What’s on TV tonight: The Great Climate Fight, Secrets of the Aquarium, and more

Tuesday 21 November

The Great Climate Fight
Channel 4, 9.15pm
“What if I told you that solving the climate crisis is possible,” says Grand Designs presenter Kevin McCloud. “The problem is: our politicians.” In this righteous two-parter, he joins businesswoman Mary Portas and TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (all “veteran campaigners”) to explore how the government is failing in its commitment to hit Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

The trio take the smart approach of playing upon your wallet rather than your fears. The solutions to climate change are not only possible, they argue, but beneficial to the economy. Fearnley-Whittingstall, for instance, makes the case that David Cameron’s 2015 de facto ban on onshore wind turbines denied the nation its cheapest source of energy during an energy crisis. McCloud, meanwhile, is in disbelief at how badly insulated Britain’s homes are, which means “we waste a fortune on gas bills.” Less persuasive are the stunts and gimmicks. For instance, Portas and notorious prankster Oobah Butler try to get Rishi Sunak to read the Climate Change Committee’s report into the UK path to Net Zero by sneaking it into a “gift” from his favourite author, Jilly Cooper. The series concludes tomorrow. SK 

Secrets of the Aquarium
BBC Two, 8pm
The deep-dive into the blue continues. This week, something fishy is going on with Friday the turtle, who has shocked staff by acting out. The solution? Give him more entertainment. Plus, an overabundance of stingrays requires the team to try out a novel contraception implant treatment. 

The Great British Bake Off
Channel 4, 8pm
The four remaining bakers face a fiendishly difficult semi-final this week, themed around the technically taxing world of patisserie. Just take the showstopper, which entails balancing the many layers of a giant mille-feuille cake. Alison Hammond is off ill, which does suck a bit of energy out of the tent.

Louis Theroux Interviews: Joan Collins
BBC Two, 9pm
A charmed Louis Theroux travels to the French Riviera to meet 90-year-old screen icon Joan Collins. She makes for frank, fabulous company, with her and Theroux’s rapport proving endearingly playful. Yet the most memorable moments are the serious ones. Namely, Collins reflecting on her competitive relationship with sister, Jackie, and her grim experiences with predatory men. 

Portillo’s Andalucia
Channel 5, 9pm
The third week of Michael Portillo’s jolly adventures across Andalucia takes him to the ancient city of Córdoba. The politician-turned-presenter marvels at the city’s mixture of stunning Roman, Muslim and Christian architecture. Testament to its rich history.

Wonderland: Gothic
Sky Arts, 9pm
A welcome chance to tuck into our greatest Gothic works. This first episode (of four) leans heavily on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which is brought to life through atmospheric extracts and picked apart by leading academics. Other novels discussed include Wuthering Heights and Rebecca.

The Australian Wars
BBC Four, 9.05pm
In this excellent finale, film-maker Rachel Perkins follows the Australian frontier wars – conflicts between Indigenous Australians and European settlers – to their gruesome conclusion. This is a period that Aboriginal people refer to as the “killing times”, when the government’s Native Police were estimated to have killed 72,000 people in its quest to clear land for settlement. 

Leo (2023)
Netflix  
The latest of Adam Sandler’s random films for Netflix is this fun-loving musical animation, centred on a talking lizard (voiced by Sandler) who lives in a classroom. When a student tells him that he’s looking old, he decides to sneak off home with them, ready for a new life of adventure; until, that is, they realise that he can talk, turning him into an in-demand school celeb. As is typical with Sandler’s recent flicks, it stars a whole raft of his family and friends.

Words on Bathroom Walls (2020) ★★★
BBC Three, 10pm  
Diary of a Wimpy Kid director Thor Freudenthal’s young-adult drama is a sensitive portrayal of mental illness, following teenager Adam (Charlie Plummer) who is diagnosed with schizophrenia after a psychotic episode in chemistry class. He’s plagued by voices: of hippy Rebecca (AnnaSophia Robb), horny teen Joaquin (Devon Bostick) and a thuggish bodyguard (Lobo Sebastian).

Rambo: Last Blood (2019) ★★
Channel 5, 11.05pm  
The fifth, hopefully final, instalment in the Rambo series, Last Blood could just as easily be called Most Blood. Apparent retirement hasn’t stopped Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo from inventing new ways to jack up the body count. He’s swapped vengeance for raising horses in Arizona, and has found a family. But old habits come into play when a Mexican cartel kidnaps his adopted granddaughter Gabriela (Yvette Monreal).

