What’s on TV tonight: Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, and more

Tuesday 26 March

Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story
ITV1, 9pm
The psychologist and former political advisor Derek Draper was first admitted to hospital with Covid in March 2020. His condition was so severe that he spent the next five months in intensive care, often in an induced coma. His organs had failed. He had lost the power of speech. By the time he returned home, a year later, his body was so damaged by the disease that he required round-the-clock care. He died in January, at the age of 56, from a heart attack. His wife, the Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway, has previously made two documentaries about her husband’s struggle. 

The first, Finding Derek, detailed his time in hospital. The second, Caring for Derek, followed the enormous challenges Garraway and her family faced when Draper returned home. Tonight’s third instalment, Derek’s Story, takes us inside the final year of Draper’s life. Garraway has expressed doubts about making this, which promises to be as unflinching as it is intimate, but was persuaded by Draper himself. It explores the costs and difficulties of being an unpaid carer, as well as giving Garraway an opportunity to tell the story of his life, and their love. SK

Saving Lives at Sea
BBC Two, 8pm; not NI
Time is of the essence in Porthcawl, south Wales, where the lifeless body of a fisherman has been dragged out of the sea. What follows is a gripping race to the beach, as the local lifeboat crew join desperate attempts to resuscitate him.  

Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild
Channel 5, 9pm
It has been five years since Ben Fogle met Randi Skaug, the adventurer who had swapped city life for a new home on a remote island off the coast of Norway. Tonight, Fogle returns to find the island transformed. Most notably, it is now home to a fully functioning bar, which has made Skaug very popular with the local coastal community.

Ricky, Sue and a Trip for Two
More4, 9pm
The second leg of Brookside and Royle Family partners Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston’s nostalgic road trip takes them to the Midlands. One particularly powerful moment comes when Tomlinson returns to Shrewsbury Prison, where he served time as one of the “Shrewsbury Two” for “conspiracy to intimidate” while picketing.

Mary & George
Sky Atlantic, 9pm
What a joy it is to watch Nicola Walker face off against Hollywood titan Julianne Moore. Both actors are on superb form in the costume drama this week, as a fired-up Lady Hatton (Walker) tries to avert a marriage between her daughter and Mary’s (Moore) son. Elsewhere, King James (Tony Curran) nervously returns to Scotland. 

Night Coppers
Channel 4, 10pm
Policing Brighton on a Saturday night is like “they’ve opened all the cages in a zoo,” says one officer. Watching Night Coppers’ second series, they seem to have a point. The first episode opens with a shift full of violence and debauchery. The positive highlight, though, is Annie and Jack, the endearing cop duo who are forced into a midnight chase when a call for help goes awry.

Wreck
BBC Three, 10pm
The first series of this sharp, slick horror ended with the revelation that a shadowy cruise ship company had been allowing wealthy guests to kill its crew. Series two picks up on dry land, with ex-employee Jamie (Oscar Kennedy) working hard to expose a bloody cover-up. Cue a trip to a mysterious wellness retreat in Slovenia and a fiendishly twisty cliffhanger. 

Carmen (2022) ★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 7.50am/NOW Cinema  
Even the star presence of Irish actor Paul Mescal can’t save this confused take on Georges Bizet’s beautiful opera. French dancer Benjamin Millepied directs (in his feature debut) and transports the action to the fiery centre of the Mexican desert, where Mescal’s PTSD-stricken ex-Marine Aidan falls in love with the beautiful Carmen (Scream’s Melissa Barrera). The leads have chemistry, but the dialogue is slow.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983) ★★★
ITV4, 9pm  
This is the Pythons’s third and last film, and while it’s not as good as classics The Life of Brian and The Holy Grail, you’ll still enjoy seeing the comedy troupe at the peak of their lunacy pondering the most existential question of all. The film is a series of sketches tracing the stages of life, featuring live organ transplants, gore, sex, death, vomiting and various other bodily functions. Wafer-thin mint, anyone?

Bronson (2008) ★★★★★
Great! Movies, 11.40pm  
The term tour de force doesn’t begin to do justice to Tom Hardy’s astonishing performance in this violent portrait of Britain’s most notorious prisoner from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Charles Bronson was originally sentenced to seven years for armed robbery before deciding his real talent lay in wreaking havoc, leading to a total of 30 years in jail interspersed with short periods of freedom; Hardy portrays him with menace.

