British Academy Television Awards
BBC One, 7pm
The great, the good and the merely good-looking of small-screen entertainment flock to the Royal Festival Hall in London to celebrate the best television of the past year. Once again, TV’s ubiquitous Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett host, with the nominations covering comedy to current affairs via the swarming sub-divisions of entertainment and factual.
As ever, though, it’s the acting and drama categories that draw the most attention, with Brian Cox (Succession) and Timothy Spall (The Sixth Commandment) topping the odds to take Best Lead Actor, and Sarah Lancashire (so unforgettable in Happy Valley) the favourite for Lead Actress. While The Gold, Top Boy and Slow Horses are all fancied for Best Drama series, Happy Valley remains in front (even if co-star James Norton was bafflingly omitted from the nominees). Comedy, by contrast, looks like an open race, but we’re gunning for Such Brave Girls or Big Boys. Michelle Visage and Tom Allen host from the red carpet from 2.45pm: you can watch on the Bafta online channel or via social media. GO
Hancock’s Half Hour
BBC Four, from 7pm
Marking today’s centenary of the birth of Tony Hancock, four episodes of his long-running (first on radio, later TV) comedy series, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The episodes, broadcast between 1959 and 1961, include The Bowmans (a parody of The Archers) and The Blood Donor.
Our Welsh Chapel Dream
Channel 4, 8pm
Keith Brymer Jones’s restoration project takes another step forward when he and wife Marj submit their planning application to turn the chapel into their new home and pottery studio. Waiting for a decision, they rip out some rot, learn some Welsh and try to win over the locals.
The Responder
BBC One, 9pm
Pressure continues to come at copper Chris (Martin Freeman) from all sides. When he and Rachel (Adelayo Adedayo) discover they’re now on the hook for the missing gun, a solution suddenly appears when a desperate Jodie (Faye McKeever) approaches him for a favour. But nothing’s ever that easy, is it?
Rob and Rylan’s Grand Tour
BBC Two, 9pm
Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark – both licking their wounds after recent divorces – teaming up for a 21st-century tilt at the Grand Tour might not sound like a great travelogue. But there’s a kind of crazed genius to their chemistry in this opening episode, as they retrace the steps of poet Lord Byron, on the 200th anniversary of his death, in Venice. Their enthusiasm brings the city – full to bursting with tourists – alive on camera.
The Lost Scrolls of Pompeii: New Revelation
Channel 5, 9pm
Professor Alice Roberts presents this engaging documentary about a new project that is using archaeology and AI to unlock the secrets of papyrus scrolls carbonised during the eruption of Vesuvius.
The Remains of the Day: The Read with Steve Pemberton
BBC Four, 9pm
Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel gets a brisk but effective filleting, with Steve Pemberton’s narration making for a pleasing portrayal of butler Stevens, ruminating upon his past as he drives across 1950s England. It’s followed by Alan Yentob’s Imagine… profile, released after Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, and a Mark Lawson interview from 2015.
School for Scoundrels (1960, b/w) ★★★★★
BBC Two, 12.30pm
Terry-Thomas is at his sublime best in this timeless British comedy, class-obsessed and all. Down-and-out Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) comes across a special college course that promises to teach him how to woo women and get the upper hand against bounders such as Terry-Thomas’s Raymond Delauney. There’s more terrific Ealing comedy with The Lavender Hill Mob on Saturday, BBC Two, 1pm.
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) ★★★
ITV1, 3.25pm
Jack Black returns to voice the high-kicking panda Po, still prone to the odd gaffe despite being the most fearsome martial artist in the animal kingdom. He is tasked with training up a group of clumsy pandas to face the chi-stealing yak Kai. The first two films laid down a visual template which this pushes further into trippy, sliced-and-diced abstraction, nodding to the techniques of the wuxia genre; the newest, fourth instalment is in cinemas.
Calamity Jane (1953) ★★★★
BBC Two, 4pm
Doris Day stars in this musical twist on a Western, loosely based on the life of the hip-shooting frontierswoman. Following a dramatic clash with Native Americans, Jane sees both a business opportunity – to bring Chicago ladies to the women-starved townsmen – and a chance for romance. But when a rescued cavalry officer proves fickle, can her friend “Wild” Bill Hickock (Howard Keel) win her heart? The Deadwood Stage is a timeless song.
Film of the Week: Minority Report (2002) ★★★★
ITV2, 7.30pm
The brilliance of director Steven Spielberg and the hard-edged sci-fi of renowned author Philip K Dick prove to be a perfect match in this futuristic thriller set in the year 2054 – which, depressingly, no longer seems all that far away. Tom Cruise plays Chief John Anderton, whose cutting-edge special police department (called “Precrime”) arrests people for crimes that a team of “precogs” foresee that they intend to commit; meaning law enforcement are always one step ahead of criminals. Well, they try to be. Anderton’s loyalty to the system is tested when he is identified as the potential killer of a man that he’s never met, threatening his security, safety and sanity. Cruise brings all of his usual swagger and style in the lead, but it’s the supporting players who really make the film sing, including Colin Farrell as an agent for the Department of Justice and Samantha Morton (in a brilliantly raw performance) as a gifted “precog”. It’s head-bending, thought-provoking and anchored by ultimately humane performances – as all the best sci-fi should be. David Haig’s ambitious theatrical adaptation is showing now at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in London.
The Mountain Between Us (2017) ★★★
Channel 4, 11pm
There ain’t no mountain high enough, no valley low enough, nor a script absurd enough to keep Kate Winslet and Idris Elba from this far-fetched disaster movie. When a plane crash leaves complete strangers Alex (Winslet) and Ben (Elba) stranded together in the Rocky Mountains in midwinter, with nothing but a bagful of almonds to survive on, they must hobble together on an icy trek to civilisation.