Wednesday 22 November

Squid Game: the Challenge
Netflix
In 2021, Squid Game, the South Korean drama that centred on desperate people playing a series of deadly children’s games for very big money, became a worldwide phenomenon. Dazzlingly stylised, masterfully plotted, it was intended by creator Hwang Dong-hyuk as a critique of cut-throat capitalism. It is an allegory that seems to have flown over the heads of Netflix, who have now brought the contest to life as a lavish 10-part reality/game show. 

It begins with a staggering 456 players (competing for a staggering $4.65 m), who are cut down by games such as Red Light, Green Light, where they must run towards a giant doll and freeze before she turns her head. In the original, anyone who moves is shot. Here they have black ink packs that explode on their chest. The whole thing is ludicrously crass, but undeniably compelling. There are shades of The Traitors in how the contestants betray each other. Not to mention a deliciously hateful villain in the shape of one obnoxious American bully. Yet it is the games themselves that sell it. Just take the task in which they must carve a shape out of a piece of honeycomb without breaking it: a sequence as riveting in reality as it is in fiction. SK

Fargo
Amazon Prime Video
The fifth series of Fargo, the anthology series inspired by the 1996 Coen Brothers film, follows Dot (Juno Temple), a Midwestern housewife with a secret knack for killing people. It’s a story told with a playful wink; perfect for Mad Men’s Jon Hamm, whose colourful North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman shows off his comedic chops. 

The Velveteen Rabbit
Apple TV+
This charming one-off adaptation of Margery Williams’s children’s story – about a toy rabbit who wishes to be real – is cosy festive fare. Although mostly live-action, it is the gorgeously rendered animated sequences that stand out. Plus, there’s a wonderful voice cast, including Helena Bonham Carter.

Amol Rajan Interviews
BBC Two, 7pm
There are few sporting personalities as interesting as Ronnie O’Sullivan, the snooker master famed for his perfectionism, as well as his struggles with drugs and depression. He sits down with journalist Amol Rajan for a candid chat about his life and career. Prime Video’s own documentary on O’Sullivan follows tomorrow (Thursday).

The Secret Genius Of Modern Life
BBC Two, 8pm
The affable Hannah Fry finds herself sucked inside the world of vacuum cleaners this week, a household staple that is also a marvel of appliance science. She visits Dyson (where she accidentally utters “hoover” as a verb) to learn about the art of impellers and the history of the earliest dust collectors, which were nearly the size of a car. 

Shetland
BBC One, 9pm
The investigation into the murder of Ellen Quinn (Maisie Norma Seaton) takes a turn for the occult tonight, as detectives Ruth (Ashley Jensen) and Tosh (Alison O’Donnell) uncover a link between the victim and a religion that seems to be based around Norse mythology. The pair also hit a rough patch after Ruth comes clean about a family link to the case.  

Such Brave Girls
BBC Three, 10pm & 10.25pm
This family sitcom follows dysfunctional teenage sisters Josie (creator Kat Sadler) and Billie (Sadler’s real-life sister, Lizzie Davidson), whose flights of mania and jokes about killing themselves are dragging down the love life of their single mother, Deb (Louise Brealey). Based on tonight’s double-bill, it is a deliciously dark treat bursting with laughs. 

Fire Down Below (1957) ★★★
Film4, 4.35pm  
Rita Hayworth returned from a four-year absence to star in this adventure drama alongside Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon. There’s some lively dialogue at the start and the stunning photography gives a vivid impression of the beauty of the Caribbean. Alas, amid all the visual delights, the plot – about two seafaring smugglers who become tangled up with a mysterious female passenger – is long drawn out and disjointed.

Riders of Justice (2021) ★★★★
Film4, 9pm  
The reliably excellent Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale, Another Round) leads Anders Thomas Jensen’s intelligent, gloriously absurd revenge film. Mikkelsen’s Markus returns home to care for his young daughter after his wife is killed in a train accident. His grief turns to fury when a survivor of the crash claims foul play – leading him to commit to finding out who was behind the tragedy. Danish co-star Nikolaj Lie Kaas is fantastic.

Malice (1993) ★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 9.05pm  
Another nervy wife/victim role for Nicole Kidman, whose character wins a huge compensation claim after being the subject of a botched operation performed by surgeon Alec Baldwin. West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin’s script is brilliant, although Kidman never quite manages to convince us that this porcelain-skinned, dainty, defenceless woman is in fact the femme fatale to end all femme fatales.

Thursday 23 November

Archie
ITVX
“Why wasn’t I deliriously happy?” muses an elderly Archie Leach. “Well, it’s a long story.” Just over three hours long (excluding ad breaks), to be precise, as Jeff Pope’s four-part miniseries trawls through a rags-to-riches showbiz tale only rivalled by Charlie Chaplin’s for sheer implausibility. Born to an alcoholic father who committed his mother to an asylum when Archie was nine, he navigated poverty then the cut and thrust of vaudeville to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood – once he had renamed himself Cary Grant, of course.