Wednesday 27 March

Professor T
ITV1, 9pm
ITV crime dramas are hardly revered for their genre-pushing narratives – male detective with demons (tick), plot centred on dead women (tick), a cheeky upstart in the force who holds the secret to solving the case (tick) – and Professor T is not one that avoids tropes. (Sunday’s Passenger is a welcome and honourable exception.) The second series ended with Ben Miller’s OCD-stricken Cambridge criminology professor Jasper being carted off to prison after an attempt to protect former lover DCI Christina Brand (Juliet Aubrey) went badly wrong. Now, he’s whiling away the days in jail, going mad over the dust and the dirt, the noise, and the attention from his curious fellow inmates.

Of course, Jasper’s talents for sussing out crimes are soon put to good use by the criminals in his orbit, as well as his long-standing colleagues on the outside. Detectives Lisa (Emma Naomi) and Dan (Barney White) are stuck over a murder case involving two brothers that has next to no leads. Could Jasper’s new surroundings hold vital clues? Throughout the first two seasons, Jasper’s struggles were attributed to a tragic event in his childhood – viewers will be relieved to hear the answers are finally within sight. PP

Barbie Uncovered: A Dreamhouse Divided
Sky Documentaries, 2am & 9pm
Following Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking blockbuster (and preceding a bumper exhibition at London’s Design Museum) comes this documentary charting the rise and rise of the all-American plastic doll. From battles between co-creators Ruth Handler and Jack Ryan to debates over Barbie’s role in a world increasingly obsessed with equality and diversity, it’s a fascinating saga, told through a series of interviews (with superfans, Mattel employees and Ryan’s daughter) and archive.

Andi Oliver’s Fabulous Feasts
BBC Two, 8pm
Always a delightfully cheery presence on our screens, Andi Oliver’s new series takes her across the UK to find food – and cooks – worth celebrating. First, we’re in Cornwall, where Oliver helps local chef Ben Quinn organise a beachfront feast for NHS staff, with live music and seasonal produce. 

Big Gay Wedding with Tom Allen
BBC One, 9pm; Scot, 10.40pm
Released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of same-sex marriage being legal in England and Wales, Tom Allen turns wedding planner (aided by celebrity pals including Oti Mabuse and Sophie Ellis-Bextor) to help couple Adam and Dan plan their big day.

Surgeons: At the Edge of Life
BBC Two, 9pm; NI, 11.15pm
Another absorbing look at the work of surgeons at Southampton’s University Hospital. This week, 27-year-old George receives urgent treatment for a tumour in his blood vessel, an operation made all the more pressing by his former battle with testicular cancer.

The 1980s Supermarket 
Channel 5, 9pm
Bovril, Spam, quiche Lorraine… This nostalgic root through Britain’s favourite foodie treats from the Eighties is filled with insights on how changing consumer habits (more money, bigger supermarkets) changed our shopping landscape for good.  

Mandy
BBC Two, 10pm & 10.15pm; not NI
Back for a third run, Diane Morgan’s chaos-plagued alter ego Mandy tries to juggle her flighty temperament with her new job – quite literally, as she’s decided to become an air hostess. But the job is nothing compared to the face from her past who shows up in the second episode. 

Next Goal Wins (2023) ★★
Disney+  
The gloriously uplifting true story of the American Samoan football team who tried to qualify for the 2014 World Cup should have been an easy score for Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit). But the director wastes the talents of lead star Michael Fassbender and gorges on sentimentality instead of humour. From Friday, you can catch Disney’s heartening Madu, which follows a gifted young Nigerian ballet dancer to England.

The Great Escape (1963) ★★★★★
Film4, 11am  
Still breathlessly exciting after all these years, John Sturges’s adaptation of the Paul Brickhill book follows a gang of Allied prisoners as they try to break out of a German PoW camp. Steve McQueen on a motorcycle remains the dominant image of the film – and an entire generation’s shorthand for suave, edgy cool. But there are many memorable vignettes, and the tension of the breakout is classic edge-of-your-seat cinema.

True Grit (1969) ★★★★★
Film4, 4.05pm  
John Wayne gives an imposing performance – for which he deservedly won an Oscar – in this muscular Western from Henry Hathaway. Wayne plays Rooster Cogburn, a hard-bitten marshal who’s called on to track down a murderer. Also on the trail are the victim’s 14-year-old daughter (Kim Darby) and an opportunistic Texas Ranger (Glen Campbell) who wants to collect the reward. A classic of the genre.

Thursday 28 March

Big Mood
Channel 4, 10pm & 10.35pm
With so much stand-up comedy riffing on mental health in recent years, it’s no surprise to find it now filtering down into scripted TV comedy. What is a surprise, though, is finding it filtering down into as original and subversively funny a comedy as this one. Written by Camilla Whitehill, it stars Nicola Coughlan (Derry Girls) and Lydia West (It’s a Sin) as best pals Maggie and Eddie, respectively, whose relationship is dominated by Maggie’s bipolar disorder. 

