TV not to miss

SATURDAY

Juno

More4, 10.05pm

Ellen Page stars as the 16-year-old pregnant girl looking for a suitable family to give up her child to in Jason Reitman’s hugely enjoyable comedy drama from 2007. Also watch out for great support roles from Michael Cera and Jennifer Garner.

SUNDAY

Silent Witness

BBC One, 9pm

And Then I Fell In Love is the story running over tonight and tomorrow, and focuses on a ring of people involved in the targeting of underage girls for sex and prostitution.

Gradam Ceoil TG4 2012

TG4, 9.30pm

The annual traditional music awards from University Concert Hall Limerick will see London-based Brian Rooney presented with the traditional musician of the year prize, while Nell Ní Chróinín from Beal Atha an Ghortaidh will receive singer of the year.

Perspectives: Sergeant on Spike

UTV, 10.15pm

As part of the network’s Perspectives series, John Sergeant marks the tenth anniversary of the death of his hero, Spike Milligan. Among those contributing are people who knew the great funnyman, such as Michael Palin, Eddie Izzard and his former manager, Norma Farnes.

MONDAY

Inside Nature’s Giants

Channel 4, 8pm

The excellent dissection series returns with the messy task of cutting up a hippopotamus in Zambia. Every year authorities in the Luangwa Valley cull about 200 hippos, an exercise in conservation that provides the Nature’s Giants team with the perfect opportunity to get up close to one of the continent’s most dangerous animals. After getting through its inch-thick skin, they see its amazing sun-protection system before pressing on to the guts. Along the way, an extraction of the hippo’s voice box shows how its closest relative really is the whale.

Celebrity Come Dine With Me Ireland

TV3, 9pm

Brian Kennedy’s angry wine-fling was the highlight of the previous series, and while emotions don’t run quite so high this time around, the five dinner parties do have their fair share of healthy banter. A potentially interesting mix of guests features Rory McIlroy’s former girlfriend Holly Sweeney, models Pippa O’Connor and Madeline Mulqueen, former rugby player Shane Byrne and VIP publisher Michael O’Doherty. Nightly until Friday.

The Savage Eye

RTÉ Two, 10.25pm

Tonight David McSavage and co look at the fascinating socio-historical issue of why the Irish are so ugly.

Casablanca

Film4, 11pm

Film4 has a Films For Life season running this week, with Casablanca featuring among several impressive offerings. The 1942 classic has achieved such an exalted place in popular culture that it seems almost clichéd at this stage, but it still stands as a top-class film. Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart play two of the finest characters in cinema history, while the magnificent rendition of the ‘La Marseillaise’ when the Germans enter the bar will turn you into a proud French person.

TUESDAY

World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel

BBC Four, 9pm

Professor David Reynolds looks at the actions of Joseph Stalin during the Second World War and explains how he went from a blundering madman to a ruthless and ultimately successful pragmatist. In this part of the world, we hear so much about D-Day, etc, but the actions of the Soviets had a far bigger part in defeating the Germans. And Stalin — despite his murderous ways — ranks as probably the single most important figure in the fight against the Nazis.

Four Lions

Film4, 9pm

Suicide bombers — ha, ha, ha. Well actually, Chris Morris does manage to get quite a few laughs out of the subject. His pointed comedy follows a group of bungling trainee fundamentalists — two British Muslims and a white convert, Barry — as they embark on their hapless jihad.

WEDNESDAY

Little Dieter Needs to Fly

BBC Two, midnight

Werner Herzog’s documentary about a German boy who lived through the Allied air raids and after the war became a fighter pilot in America. Ironically, he ended up taking part in attacks on Vietnam where he was shot down and captured. Much of the 1997 film follows his journey back to Laos and Thailand with Herzog, where they retraced his ordeal.

THURSDAY

Ivory Wars: Out of Africa

BBC One, 9pm

This Panorama special looks at how an increased demand for ivory in the Far East may spell disaster for Africa’s elephants. Despite a global ban on ivory sales, seizures of the valuable product are way up and one area of Kenya has lost a quarter of its elephants to poaching in the past three years. Rageh Omaar reports on how wild elephants could be seriously threatened unless Chinese demand for ivory diminishes.

Peter Kay Live At the Bolton Albert Halls

Channel 4, 9pm

This homecoming show by the Bolton comedian in 2003 sold by the truckload when it was released on DVD. A decade later and much of the humour still stands up.

Derek

Channel 4, 10pm

After Ricky Gervais’s previous show, Life’s Too Short, failed to hit the heights expected of The Office creator, it’ll be interesting to see if he’s rediscovered his touch for this one-off drama. Gervais plays Derek Noakes, a 49-year-old whose hobby is autograph hunting. An exploration of an offbeat subculture, the show looks as if it’ll have a bitter-sweet edge mixed in among the funny moments.

FRIDAY

Roy

RTE Two, 5pm

Episode two of the second series about an animated boy going to school in Ballyfermot has our hero believing the hype about an act of kindness he performed.

Unreported World

Channel 4, 7.30pm

This top world affairs show makes a welcome return with a focus on Sudan, a country whose bleak situation made the headlines recently because of George Clooney’s arrest. Footage from the Nuba Mountains shows the doctors who are putting their lives on the line to treat people being brutalised by the country’s dictatorship.

Piers Morgan’s Life Stories

UTV, 9pm

William Roache, aka Ken Barlow of Coronation Street, is the first guest of Piers Morgan’s new series. Almost 80, he talks about the serious womanising that doesn’t quite fit with the image of his onscreen character.