Film4, 1am
Nuri Bilge Ceylan can seem to be the most evasive of film-makers. This lengthy police procedural, which starts with the prolonged, slightly absurd search for a body in the rolling wastelands of Anatolia, has been going for more than an hour before the characters start to take shape. And the audience must stay with it longer still before the wisps of disparate themes begin to coalesce into a whole. And yet the film is enthralling, even as it withholds from us any real sense of resolution. The interplay between a group of men, of dramatically differing status and temperaments, is observed by an eye that finds fascination in the mundane. The exchange of biscuits becomes a subtle power-play; a surreptitious toilet break takes on a disquietingly surreal tone. (150min)
Radio choice, by Catherine Nixey
Partition Voices
Radio 4, 9am
In this country people rarely remember the ghost trains. In India they are infamous. When the Partition of India took place in 1947, and the religious attacks started, many Hindus fled from what was now Pakistan on trains to India. They never reached it: bands of Muslims entered the trains and murdered everyone. The trains did arrive at their destinations — but filled with corpses. The Partition of India caused one of the largest mass migrations to date (15 million were displaced) and one of the bloodiest: almost a million were killed. Yet it was so traumatic, people are only now beginning to speak about it. In this extraordinary programme, presented superbly by Kavita Puri, we hear from some of them. There is not space to recount all the tales here: suffice to say that two of the speakers woke up underneath piles of corpses.
Alone on a Wide Wide Sea
Radio 2, 1.30pm
More migration, albeit this time with imagined characters. Revisiting real (and often unpleasant) historical events, but seeing them from a child’s-eye viewpoint is Michael Morpurgo’s forte. He most famously did it with War Horse; here he has taken a story that is already child-based. Between 1869 and 1970, 100,000 British children were sent overseas, alone, by British churches and charities to enable them to find a “better” life. They often found something far worse. This starry adaptation features Toby Jones and Jason Donovan and should make diverting listening for holiday-home children.