Friends for a decade and now heading into their 30s – with pressures of work, family and unfulfilled ambition beginning to bite hard – their relationship is pushed to its limit when Maggie’s disorder shows worrying signs of making a return. Coughlan and West are a perfect pairing here: the former an impish, uncontainable explosion of chaos on screen, and the latter the balancing element of superficial calm. Tonight’s opening double bill (the full six-episode series is available on Channel 4 online from today) takes two fairly ordinary set ups – a school speech and a birthday party – and lights them up with some of the most outrageously funny, heartwarming scenes to hit our screens this year. GO

American Rust
Amazon Prime Video
The US crime drama featuring Jeff Daniels as the sheriff in a depressed steel town returns, revived by Amazon following Showtime’s premature decision to cancel it after just one series. Most of the cast, including the excellent Maura Tierney, are also back, and the story is more nuanced than ever before – kicking off with a mysterious series of mail bomb attacks. 

Grey’s Anatomy
Disney+
Fans of the long-running (this is its 20th season) Seattle-based medical drama will be relieved to see lead character Dr Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) weighing up her options after last season’s cliffhanger, which suggested that she was leaving the show. But could the end of her reign be imminent? 

Bruce Lee: A Life in Ten Pictures
BBC Two, 9pm
Live fast, die young is a tag perfectly befitting of this portrait of the pioneering martial artist and film star, who took the world by storm in the 1970s. Those who knew him best, including former wife Linda, daughter Shannon and colleagues, recall 10 key moments in his brief – he died at just 32 – but very eventful life.

The Twelve
ITV1, 9pm
Sam Neill leads this twisty Australian courtroom drama to its terrestrial showing after an ITVX premiere last year. It gets off to a slow start in tonight’s opening double-bill, setting us up to follow – in off-puttingly minute detail – the lives of jury members in the trial of a woman accused of murdering her missing niece. Despite Neill’s best efforts, you’re left at a loss as to why you should care.

Taskmaster
Channel 4, 9pm
Nick Mohammed, Steve Pemberton, Joanne McNally, John Robins and Sophie Willan are the latest (unlucky?) five tasked with undertaking fiendish challenges in hope of amusing dastardly show dictator Greg Davies. Egg-protection and gorilla-ring-tossing are among the nonsense trials set by Alex Horne in tonight’s deliciously chaotic opener.

The Hotel Inspector
Channel 5, 9pm
With the UK hospitality sector in crisis, Alex Polizzi casts her net wider as the business rescue series returns. In her sights, tonight, a British-Italian couple who run a lovely but woefully unprofitable café in a livery yard in a Somerset village. Weighing in with gusto, Polizzi soon comes up with new routes to success. 

Breaker Morant (1980, b/w) ★★★★★
Great! Action, 4.50pm  
One of the all-time great war films, Bruce Beresford’s epic focuses on one of the first war-crime prosecutions in British military history. Lieutenants Harry Morant (Edward Woodward), Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown) and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) were all Aussies serving in the British Army during the Second Anglo-Boer War, and stood accused of murdering PoWs and an unarmed civilian. Their trials are portrayed in thrilling detail.

The Breakfast Club (1985) ★★★★★
Comedy Central, 9pm  
John Hughes’s 1980s smash centres on five disparate students stuck together in detention, as they begin to realise that they are more than stereotypes: the swot (Anthony Michael Hall), the jock (Emilio Estevez), the basket case (Ally Sheedy), the snobby princess (Molly Ringwald) and the rebel (Judd Nelson). The latter’s raised fist, soundtracked by Don’t You Forget About Me, remains one of cinema’s most gloriously romantic moments.

Stand by Me (1986) ★★★★★
Film4, 9pm  
Few dramas about youth can rival Rob Reiner’s powerful tale about four plucky boys who go in search of a missing teenager. Based on Stephen King’s autobiographical novella, it’s beautifully observed and wonderfully nostalgic. It’s also probably the finest film that River Phoenix (brother to Joaquin) made, his appearance a sad reminder of a talent wasted when he died only seven years later at the age of 23.

Friday 29 March

A Gentleman in Moscow
Paramount+
Ben Vanstone, the man behind Channel 5’s hugely successful revival of All Creatures Great and Small, here takes on something completely different: Amor Towles’s acclaimed 2016 novel about Count Alexander Rustov, a Russian whose house arrest in 1917 in the poky attic of Moscow’s Hotel Metropol lasts for years as the world changes around him. Ewan McGregor gives his finest small-screen performance to date, lavishly moustachioed but essaying a sensibly neutral accent as the urbane aristocrat who refuses to give his captors the satisfaction of seeing him defeated, despite the attentions of Johnny Harris’s scowling Bolshevik. 

