Wednesday's TV tips
The eight remaining bakers face recipes with a twist tonight, as Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins reveal that this week’s tasks feature alternatives to commonly-used ingredients.
For the signature bake, they must create a variety of sugar-free cakes, and one competitor decides to take an even healthier step by preparing a cake without any traditional form of flour.
In the technical challenge, Paul Hollywood sets the bakers to work making gluten-free pittas, and for the showstoppers, they attempt to create dairy-free ice-cream rolls.
An exploration of the ’multiverse“, a theoretical approach to some of the fundamental questions of existence, which states that an infinite number of universes exists.
Each of these separate universes is defined by the way they differ from the others, in a concept seized upon by sci-fi writers to depict fantastical worlds where anything is possible.
The programme reveals that, until recently, the ’multiverse” theory was dismissed as a fantasy, but now this idea has found its way to the forefront of scientific thinking.
Garda Down Under is the story of life on the beat for Irish officers working in Western Australia, the largest police district in the world. So large, in fact, that the island of Ireland would fit in there 30 times over.
In this six-part series we follow the Irish recruits on the job and off duty as they settle in. Far from home – and away from extended family networks – we discover what life is like for the Irish ‘transitional officers’, as they get to grips with their new work and lifestyle.
We also get to see how their partners adapt to life on the other side of the world. From the urban sophistication of Perth to Kununurra, a place so remote police officers do everything from taking forensic evidence to acting as temporary paramedics, it’s a major culture shock for our ex-Gardaí.
(2009) Tom Hanks returns as professor Robert Langdon in director Ron Howard’s sequel to blockbuster The Da Vinci Code.
Also adapted from a best-seller by Dan Brown, it jettisons the ponderous dialogue of its predecessor in favour of a protracted game of cat and mouse around Rome as Langdon works to solve the murder of physicist Father Silvano Bentivoglio.
Aided by scientist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), the investigation takes a deadly turn when they uncover the actions of a secret society and fall foul of a psychotic assassin who has kidnapped four cardinals and is plotting to launch a terrorist act against the Vatican.
Is Sue Perkins the hardest-working woman in TV?
Following on from Saturday’s Sue Perkins’ Big Night Out and tonight’s Great British Bake Off, she’s now heading to India for this one-off documentary to learn more about the one of the country’s most exuberant cities, Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta.
For many people in the West, the city is best known for its infamous ’Black Hole“ and the poverty of its street people, but Sue discovers that Kolkata is re-inventing itself, with a booming property sector and a reputation for culture and tolerance.
The presenter meets people from both the poorest and richest sections of society, and discovers what Kolkata can tell us about a country emerging from its colonial past.
There have been plenty of weight documentaries examining human history from the earliest civilisations to the present day, but as the title suggests, this series gives it a new twist, it’s from the perspective of women.
Dr Amanda Foreman explores how different cultures have dealt with the role and status of females, and profiles some of the women who have changed history.
Her journey begins in Anatolia, where she visits Catalhoyuk, one of the world’s earliest settlements, which is believed to have held some surprising ideas about gender.
From there, it’s on to Mesopotamia, home of some of the first law codes written to regulate women’s behaviour, including the first known rule about the wearing of veils.
Marilyn Monroe committed suicide on 5th August 1962, according to the official report into her death.
The first detective on the scene did not believe that it was suicide, however. His instincts told him that the screen goddess had been murdered. Monroe's death has been the subject of much speculation over the years.
The FBI, the Mafia and even the Kennedys have at various times come under suspicion, but none of the accusations ever came to anything.
Charity activist and Bodyshockers presenter Katie Piper investigates some of the many different ways modern women approach childbirth, meeting people who sought ever-more unique means of delivery in a bid to secure their dream birth experience.
Among those she meets are expectant mothers who followed strict fruitarian diets, a businesswoman who plans to gain the ’post-birth glow’ said to have been achieved by the Duchess of Cambridge after the arrival of her two children, and two mums-to-be who are seeking spiritualist ocean births in Hawaii in the presence of wild dolphins, having already made use of crystals to predict their due dates.
As Katie’s investigation progresses, she discusses the pros and cons of each birth plan with a clinician, and catches up with the ambitious parents to discover whether they were able to follow through with their extravagant arrangements.
(1984) Clint Eastwood subtly eases his way out of Dirty Harry mode to play a seedy New Orleans detective in this gritty thriller.
When detective Wes Block (Eastwood) is called in to investigate a series of sexually motivated murders, the case casts an unwelcome light on his own darker impulses.
Psychologist Beryl Thibodeaux (Genevieve Bujold) assists him with the case, but finds her initial attraction to him slowly change to suspicion and fear as his personality changes.
As the body count increases, it appears the killer has begun to target Block’s acquaintances. And the stakes are raised when Block’s own daughters are threatened…