Pope’s biopic cuts between Grant’s rise, the final months before his death in 1986 and his romance with Dyan Cannon (Laura Aikman) as his career waned in the mid-1960s. It is a familiar device that strikes effective tonal and aesthetic contrasts (the parade of cameos from jobbing Brits essaying, say, Grace Kelly or Alfred Hitchcock is divertingly bizarre), albeit while playing fast and loose with a few timelines and making some jarring musical choices. Cannon – on whose book this is based – is positioned as the heroine of the piece; Isaacs, meanwhile, has a decent tilt at the impossible: replicating Grant’s urbane charisma, star quality and profound insecurity. GT

Ronnie O’Sullivan: the Edge of Everything
Amazon Prime Video
Always enjoyably outspoken, the snooker ace is the latest sportsman (after Becker, Beckham and Rooney) to open up for the cameras. This sympathetic but not uncritical documentary tracks a tumultuous 2021 full of brilliance, self-sabotage and upheaval.

One Trillion Dollars
Paramount+
The term “high concept” almost undersells this remarkably ambitious German miniseries in which a brassic Berlin bicycle courier (Philip Froissant) unexpectedly inherits the titular sum, with strings attached: he must use his fortune to secure the future of humanity by tackling climate change, pollution and rapacious capitalists.

Doctor Who: The Daleks in Colour
BBC Four, 7.30pm
Another bumper haul of Time Lord treasures begins at 12.15pm with a Bargain Hunt special on BBC One (expect to see Daleks, androids and a Tardis) and ends at 8.45pm with a welcome repeat of An Adventure in Space and Time, Mark Gatiss’s lovely retelling of the genesis of Doctor Who this time 60 years ago. At 7.30pm, however, comes a real treat: the Doctor’s first encounter with the Daleks. This serial from December 1963 has been colourised and trimmed from seven 25-minute episodes into one 75-minute feature.

Elderly Drivers: Putting the Brakes On? Tonight
ITV1, 8.30pm; UTV/STV, 11.15pm
Ginny Buckley queries whether, with an ageing population and ever-busier roads, drivers over a certain age should be retested for their licence, or whether there are other ways in which our roads could be made safer.

The Newsreader
BBC Two, 9pm
The second series of this spry Aussie drama nears its climax as Helen’s (Anna Torv) decision to pass an interview with an HIV-positive mother onto Dale (Sam Reid) backfires horribly amid a botched edit and communication breakdowns.

The King’s Guard: Serving the Crown
Channel 5, 9pm
With the Coronation of King Charles III fast approaching, Garrison Sergeant Major Vern Stokes brings 4,000 troops to the capital for one last rehearsal, while fellow specialist officers are given a mere 10 weeks to train raw Ukrainian recruits preparing for combat against Putin’s soldiers on the frontline. 

Final Cut (2022) ★★★
BBC Four, 10.05pm  
Michel Hazanavicius’s enjoyable remake of the cult Japanese comedy One Cut of the Dead is a treat; a Shaun of the Dead-esque send-up of po-faced horror tropes. It stars Romain Duris as Rémi, a low-rent film-maker who is tasked with shooting a zombie flick on a tiny budget; he and his team – including producer Mounir (Lyès Salem) – soon face bigger issues than money when they’re attacked by real members of the walking dead.

Castaway (1986) ★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 10.05pm  
Nicolas Roeg’s films all had a twisted note, from the psychological anguish of Don’t Look Now to rockstar-actors on the edge (Jagger in Performance; Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth). Here, Roeg adapts Lucy Irvine’s real story of when she spent a year living on a remote island with a man she hardly knew; they soon realised it was less idyll, more fight for survival. Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed play the leads.

My Feral Heart (2016) ★★★★
BBC Two, 11.15pm  
Jane Gull’s heartfelt and low-key drama stars Steven Brandon as a man with learning disabilities who, after the death of his mother, is placed under the protection of the state. He forms close bonds with his fellow residents, and eventually escapes and strikes up a friendship with a tearaway young woman, played by Shana Swash. It’s a minor-scale One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which quietly ends up saying rather a lot.

Friday 24 November

Two Doors Down
BBC One, 9.30pm
Despite a format so antiquated it could be set in the 1970s, this sitcom about a gang of mismatched but tight-knit Glaswegian neighbours consistently delivers in terms of raucous comedy. That’s largely down to sparklingly obtuse scripts by Simon Carlyle (who died in August) and Gregor Sharp, and a superb ensemble cast who rarely miss an opportunity to, collectively, make the most of a good line. 

