CRITICS’ CHOICE
Pick of the day
Secrets Of Growing Up (ITV, 9pm)
The sister programme to last week’s Secrets of Growing Old begins by lining up children who have extraordinary abilities or have done remarkable things, such as Sienna who, at five, saved her mother’s life. More high-achievers appear as the film advances, including boys who display teenage willingness to take risks (a skyscraper climber) and problem-solving skills (a precocious physicist). Even examples illustrating negative sides to being young — narcissism, staying in bed — end happily, with interviewees celebrated for finding a solution.
While these mini-stories are expertly told, the relentless perkiness soon grate, though. Irksome, too, is the vagueness of the references to research (“scientists have discovered”) and the commentary’s tendency to make dodgy generalisations, such as its staggeringly dated assertion that “any teenager” will want “to be attractive to the opposite sex”.
John Dugdale
Friends for life
Rescue Dog To Super Dog (C4, 8pm)
Yet another dogs-are-lovely series, but with a very Channel 4 twist: these are rescued dogs that become rescuers, helping people with disabling conditions rebuild their lives. Two specialist trainers pick the dogs and teach their new owners how to train them. In the opener, Emily, who suffers from narcolepsy and cataplexy (sudden collapses), is paired with Poppy, a former stray; while Alan, who has Tourette’s and, like Emily, has little social life, gets Duke to wake him up and give him a reason to get out of the house. Both adore their dogs, but the training is not without its hiccups.
Art for art’s sake
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards (Sky Arts, 8pm)
Celebrating their 20th anniversary, Melvyn Bragg’s gongs claim to be the only ones anywhere that “focus on the arts in their entirety”. Many illustrious figures have won in the past, and a typically rich line-up of 2016 contenders includes Banksy (visual art), Sleaford Mods (pop), Peter Kay and Sharon Horgan (comedy) and the makers of the National Theatre’s People, Places and Things, BBC2’s Wolf Hall, Glyndebourne’s Saul and the Royal Ballet’s Woolf Works. Most categories are dominated by offerings from England: did Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales really fail to produce anything of sufficient quality?
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Heartfelt documentary
The Big C & Me (BBC1, 9pm)
This show should come with its own health warning: only those with hearts strong enough to withstand an hour of emotionally manipulative editing and stories of human bravery both familiar and yet unimaginable should watch. Viewers will meet the magnificent June, 83, who must decide whether or not to risk the pain of chemotherapy to cure her pancreatic cancer, and whose worried daughters want her to write a “bucket list” of experiences to get started on. “I don’t want to go to Morecambe, that’s for sure,” she says.
French connection
Versailles (BBC2, 9pm)
In treating the disputed story of Queen Maria Theresa’s illegitimate child as fact, this drama immediately set out its stall with pleasing honesty. Historical rigour be damned, this is a lavish royal drama, not a documentary; viewers will have to tune to BBC4 for actual facts. In episode two, Louis XIV must decide what to do with the child, but who can he trust to discuss such a secret? Only his valet and gardener, both of whom are played by Scottish actors on hand to dispense couthy homespun wisdom. So much for the Auld Alliance, then; here the Scots are recast as mere underlings.
Political high jinks
Power Monkeys (C4, 10pm)
After sending up British politics in Ballot Monkeys in the run-up to last year’s election, Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin take aim at international targets in a follow-up series largely written on the day of transmission. As the UK’s referendum approaches, Claire Skinner and Jack Dee play figures in the Conservatives’ pro-Remain “Unity Unit”; Kevin McNally and Andy Nyman’s characters are on the “Brexit Roadshow” bus and Archie Panjabi’s Preeya is a vacillating Tory careerist. Also somehow squeezed in are glimpses of Donald Trump’s campaign plane (with Amelia Bullmore as an adviser on wooing women voters) and aides to Vladimir Putin.
John Dugdale and Helen Stewart
Sport choice
ATP Tennis (Eurosport, 10am/1pm)
T20 Cricket (Sky Sports 2, 6pm)
Cycling (ITV4, 7pm)
Tour Series Cycling (ITV4, 8pm)
TT: Supersport Race 2 (ITV4, 9pm)
The Motorsport Mavericks (ITV4, 10pm)
Euro 2016 — Football Focus (BBC1, 10.45pm)
You say
The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC2) must surely be one of the most successful programme formats around because I really enjoy and look forward to watching it — and yet I hate sewing.
Susie Lewis
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I was again disappointed to see that, without exception, both judges and contestants in this year’s series had been unable to change their outfits overnight for the second day of each round. Could the first challenge next year be to sew an outfit to wear on the second day?
Keith Swinnerton
A rare beast was on show in Grayson Perry — All Man (C4): a presenter more interested in the subject’s answers than the image of himself on TV. The moral void at the heart of our financial masters quietly exposed to show. The scary males weren’t on the estate.
Elaine Durant
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FILM CHOICE
Great Expectations (1946)
Film 4, 2.30pm
One of the very best Dickens adaptations, David Lean’s film (starring John Mills) is made up of wonderful sights, including the windswept gothic fenlands of the opening scenes and the decrepitude of Miss Havisham’s mansion. A particularly fruitful purpose of the movie’s visual style is to tinge the story with the mood of a fairy tale. (B/W)
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The Look Of Love (2013)
Film 4, 1.40am
Michael Winterbottom’s biopic of the Soho porn tycoon Paul Raymond keeps on-screen sex and nudity to a minimum, not wanting to muddy its credentials as a serious portrait. Yet it also averts its gaze from the things such films are meant to expose: the key truths of its subject’s inner life. Steve Coogan’s performance is still entertaining, however, and the movie gives us a colourful picture of Raymond’s epicurean world.