THE HUNT FOR THE WORLD'S END KILLERS | ROB BURROW: LIVING WITH MND | FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th October 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Hunt for the World’s End Killers – Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

45 years ago, the bodies of two young women, Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, were discovered six miles apart in East Lothian. They’d been brutally murdered. Close friends since childhood, they were last seen alive in the World’s End pub on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. A major investigation ensued. 

Sensitively handled and impressively researched, this absorbing two-part documentary recounts an utterly tragic saga with far more depth and context than one usually finds in programmes of this nature. 

Bolstered by insightful contributions from various journalists, authors and retired police officers, it’s a rigorous piece of social history which, among many other things, covers some landmark developments in the support for female victims of sexual violence. An exemplary essay.

Rob Burrow: Living with MND – Tuesday, BBC Two, 7pm

Rugby League legend Rob Burrow was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2019. This intimate documentary follows Rob, wife Lindsey and their kids as they deal with the everyday reality of living with a degenerative condition. 

It’s a frank, tender portrait of a loving family doing everything within their power to get by.

The Burrows are abundantly nice, kind and decent people. Their love for each other is quietly inspiring. 

Life is awfully cruel, but if you’re lucky enough to have a devoted support network, well, that must never be taken for granted. It helps us to cope with all the other difficult things we’re sometimes forced to deal with. We endure. We have to.

Unapologetic – Wednesday, Channel 4, 11:05pm

I haven’t seen this topical talk show, but it sounds quite interesting. Hence why I’m flagging it up. 

Your hosts are Yinka Bokinni and Zeze Millz. Their M.O. is this: discussing nuanced subjects – in a light-hearted way - that public figures tend to avoid for fear of being ‘cancelled’. 

That’s an absolute minefield, obviously. I’m no fan of culture war mendacity, but bear in mind that Bokinni and Millz are people of colour. This isn’t yet another forum for middle-aged white celebrities to drone tediously on about how “you can’t say anything anymore.” 

Does that mean it’s any good? I’ve no idea. But you may be intrigued by some of the socio-political issues under discussion.

Aldi’s Next Big Thing – Thursday, Channel 4, 8pm

Anita Rani and award-winning grocer Chris Bavin host this new series in which small-scale British food and drink producers get the rare opportunity to pitch their products to Britain's fourth biggest supermarket chain, Aldi. The ultimate prize is a life-changing contract with those towering Gods of retail. 

So yes, it’s very much your standard competitive TV hootenanny. Dragon’s Den on a manageable budget. But that’s fine, it means no actual harm. 

Episode one throws a glaring spotlight upon two budding entrepreneurs who reckon that our tiny insect friends are the future of nutrition, plus some obsessive pie and sauce makers. 

This will never be mistaken for essential television, but it serves as a distraction.

Unreported World – Friday, Channel 4, 7:30pm

This week, investigative journalist Sahar Zand delves behind the scenes of Japan’s increasingly controversial Sumo wrestling industry. 

Sumo is a centuries-old tradition, an important and respected facet of Japanese culture, but in recent years it’s been criticised for failing to take care of the wrestlers who partake in it. 

Zand spends time with a 12-year-old boy, Kyuta, who hopes to become a grand champion. To achieve that goal, he’ll have to earn a place in the ‘Sumo stable’, an institution that’s shrouded in secrecy. 

Zand meets former wrestlers who describe life in the ‘stable’ as nothing more than servitude. Concerns are mounting for the physical and psychological health of these men.

Friday Night Live – Friday, Channel 4, 9pm

The Channel 4 alternative comedy showcase Saturday/Friday Night Live was a formative experience for myself and millions of other ‘80s comedy-crazed kids. 

We already loved The Young Ones and The Comic Strip Presents, Rik Mayall et al were our heroes, but this anarchic variety extravaganza also introduced us to the brilliant likes of Jo Brand, Julian Clary, Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Fry & Laurie and Paul Merton. 