Rustov’s fellow residents include Paul Ready’s prince and a sharp-witted actress (played by McGregor’s real-life wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead), as well as Nina (Alexa Goodall), the young daughter of a widowed bureaucrat, with whom he forms a critical bond. Despite a superfluous voice-over and initial emotional reserve, the rich variety of characterisation and unaffected warmth of McGregor’s performance snares the interest in an elegant eight-part adaptation, which should please fans of the book and newcomers alike. GT

Steve!
Apple TV+
Enjoying a late-career renaissance thanks to Only Murders in the Building, Steve Martin is the focus of Morgan Neville’s winning profile, told across two timelines: the first, through glorious archive, relates his rise to stand-up superstardom, while the second has the septuagenarian looking back on his life.

Renegade Nell
Disney+
Sally Wainwright relocates her abiding interests in family and justice to 18th-century England in this rollicking ride which casts Derry Girls’s Louisa Harland as highwaywoman Nell Jackson, residing on the fringes of society. In her favour: a sprite with magical powers called Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed). Counting against her: a murder charge. 

The Sewer Map of Britain
Channel 5, 8pm
Mark Benton narrates the broadcaster’s latest gently informative survey of a national niche, this one spanning London and Hadrian’s Wall, Roman invention and modern innovation, adding a generous dollop of unpleasantness for good measure.

Pilgrimage: the Road through North Wales
BBC Two, 9pm; Wales, 9.30pm
Casting is everything for this annual spiritual trek, and this year’s yomp (from Flint Castle to Bardsey Island) gathers another diverse group including The Traitors’ Amanda Lovett, actor Tom Rosenthal and presenter Christine McGuinness. The revelations come thick and fast in another series with much to appeal, whether you’re devout or a non-believer. 

The Life and Death of Lily Savage
ITV1, 9pm
A year on from his death, Paul O’Grady’s beloved alter ego receives her due in this funny and often very affecting documentary following their trailblazing campaigning against homophobia up to 2004, when Lily Savage was retired and O’Grady settled into the bosom of mainstream television. Ian McKellen, Graham Norton and O’Grady’s sister, Sheila Rudd, all contribute.

Chernobyl: Countdown to Armageddon
Channel 5, 10pm
Few revelations here, but a briskly useful summary of the story behind the infamous nuclear disaster   – interest in which remains high since the 2019 drama – and an overview of the impact of the war in Ukraine make this Ben Fogle-narrated film worth a look. 

The Beautiful Game (2024) ★★★
Netflix  
The second of this week’s football-themed offerings stars the reliably excellent Bill Nighy as an experienced football coach tasked with getting a team of gifted but troubled British footballers to the Homeless World Cup tournament in Rome (this year’s real-life competition will be held in Seoul). The players’s circumstances and demons threaten to come between them and the game. Top Boy’s Micheal Ward is the talented striker with everything at stake. Thea Sharrock directs.

Kung Fu Panda (2008) ★★★★
Channel 4, 12.30pm  
Jack Black delivers a suitably silly performance as the voice of the hero in this delightful animated semi-spoof of martial arts movies. After being identified as the Dragon Warrior, pot-bellied panda Po (Black) is forced to train for a showdown with evil master and snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane). Further animal-animated fun – perfect for the Easter weekend – can be found in Hop (2011) on ITV2 at 4.30pm.

PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023) ★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 4.05pm/Paramount+  
If you happen to have children – or grandchildren – under five, chances are your life has already been haunted by the presence of Paw Patrol’s heroic pups. Here, the gang – Marshall (Christian Corrao), Skye (McKenna Grace) et al – head into space to stop a super-galactic villain in his tracks. For some reason, Kim Kardashian and her children (North and Saint) also lend their voices.

Barbie (2023) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm  
It might have been shunned at the Oscars – its sole win was for Best Original Song – but Greta Gerwig’s bubblegum extravaganza made more than a billion dollars worldwide and brought us “Kenergy” (thanks, Ryan Gosling). Margot Robbie is the plastic doll trapped in a Truman Show-esque world where women rule… until they don’t. More Gosling treats with La La Land, in which he plays a struggling jazz pianist, on BBC Two at 11pm.

Television previewers

Stephen Kelly (SK), Veronica Lee (VL), Gerard O’Donovan (GO), Poppie Platt (PP) and Gabriel Tate (GT)