Proof of that came last season when Doon Mackichan quit her key role as the buttock-clenchingly awful Cathy. It was a departure that might have scuppered a lesser sitcom but, happily, the residents of Latimer Crescent rallied when Siobhan Redmond stepped in as the utterly unhinged Anne-Marie – a new, and very different, partner for the abandoned Colin (Jonathan Watson), which ended up giving the comedy a whole new dynamic. Now, as they return for a new run, it’s all change again as Beth (Arabella Weir), Eric (Alex Norton), Christine (Elaine C Smith) and the rest of the neighbours turn up at Colin’s for a surprise birthday party he’s arranged for Anne-Marie. And what a surprise it proves to be – Cathy’s come home. GO

One Night
Paramount+
Hard on the heels of her gritty recent turn in BBC One’s Time, Jodie Whittaker takes on a very different role in this grippy six-part Australian drama. Set against the lush background of the New South Wales coast, she stars as Tess, one of three women with varying memories of a traumatic night in childhood that continues to haunt them.   

Unreported World
Channel 4, 7.30pm
Ashionye Ogene reports from Romania about a controversial school in Bucharest set up to train women in witchcraft. She meets the school’s new recruits, who see rituals and potions as a route out of poverty, and local priests calling for the school to be shut down.

Celebrity Mastermind
BBC One, 8pm
Comedian Rosie Jones, radio presenter Gemma Bradley, broadcaster Andy Goldstein and singer-songwriter Dan Gillespie Sells are first into the chair as the celebrity version of the veteran quiz returns. Their specialist subjects include Victoria Wood’s sitcom dinnerladies, Marvel’s Iron Man films, Bernie Taupin, and Scorsese’s Goodfellas. 

The Toy Hospital
Channel 5, 8pm
If you think The Repair Shop is a mite mawkish, here’s a series that gleefully embraces self-parody in its quest to wring tears from viewers. Kitted out in scrubs, ICU monitors bleeping in the background, a trio of toy “doctors” set about reviving and restoring incapacitated childhood treasures. First in, a teddy with – gasp! – a broken neck. Former Bake Off winner Nancy Birtwhistle is the host.

Have I Got News For You
BBC One, 9pm
More topical comedy as the reliably witty Prof Hannah Fry takes the reins as host, as actor Stephen Mangan and Vice UK’s editor-in-chief Zing Tsjeng join team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton to poke fun at the week’s news.

Greatest Guitar Riffs
Sky Arts, 9pm
Headbangers ahoy! In the first of a terrific three-part series, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi takes us on a sound journey through his most iconic “heavy” riffs, recalling how he and his bandmates invented heavy metal. Other contributors include Brian May, Dave Davies and Tom Morello. There’s even a trip to Birmingham Royal Ballet to watch rehearsals for Carlos Acosta’s new Black Sabbath ballet (which the Telegraph’s dance critic loved). 

The Kill Room (2023) ★★
Amazon Prime Video  
A starry cast leads Nicol Paone’s thriller: Uma Thurman, Maya Hawke (Thurman’s daughter) and Samuel L Jackson. Thurman plays an art dealer who, struggling to get by, teams up with a hitman (Joe Manganiello) and his boss (Jackson) for a money laundering scheme that goes swiftly pear-shaped. What ensues is a fast-paced battle between the stuffy art world and violent underworld; let down slightly by a weak plot.

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) ★★★★
Dave, 9pm  
The follow up to Volume 1 is not just more of the same old blood-lusty Tarantino. After the fuss made over his absence, Bill himself (David Carradine, cast for his charismatic 1970s TV role in Kung Fu) finally appears, as the disgruntled, deadly, evil ex of the much-suffering Bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, aka Black Mamba (Uma Thurman). It contains most of the plot and very little swordplay (a welcome choice, after the overdose in Vol 1).

Legend (2015) ★★★
BBC Three, 10pm  
Tom Hardy gives a solid, convincing performance as east London gangster Reggie Kray but his caricatured portrayal of twin brother Ronnie lets him down, and his inconsistent performance leads to an entertaining though muddled film. Emily Browning, however, gives just the right mix of defiance and despair as Frances Shea, Reggie’s put-upon wife. Watch  out for some particularly gory scenes.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018) ★★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm  
This ravishing period piece marked theatre director Josie Rourke’s film debut. Adapted from John Guy’s 2004 biography, it explores the internal whirrings of the monarch’s early reign, rising above the martyr-temptress image of legend. Saoirse Ronan is thrilling as Mary, while Margot Robbie dons a red wig to portray Elizabeth I; both actresses, now among Hollywood’s most in-demand, hinted at their future greatness here.

Television previewers

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