This one-off revival, hosted by Elton of course, won’t pack such a punch, it’s an exercise in nostalgia, but I suppose it’ll be quite nice to revisit the format. 

The bill includes the aforementioned Brand, Clary and Enfield, plus some young, current circuit comics.

Am I Being Unreasonable? – Friday, BBC One, 9:30pm

We’ve reached the penultimate episode of this delightfully dry and eccentric comedy thriller about a village-dwelling wife and mother (co-writer Daisy May Cooper) whose already complicated life becomes even stranger when she befriends a woman (co-writer Selin Hizli) with a mysterious past. 

Am I Being Unreasonable? is one of those addictive shows that takes you completely by surprise. A gut-punching sleeper hit. Thanks to the excellent This Country, we already knew that Cooper was a talented writer/performer, but this is a more striking piece of work as far as I’m concerned. 

And I hope it’s a one-series deal, as next week’s finale is perfect. A sequel might dilute its impact.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Our Dementia Choir Sings Again with Vicky McClure – Monday 10th October, BBC One

Four years ago, the actor Vicky McClure formed a choir of people living with dementia. Like so many of us, she’s lost a loved one to that illness. The therapeutic power of music proved to be very effective. 

In this poignant sequel to her original programme, McClure reconvened with various members of the choir. Inevitably, some of them aren’t in great shape. 

Hats off to McClure, her choir and their family members/carers for refusing to hold back on the fundamental point of this endeavour: people with dementia require so much more support from a system that’s skewed against them. 

An uplifting show tempered with deep-seated despair, this is public service broadcasting at somewhere near its best. The series concludes on Monday 17th October.

Rise of the Nazis: The Downfall – Monday 10th October, BBC Two

The final series of this estimable documentary project began in December 1944. Hitler’s regime is in freefall, they’ve clearly lost the war. Hitler, of course, refuses to accept reality. 

As always, the purpose of this series is to examine the psychology, not only of Hitler and his chief enablers, but also that of the German footsoldiers and everyday citizens. It’s a grimly fascinating study of what happens when fascism prevails over a nation. 

As strange as this may sound, it offers some hope: fascist dictatorships will always fail because they are, by their very nature, chaotic cults founded on the monomaniacal obsessions of ‘charismatic’ yet utterly insane bigots. 

This episode, and the previous six, are available on iPlayer. Highly recommended.  

TV Column: GROWING UP POOR: BRITAIN'S BREADLINE KIDS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 30th November 2019.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

NEXT WEEK’S TV

GROWING UP POOR: BRITAIN’S BREADLINE KIDS

Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

As we inch ever closer to the most important General Election in years, Channel 4’s Dispatches team present this vital, devastating report on poverty. More than four million British children are growing up hungry. Unforeseen circumstances can send families into tailspin. We meet a mother of two who was forced into emergency accommodation after fleeing from an abusive partner. She’s struggling to support her kids via the catastrophic Universal Credit system. They couldn’t survive without access to one of the many food banks that exist in this great unequal nation of ours. No one should have to live like that. Meanwhile, a depressed teenager who lives with her family in sheltered accommodation struggles with suicidal thoughts. Watch and weep.

HOW TO SAVE £1000 ONLINE

Tuesday, Channel 4, 8pm

Hey, we all love shopping, right? Of course we do! But did you know that online retailers use mendacious techniques to strip you of your hard-earned cash? Don’t worry, though, as here come a pair of breezy experts to tell you how to avoid being ripped off. The immediate beneficiaries of their valuable teachings are two shopaholic families who waste thousands of pounds every year on expensive clothes and holidays. You’ll be forgiven for struggling to care about the overwhelming plight of these poor, beleaguered people. It beggars belief that Channel 4 would show this programme just 24 hours after the transmission of Growing Up Poor: Britain’s Breadline Kids, but I don’t suppose the contrast ever occurred to them.

