Monday’s TV tips
Jamie Oliver visits the Nicoyan Peninsula in Costa Rica, where he joins fisherman Otto for a meal of freshly caught fish with family and friends on the beach.
In Okinawa, an island 400 miles off the coast of Japan, Jamie joins a 74-year-old grand karate master to learn some moves before lunch, which features popular local ingredient sweet potato.
Back in the UK, Jamie creates nutritious and tasty meals, including cheese and corn pancakes topped with smoky bacon and caramelised banana; fish tacos, and chicken and sweet potato cacciatore, with mushrooms, tomatoes, olives and bread.
Michael Mosley is undoubtedly BBC Two’s go-to guy when it comes to biological and medical issues. He also isn’t afraid to experiment on himself – as proven by the numerous times he has put his body through various tests and rigours to prove (or otherwise) certain points.
Now Mosley is turning his attention to arguably his biggest project to date – the human body. During this three-part documentary he will explore how we are created, from conception to birth.
He begins with an insight into the first eight weeks of pregnancy, during which a single cell, no bigger than a speck of dust, transforms into the most sophisticated organism on the planet – a human foetus. It’s a fascinating story, and one that obviously relates to each and every one of us.
Alice Levine is one of the brightest additions to Radio 1 in years, and is also rather good at fronting documentaries, as this offering proves.
Here she searches for girls with a hidden talent for computer coding, in a digital world dominated by males, despite the fact that half of all gamers are women.
Alice takes East End girl Ellie, art student Daisy, boffin Neelam, fashion graduate Tolani and aspiring millionare Arooj to meet some of the UK's most powerful women in technology, and presents them with a challenge to invent a start-up in five days.
New series. Behind-the-scenes look at the Wiltshire stately home as its flamboyant owner, the Marquess of Bath, prepares to retire and hand over control to his son Ceawlin and his wife Emma, but the change isn’t going smoothly.
Ceawlin has upset his father when he moved back in, and the pair are no longer on speaking terms, and there is further unrest in the estate’s village when the rents are increased.
Meanwhile, Emma is settling into life as Lady Weymouth and now has her own servants.
With exclusive access to the defence and prosecution teams, medical witnesses and former friends, The Boston Nanny unpicks the story from its beginnings in January 2013 in an apartment close to Harvard University.
The Boston Nanny will paint a picture of the woman who has been making headlines in Ireland and the U.S for the last two and a half years.
The film will detail the life Brady McCarthy built for herself as an illegal immigrant in America before the dream turned into a nightmare.
It will unpick the terrible events of January 14, 2013, the ensuing police investigation and the long-running saga which caused Brady McCarthy to spend the last two years awaiting trial in a US prison.
The film will also unpack the science behind Shaken Baby Syndrome – the controversial diagnosis at the centre of the case, a diagnosis which has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years. The case against Brady McCarthy collapsed after medical experts raised doubt over the cause of death.
However, as the documentary reveals, this may not be the end of the story for Aisling.
Episode 2 sees Liam Brady sparkle on his debut against the USSR in 1974. Join Liam Nolan and guests for all the action on Aprés Match of the Day.
It’s October 1974 and the Republic of Ireland face the mighty USSR at Dalymount Park with an 18-year-old Liam Brady making his debut in fine style and Don Givens scoring a hat trick in a famous win at the Phibsboro venue.
Liam Nolan and guests have all the highlights in Aprés Match of the Day…
The BBC’s India season has been a jewel in their output crown this year, with Sue Perkins’ Calcutta documentary being one of the highlights. Like many of the regions featured in that show, Dharavi, Mumbai is also an area of extreme poverty boasting a wealth of fascinating, upbeat characters.
We get to see some of them in this documentary musical set in a school in Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia. It combines footage of the children’s daily lives, with songs reflecting their hopes and dreams.
The Fear is back for a fourth season. Trawling around the country the gang will be up to their usual tricks, storming across Ireland with their hidden camera and generally spreading The Fear…
This season will feature plenty more pranks and see the return of all your favourite characters, Irinka The Russian Streetwalker, The Nun, Fred Cooke, Sergeant Major and Jimmy the most annoying man in Ireland.
Joining Hilary Rose, Ross Browne and Fred Cooke this season will be some special guest comedians including Dermot Whelan, Karl Spain and Martin Maloney.
(2008) Hot-headed Michael Peterson decides the best way to make a name for himself is to arm himself with home-made sawn-off shotgun and attempt to rob a post office.
He is consequently sentenced to seven years behind bars but remains there for another couple of decades, much of his time spent in solitary confinement.
The longer his mind continues to rot in jail, the more his alter ego superstar Charles Bronson takes over his life. Based on a true story, Tom Hardy brilliantly conveys the man once dubbed the most violent prisoner in Britain, rendering his co-stars practically invisible.
A premise that could easily have turned into a glorification of violence and crime, is sensitively dealt with in Nicholas Winding Refn’s directorial effort.
Not content with giving our brains a Monday night work out with the double bill of University Challenge and Only Connect, BBC Two is now bringing us a new panel show so mentally stimulating, it threatens to make QI look like Celebrity Juice.
Hosted by Professor Brian Cox, with the help of Mock the Week regular Hugh Dennis and Ben Miller, who abandoned a PhD in physics for a career in comedy, it sees scientists competing to find the connections between six unlikely objects.
In the first episode, anatomist Professor Alice Roberts and theoretical physicist Prof Jim Al-Khalili are among the experts trying to work out what links an analogue record player to Galileo, a dung beetle, whipped cream, and the inner Earth. Maybe an experiment involving a beetle obstacle race and exploding bags of custard will shed some light on the matter...
(2013) Iceland’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Academy Awards is a darkly comic portrait of a close-knit community and its relationship with the miniature horses that roam the area.
Kolbeinn (Ingvar E Sigurosson) owns one particularly fine animal and parades it around town en route to assignations with his girlfriend Solveig (Charlotte Boving). Cantankerous coot Grimur (Kjartan Ragnarsson) is fed up with neighbour Egill (Helgi Bjornsson), who insists on erecting barbed wire fences across the old horse paths. So Grimur takes a pair of wire cutters to the fences but his act of rebellion comes at a terrible price.
Meanwhile, drunkard Vernhardur (Steinn Armann Magnusson) hopes to sate his thirst with some vodka from a passing Russian tugboat. He chases the crew out to sea on his horse, hoping to attract their attention.
