Viewing guide, by James Jackson
Hits, Hype & Hustle: An Insider’s Guide to the Music Business
BBC Four, 9pm
Part two of this insiders’ guide to the music business looks at how live rock performance has become a multimillion-dollar industry. Appropriately enough, the first ten minutes are all about U2, innovators in the art of the stadium show and who, on their 360° tour, were pulling in £5 million a night. Clips of their gargantuan PopMart staging of 1997 and their latest tour, the Joshua Tree, demonstrate how huge live shows have become. The veteran promoter John Giddings — our guide here — goes backstage to muse with the bassist Adam Clayton on the band’s early days playing at the Hope and Anchor in Islington compared with the vast crowds today. Why Giddings? Because, as Clayton puts it: “People don’t realise what promoters do; they protect the audience and they protect the band and make sure no one gets ripped off.” The first big shows Giddings attended were at the original Isle of Wight festival and he recounts how the backstage chaos of unpaid artists and frantic last-minute negotiations (the Who demanded a fee to match Bob Dylan’s) were part of a broad transformation of the music industry. The hour is best for its anecdotes: in tracing the live rock show from the 1970s to today, we hear from Phil Collins on Peter Gabriel’s eccentricities (turning up wearing a fox’s head) to Stewart Copeland of the Police on how the band, while at their peak, played to a local women’s organisation in India. Alex James recalls Blur’s chaotic early tours: at one gig he ended up with two black eyes, each from different band members.
Further recommendations
Glastonbury Golden Greats features artists who have occupied the festival’s “legends” slot, including BB King (BBC Four, 10pm)
The Wine Show
Channel 5, 7pm
Idling around their sunbaked “Provençal villa of fun”, Matthew Goode says to his fellow actor James Purefoy: “If Joe doesn’t bring us something refreshing soon I’m just going to climb into the fridge.” Joe is the wine master Joe Fattorini, who is soon on hand to quench poor Goode’s thirst with elixirs from . . . Armenia and Georgia. For, as Fattorini explains on his trip to eastern Europe later, the countries have the oldest wine cultures in the world. Jancis Robinson then shows up to referee on wines for the Michelin chef Stéphane Reynaud’s divine squid stew. So much to learn from this amiable hour.
Live Match of the Day: The FA Cup
BBC One, 7.30pm
David and Goliath has nothing on this: Yeovil Town, who are facing a battle to stay in the Football League, welcome titans Manchester United, who have won the Cup 12 times, to their Huish Park fortress in deepest Somerset hoping for a famous victory. Well, they — and we — can but dream for such an irresistible upset. Either way, passions will be worn on sleeves and there will be a terrific sense of occasion to enjoy from one’s armchair. Consider this: the entire town has a population of 45,000, not enough to fill Old Trafford.
Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens
BBC Two, 9pm
Monty’s odyssey through heavenly Islamic gardens reaches Istanbul, where he walks amid a gaudy carpet of tulips (“I’m really not sure how to react,” he admits) and hears about the sacred relevance of the flower. There is something enriching about a programme that finds the intersection of religious history and green-fingered travelogue. And it looks wonderful, not least at Humayun’s tomb, a domed Mughal palace in Delhi, or the Taj Mahal. Heat, dust and dazzling colours — these are places to seduce your soul.
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Lethal Weapon
ITV, 9pm
In tonight’s episode, a threatened LA pop superstar is having a fling with her bodyguard — in homage to the Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard, perhaps? — but, as ever, the crime set-up is merely a conduit for the soppy banter between those loveable maverick detectives Riggs and Murtaugh, both so casually witty one suspects they’re having the lines written by a team of scriptwriters. As they’re tasked with babysitting the diva-in-peril, their boss warns them through gritted teeth: “I want you to drop no one off a balcony for 24 hours.”
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
Hansa Studios: By the Wall 1976-90
Sky On Demand
Hansa Studios in Berlin is where David Bowie recorded his classic albums Heroes and Low during a self-imposed exile in the city from 1976 to 1979. Located in a wasteland in what was West Berlin, a few hundred yards from the remains of the Berlin Wall, the studio has a global mystique, up there with Abbey Road and Muscle Shoals. It has also hosted Iggy Pop, U2, Depeche Mode, Nick Cave and REM. This meticulous, feature-length documentary traces the historical, cultural and artistic significance of the studio and the music recorded there, with contributions from Bowie (from archive), his producer Tony Visconti and REM’s Michael Stipe.
Film choice
Our Man in Havana (PG, 1959)
Film4, 2.55pm
Graham Greene adapted his novel for his third collaboration with the director Carol Reed. Alec Guinness was born for the role of James Wormold, the vacuum cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Cuba who is recruited into British Intelligence and digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble. Wormold invents Cuban plots and fabricates agents to satisfy his bosses in London — and it all works rather too well. The film was well received at the time. Our critic wrote in December 1959: “If the film is less ambitious than some of Sir Carol’s earlier work, it is masterly in accomplishment and richly human. Some people will say that it is slow; some people are never satisfied.” (111min) Chris Bennion
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The Innocents (12, 1961)
Talking Pictures, 9pm
The Innocents creeps slowly up on the viewer: a drip-feed of fear fed by creaks, eerie children and shadowy demonic figures. Directed by Jack Clayton, the film’s Victorian horror comes from the deathly atmosphere of Bly House, a crenellated country mansion where Miss Giddens, played by Deborah Kerr, is sent to be the nanny for two rich orphans. The children’s previous nanny and her manservant lover met mysterious deaths. An adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of Screw, the black-and-white drama cranks up the psychological horror, and we are no longer sure whether the innocent children are possessed by the previous occupants of the house or the new nanny is losing her mind. (100min) Kate Muir
Drive (18, 2011)
BBC Two, 11.05pm
Adapted from a novel by James Sallis, Drive pays loving homage to past movies. With extensive use of a twanging synthesizer on the soundtrack, it references the pulpy B-movie action flicks of the 1980s, but the obvious allusion is to Walter Hill’s The Driver. The central character, called Driver, is a stunt driver for Hollywood movies by day and a talented getaway driver by night. It could be the premise for any number of mediocre car-chase films, but Drive is superior. Ryan Gosling plays Driver; Carey Mulligan is the young mother and neighbour for whom Driver falls. Like most films about fast cars, the sexual subtext is unavoidable. (100min) Wendy Ide
Radio choice, by Catherine Nixey
All Those Women
Radio 4, 11.30am
You have to wonder if this comedy, about four generations of women living in the same house, would get the same title now — there is something a teensy bit derisory about it. Nonetheless, this series is very amusing. It’s written by the comedian Katherine Jakeways, who has an almost Victoria Woodish ear for dialogue. In this episode Jen (the mother) is starting a work placement as a teacher while her mother, Maggie, is going to lunch with Nerys, an old friend. Or, to be more precise, frenemy. Nerys is “a piece of work” and is beautifully portrayed. At their lunch Nerys says such things as: “Bless you, Maggie” (“I don’t think I need blessing,” Maggie snaps back). And, when inquiring about Maggie’s daughter, asks: “How’s poor Jen?” It’s so lightly and so well done, capturing the countless ways in which friends crush with concern.
Cillian Murphy Sits In
6 Music, 7pm
It always feels slightly unexpected to have Cillian Murphy turn up as a DJ on 6 Music. He’s far better known as an actor (he and his ice-blue eyes have co-starred in such period dramas as Dunkirk and Peaky Blinders). But then again, Murphy is sitting in for Iggy Pop, who would hardly be your first choice for a radio DJ either; so perhaps this slot demands an unexpected host. Here Murphy picks two hours of his favourite tunes.