MY GRANDPARENTS’ WAR

Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

As if to apologise for the previous evening’s blundering transgression, Channel 4 get back on track with part two of this compelling WWII history series. This week’s famous guide is anti-war campaigner and one of the world’s greatest living actors, Mark Rylance. His grandfather, Osmond, spent almost four years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A Hong Kong-based banker with no military experience, Osmond bravely joined a volunteer defence force in December 1941. On Christmas Day of that year he was shot and imprisoned. Rylance, who comes across as a lovely, sensitive soul, uncovers the moving story of a man who, like so many men who endured harrowing ordeals during the war, rarely spoke about it afterwards.

COUNTRY MUSIC: A FILM BY KEN BURNS

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

Multi-award-winning documentarian Ken Burns is renowned for his epic accounts of American history. It was only a matter of time before he got around to country music, an ancient stream at the heart of the nation’s divided, complex culture. In episodes five and six he reaches the mid-1960s, a tumultuous era of change and revolt when certain preternaturally rebellious artists from the largely conservative world of country music commented sympathetically on current events. He focuses on Godlike feminist trailblazers Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, indomitable human rights activist Johnny Cash, Fellini-inspired hippie cowboy Kris Kristofferson and the extraordinary African-American country singer Charley Pride. Country music prides itself on integrity: these guys are the ultimate bastions.

LAST WEEK’S TV

KILL YOUR TV: JIM MOIR’S WEIRD WORLD OF VIDEO ART

Sunday 24th November, BBC Four

If you’ve ever wondered where Jim Moir, aka Vic Reeves, gets his kerrazy ideas from, you only have to watch programmes such as this. Moir is an avant-garde artist who became a comedian by mistake. This documentary, in which he explored the colourful history of artists exploiting video technology for wild, subversive means, was probably the closest we’ll ever get to a mission statement from someone whose work defies logic.

MEAT: A THREAT TO OUR PLANET?

Monday 25th November, BBC One

Humans feast upon 65 billion animals a year. Scientific research has confirmed that meat production is one of the biggest causes of our environmental crisis. In this commendably grave and urgent documentary, animal biologist (and meat-eater) Liz Bonnin became increasingly horrified by her findings. She also provided some hope via rational solutions to the problem. Remember rational solutions? How quaint.

THE MAN WHO SAW TOO MUCH

Wednesday 27th November, BBC One

Say what you like about Alan Yentob (I always do), but fair play to the man: his stark documentary about Boris Pahor, a 106-year-old survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, was riveting. Pahor spent time in Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Natzweiler. The latter is rarely spoken about, despite being one of the most horrific camps of its kind. A powerful piece of television.

TV Review: SS-GB + INSIDE NO. 9

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 25 February 2017.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

SS-GB: Sunday, BBC One

INSIDE NO. 9: Tuesday, BBC Two

In the twisted annals of alternative history, one theoretical question dominates: what if the Nazis had won World War II?

This nightmare scenario has inspired such notable works of counterfactual fiction as Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Kevin Brownlow’s It Happened Here and that episode of Star Trek with Joan Collins.

It also forms the basis of SS-GB, a 1978 novel by Len Deighton. Set in a parallel 1941, after Germany won the Battle of Britain, it depicts occupied London as a forbidding maze of summary executions and a growing Resistance movement. Scotland Yard still exists, albeit as an adjunct to the SS.

So far, so intriguing. Unfortunately, SS-GB squanders the potential of its ‘what-if?’ scenario by focusing on a conventional murder mystery. Alternative history thrives on plausibly imaginative details, but aside from the impressive spectacle of a bomb-torn Buckingham Palace, episode one didn’t depict this world in a particularly rich or compelling way.

While strong on smoky atmosphere, the narrative burned far too slowly.

Deighton’s novel has been dragged to the screen by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the writers behind every Bond film starring Daniel Craig. If, like me, you regard those films as moderately entertaining at best, then your expectations for SS-GB will have been lowered accordingly. Even so, I expected more.

The only truly interesting facet so far is our intriguingly compromised hero, DS Douglas Archer (Sam Riley), a lawman who’s earned the trust of his Nazi overlords while secretly praying for their eventual destruction.

Despite Riley’s youthful appearance, he seems older than his years, thanks largely to his raspy channelling of the late John Hurt (possibly as a nod to Hurt’s performance in 1984). 

Affecting the distinctive brogue of another actor could’ve backfired embarrassingly, but Riley’s charismatic, committed performance transcends mere plagiarism. He makes the most of his ambiguous role.

Authors have always returned to the concept of an Axis victory because it could so easily have happened. It’s a frighteningly plausible piece of skewed reality. Fascism remains a threat to this day – just look at the White House. By rights, SS-GB should tap into those fears in a powerful, queasy way.

Instead, it merely dresses them up in lugubriously stylised noir-ish threads: Peaky Blinders meets ‘Allo ‘Allo with a riding crop up its rectum.

It didn’t stir into action until the third-act arrival of a clichéd yet arrestingly unpleasant SS officer with whom Archer must form an uneasy alliance. But even the threat of a bomb at Archer’s son’s school couldn’t quicken the pulse of this thin, murky, wasted opportunity. 

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith packed more tension into 30 minutes of INSIDE NO. 9 than SS-GB managed in an hour.

When four men arguing over a restaurant bill feels more high-stakes than a Nazi occupation of Britain, you know you’re in the presence of ingenious writers.

Every episode of their justly celebrated anthology series is different, but the latest was typical in the way it continually subverted expectations, even when you thought the final twist had already been revealed.

However, on this occasion I wish they actually had settled on the cunning revelation that the whole argument was an elaborate scam at the expense of wealthy businessman Philip Glenister. The final twist – having rumbled their plot, Glenister becomes their accomplice – was too sudden and felt unnecessary.  

Still, this otherwise entertaining episode proved once again that Pemberton and Shearsmith operate within the highest echelons of television writing. 

No one else manages to combine character-driven black comedy and tightly-woven drama with as much finesse; I hope they’re given carte blanche to create this magnificent series for as long as their fiendish brains will allow.

TV Review: THE HALCYON + UNFORGOTTEN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 7 January 2017.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

THE HALCYON: Monday, STV

UNFORGOTTEN: Thursday, STV

If escaping to the past beats facing up to a brutal future, then how better to ignore the birth of 2017 than traveling back to a glamourous five-star London hotel in 1940? Sure, World War II and all that, but weren’t the fashions divine?

Welcome, then, to THE HALCYON, where jitterbugs and doodlebugs collide in a streamlined tumult of soapy wartime melodrama: Downton Abbey with ration books and epaulettes.

A hotel is a classic setting for drama, offering as it does a myriad of stories operating under one convenient roof. In this case we have a Savoy-esque palace populated by various characters divided by class, nationality and politics, most of them portrayed by familiar TV faces.

Chief among them are the perennially watchable Steven Mackintosh as Garland, the ambiguous hotel manager whose outward propriety hides a scheming underbelly – Mackintosh excels at playing seemingly ordinary men with a sinister edge – and his haughty yet melancholy nemesis Lady Hamilton, played by Olivia Williams. She’s The Halcyon’s widowed owner who, for reasons only hinted at, despises Garland and his murky relationship with her late husband.

It’s a shame Lord H bumped himself off in episode one, as he was enjoyably portrayed with philandering ennui by the excellent Alex Jennings. He reminded me of Paul Whitehouse’s caddish 13^th Duke of Wybourne from The Fast Show: “Me, Lord Hamilton, here? In the bathroom of a naked jazz chanteuse? With my reputation?!”

The lifts are also jammed with the likes of Mark Benton plying his usual trade as an affably lugubrious concierge, Charity Wakefield – last seen over Christmas playing a surrogate Lois Lane in Doctor Who – as, well, a glamourous Nazi sympathiser, and Absolutely’s Gordon Kennedy as a caustic Scottish chef – the ghost of Crossroads’ Hughie McPhee looms large.

Of less interest are a simpering receptionist, a gaggle of identikit posh blokes and two big band-style songs from Radio 2 jazz squid Jamie Cullum.

Filmed within an impressive studio set shot and dressed with appropriate opulence, The Halcyon is a blatant attempt by ITV to replicate the success of Downton Abbey and Mr Selfridge. It’s also indebted to practically every Stephen Poliakoff drama ever made, albeit set to a brisker pace (which wouldn’t be hard - the tombs of Ramesses are more animated than most Poliakoff dramas).

Nevertheless, the show set its well-trodden wheels in motion in confident and fairly promising style. Seeing as it clings so unashamedly to ITV’s Posh Soap blueprint – sex, serfs, toffs and fancy furnishings - success for The Halcyon is almost a formality.

Already a deserved hit for ITV, superior crime drama UNFORGOTTEN returned with another byzantine cold case for refreshingly normal and compassionate detectives Cassie and Sunny (Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar, whose underplayed chemistry remains a key component).

This time they’re investigating a grisly unsolved murder from 1990. Naturally, the formula that proved so effective last year remains intact: when Cassie and Sunny eventually discover the identity of an unfortunate corpse, they’re plunged into an England-spanning mystery involving several seemingly unconnected characters.

Series Two’s suspects include an NHS nurse, a Muslim schoolteacher and a gay barrister: an apoplectic Daily Mail nightmare writ large. Good.

With all the requisite intrigue in place, the pressure is on for Unforgotten to match the twisting heights of series one.

If it does, then its reputation as one of the best TV dramas of its kind is secured.

TV Review: MY MOTHER AND OTHER STRANGERS + THE PITY OF WAR: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF THE WAR POETS

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 19 November 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

MY MOTHER AND OTHER STRANGERS

Sunday, BBC One

THE PITY OF WAR: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF THE WAR POETS

Sunday, STV

As befits the spirit of Remembrance Sunday, our rival networks came together last weekend to commemorate both world wars.

Despite being tainted with a nagging tug of predictability, BBC One’s MY MOTHER AND OTHER STRANGERS is a fairly promising new drama about life in a rural Northern Ireland parish in 1943.

The opening scenes didn’t bode well. They unfurled in a studiously tasteful procession of wartime clichés: children staring up at bombers flying overhead; women in woollen berets riding bicycles; flat-capped men grumbling about spam; US airmen swaggering into town on a wave of big band jazz (“All right, boys, this is a dance, but they call it a ceilidh!”).

The only thing missing was our old friend, the untethered horse cantering down a cobbled high street.

Thankfully, those dubious first impressions were gradually laid to rest. Much like Call the Midwife, this is a cosmetically pretty – it’s beautifully photographed - yet fundamentally solemn and understated Sunday night confection.

Our protagonists are the Coyne family. Mother Rose (Hattie Morahan, hitherto best known as the neurotic Jane from Outnumbered) is an educated Englishwoman whose role as a pillar of the community still can’t overcome her alien status. Although somewhat snobbish, she’s perceptive, humane and – so it transpired – willing to take up arms.

Her conflicted Irish husband, Michael, runs the local boozer, while her teenage daughter and young son (whose weathered adult narration, courtesy of Ciaran Hinds, provides the requisite air of ambiguous nostalgia) struggle to make sense of their war-torn playground.

In time-honoured and occasionally over-literal fashion, it’s a child’s-eye view of a perplexing adult world.

When Rose encountered a Tennyson-quoting US army captain (Mad Men actor Aaron Staton) on a picturesque clifftop, the stage was set for an inevitable “will they, won’t they?” romance. Likewise, there were few surprises in the story of Rose’s innocent daughter falling for a charming American airman. His cards were marked from the moment he appeared.

Nevertheless, it was a rather poignant vignette about adolescent confusion and the tragedy of young men being sent off to certain death. These stories are fictional, although loosely based on actual incidents. A palpable sense of sadness permeates proceedings, and writer Barry Devlin isn’t afraid to explore the underlying darkness, violence and bigotry of his rain-drenched parish.

If he cuts back on the clichés, then I don’t see why this sincerely tender drama couldn’t run and run.

Though generally dismissed as a bulwark of bottom-drawer populism, ITV is very occasionally capable of producing programmes of surprising sensitivity and depth.

THE PITY OF WAR: THE LIVES AND LOVES OF THE WAR POETS was one such anomaly.

This one-off docudrama paid tribute to the soldiers whose experiences in the trenches during World War One inspired some the greatest anti-war poetry ever written.

It was framed by John Hurt as an ageing Siegfried Sassoon, still haunted by the war 50 years later. The great Thespian’s husky voice caressed Sassoon’s starkly disillusioned words, while younger actors read from letters, diaries and poems to provide a horrifyingly vivid picture of life on the frontline.

The emotionally-charged yet platonic mentor/student relationship between Sassoon and Wilfred Owen was touchingly portrayed. Owen, our greatest wartime poet, was killed in action just one week before Armistice Day. But his harrowing work lives on.

This graceful programme served as a fitting testament to the subversive genius of two outstanding poets, and to the fallen soldiers whose hellish nightmare they immortalised so unsparingly.

TV Review: KEITH RICHARDS: THE ORIGINS OF THE SPECIES + THE MARVELLOUS WORLD OF ROALD DAHL

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 30th July 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

Keith Richards: The Origins of the Species: Saturday, BBC Two

The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl: Saturday, BBC Two

  

Keith Richards and Roald Dahl: together at last! They may not seem like natural bedfellows, but during last Saturday’s generous documentary double-bill, it struck me that both were natural-born storytellers and nonconformists who have enriched our lives immeasurably.

If you had to define the essence of Keith – eau de Keef - then look no further than the moment in Keith Richards: The Origins of the Species when he recounted a charming childhood memory of his visits to Dartford marshes.

“I saw my first dead man there,” he noted. That faux-casual use of “first”, as if it was merely a throwaway detail, spoke volumes about a man who understands his own myth.

This entertaining hour in the company of one of rock’s great raconteurs was a Rolling Stones documentary with a difference: it ended at the point where the band were about to form.

It focused instead on The Human Riff’s formative years in monochrome, bombsite Dartford, told in his own colourful words. It also functioned as an iconoclastic piece of post-war social history. A keen history buff with a distinctive eye for detail, Keith should have his own BBC Four series by now. If they don’t hurry up, Channel 4 will poach him as the new host of Time Team.

Despite his legendary intake of Bad Things, his memory is remarkably lucid. Reliably funny and engaging – your cup would runneth over with joie de vivre if you’d survived what he has – he told his story with a throaty mix of wry nostalgia and genuine warmth, especially when discussing his family.  

Julien Temple, a director famed for such classic documentaries as The Filth and The Fury, bolstered Keith’s anecdotes in typically inventive style with an eclectic collage of archive footage scored to Stones music and period pop hits. His camera revelled in the lizard-like contours of rock’s craggiest visage. That nicotine cackle and woozy grin were in full, glorious effect.

When infant Keith’s England was being bombed during the war, Roald Dahl was protecting it as an RAF pilot. The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl began with him crashing his plane in Africa. He was lucky to survive. A life-changing incident, it inspired his first piece of published writing. He frequently returned to the magic and terror of flight.

As this fascinating and touching essay made clear, all of Dahl’s classic yarns contained elements of autobiography. Childhood encounters with vicious adults, the tragic loss of comrades during the war, even his own wife’s stroke – her mangled language inspired The BFG – all found their way into his work. Yet he incorporated these dark matters with such sensitivity, they never felt ghoulish.   

Told using extracts from his memoirs, as read by Robert Lindsay and illustrated by the great Quentin Blake, it confirmed my belief that the most beloved children’s author of all time – face facts, Walliams – was one of the greatest literary geniuses of the 20^th century.

He understood implicitly that children love reading about frightening things, just as long as the author lightens the darkness with humour.

He endured the horrors of war. His survivor’s guilt inspired him to write about children who’d lost their parents. One of his daughters died when she was only seven. When his young son had a severe brain injury, he co-invented a valve to alleviate his condition. Several thousand other children benefited from this invention, which was never sold for profit.

An extraordinary man. A kindly subversive. Keith and Roald both.

TV Review: THE REAL MARIGOLD HOTEL + CHILDREN SAVED FROM THE NAZIS + THE DAY HITLER DIED

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 30th January 2016

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

The Real Marigold Hotel: Tuesday, BBC Two

Children Saved from the Nazis: The Story of Sir Nicholas Winton: Wednesday, BBC One

The Day Hitler Died: Sunday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

A comfortably middle-class take on I'm A Celebrity, The Real Marigold Hotel is an easygoing travelogue in which a group of well-known senior citizens arrive in India to test its reputation as an ideal retirement destination.

There is no competitive element and everyone, from Sylvester McCoy to Miriam Margoyles, Wayne Sleep and Jan Leeming, gets on. On television in this day and age? How novel.

It's inspired by – but not officially based on, as an amusingly defensive caption was legally obliged to state – the dreary Brit-flick starring Maggie Smith, Judi Dench et al. It therefore conjures uncomfortable echoes of Empire by depicting India as a colourful playground for rich white westerners. But it also, in its polite British way, confronts the injustice of India's caste system and its rank extremes of wealth and poverty.

This was particularly evident when our cuddly grey-hairs met – in McCoy's unimpressed words - “some Maharajah”. His regal wife tried to justify the disparity between her riches and the suffering outside as part of the Karmic cycle of life. You keep telling yourself that, your Maj. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Despite their anger – and I'm sure they feel just as righteous about Britain's own shameful equality gap - the team had nothing but praise for the warmth and generosity of their Indian hosts. Mrs Maharajah aside, no one came out of this badly.

Disgusting cynic that I am, I was looking forward to making merry fun of Wayne Sleep for his woolly spiritual quest, until he revealed that he'd been musing on mortality after recently recovering from prostate cancer. His desire to reconnect with his latent religiosity was entirely sincere.

Meanwhile, Margoyles proved reliably eccentric as she vented her obsession with base bodily functions, spoke of her total lack of interest in house work, and struggled with her “scorn for the upper classes”. Inevitably, she was favoured in the edit above everyone else (the likes of Roy “Catchphrase” Walker and singer Patti Boulaye barely featured at all).

However, my favourite moment had nothing to do with social injustice, spiritual awakenings or flatulent actresses. It was when McCoy's avuncular mask slipped briefly after a local innocently asked what Doctor Who was. “It's a television programme that's been running for 50 years,” he mumbled pointedly. Simmer down, Sylv, the Doctor clearly hasn't conquered Jaipur yet. The locals have more pressing things to think about.

A moving tribute to an unsung British hero, Children Saved from the Nazis: The Story of Sir Nicholas Winton showed how an unassuming London stockbroker took it upon himself to rescue over 600 Czechoslovakian children on the eve of WWII. The definition of humility, Winton's selfless act would've remained secret had his wife not stumbled across the truth 50 years later while rummaging through their attic. It was a reminder that life-affirming triumphs can often flourish in the tide of abject horror.

Der Führer's death aside, there wasn't a trace of light amid the darkness in The Day Hitler Died. Although the dismal details of his final days in a bunker beneath war-torn Berlin are widely known, this rigorous documentary had a fascinating ace up its sleeve: previously unseen archive footage, filmed for the Nuremberg Trials, of Hitler's bunker-dwelling cohorts confirming his death.

The most morbidly compelling contribution came from the soldier tasked with standing guard over Hitler's funeral pyre as Russian bombardment raged overhead. When this personification of evil was finally reduced to ash, the young man gave a Nazi salute and retreated. A miasma of insanity, right to the end.