Best on TV

The Graham Norton Show

3e, 9pm

Other than the talent shows and Scandinavian murder mysteries, Saturdays’ schedules are fairly light on quality entertainment. Perhaps you can find some solace in this rebroadcast of a show seen earlier on BBC. Joining the Irish presenter will be Zac Efron, Matt LeBlanc and Lee Mack.

SUNDAY

Indian Ocean With Simon Reeve

BBC Two, 8pm

Simon Reeve continues his journey around the world’s third largest ocean. Combining interesting travel fare and a number of social and environmental issues, tonight he’s spear fishing off Madagascar, and visits some of the Chagos islanders who were expelled from Diego Garcia by the British in the late 1960s. He’s also in the Seychelles where he meets an Englishman who has turned his private island into the world’s smallest national park.

Vera

UTV, 8pm

The second episode of the four-part series has Vera (Brenda Blethyn) investigating the death of a popular social worker.

MONDAY

A Story with Me in It

RTÉ One, 7.30pm

A new series of the show which has Irish writers helping adults who have struggled with their literacy skills. Episode one has Kate Thompson teaming up with Noel Phelan from Kilkenny, a man who ends up writing a powerful letter to his daughters who are away in New Zealand.

Foxes Live: Wild In The City

Channel 4, 8pm

In both Ireland and England, foxes have managed to eke out a living in urban environments. This three-part series has Mark Evans (Inside Nature’s Giants) fronting a show that combines live footage and expert contributions with a real scientific study.

Kitchen Hero

RTÉ One, 8.30pm

Donal Skehan is back for another series as the celebrity chef who caters for the yoof market. Ironically, however, he’s looking to his grandmother for inspiration as he attempts to engender thrifty habits in his peers, a generation that were reared on the fatted calf on the Celtic Tiger. In this first episode, Skehan visits culinary students in Dublin and finds their own eating habits are similar to most other college-goers. In other words, curry chips and other takeaways seem to be top of the menu. Instead, he offers low cost and healthy alternatives: beetroot and feta salad, chickpea burgers, and a lemon and poppy seed cake.

The 70s

BBC Two, 9pm

Sex discrimination and football hooliganism loom large in Dominic Sandbrook’s look back on the 1970s. The historian looks at how, while equal pay and rights meant that women could technically work on an equal standing to men, casual sexism lived on in popular culture. He also looks at how fighting on the soccer terraces and industrial unrest gave the impression of a society spiralling out of control. On the music front, punk reared its magnificently ugly head to revolutionise the music industry.

TUESDAY

This World

BBC One, 10.35pm

Darragh MacIntyre looks at some of the cases of child abuse involving the Catholic Church in Ireland, and shows how a new scandal is brewing for a number of people high up in the organisation’s hierarchy.

WEDNESDAY

The Hurt Locker

Film4, 9pm

Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 tale of an American bomb disposal squad in Iraq ensured she was the first woman to win a best director award at the Oscars. As taut as the subject matter would suggest, the film’s appeal is increased by the fact that it was based on real experiences recorded by a reporter during the invasion.

THURSDAY

Éagóir

TG4, 10.30pm

The title of this series translates as ‘injustice’ and tonight’s episode looks at how Nicky Kelly, above, and three other members of the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party) were subjected to extremely poor treatment by the Gardaí and other organs of the state. Arrested after the robbery of £250,000 from the Cork-Dublin train at Sallins, Co Kildare, in 1976, all four signed statements of admission while in custody. The accused said they had been subjected to physical and mental torture by gardaí, a claim dismissed by a judge who said the injuries had been self inflicted and/or caused by the other prisoners. In 1978, they received jail terms of between nine and 12 years. Amnesty International became involved and two of the accused were released in 1980 after a year in jail. Nick Kelly had fled to the US, and when he returned he was imprisoned for four years, eventually being released on “humanitarian grounds”.

FRIDAY

Fleetwood Mac — Don’t Stop

BBC Four, 9pm

A night dedicated to the influential rock band begins with this documentary tracing their birth in the late 1960s with Peter Green through their later incarnations in the 1970s and ’80s. Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are among the contributors as they talk about the highs and lows of an output that included the 40-million-selling album Rumours. Immediately afterwards, Peter Green: Man of the World (10pm) looks at the guitarist who left the band as he battled with addiction and mental health issues.

Awake

Sky Atlantic, 10pm

One of the disadvantages of Sky Atlantic’s policy of picking up American dramas after they begin in the US is that if the series begins to garner negative reviews, it can be difficult to give the show much hype on this side of the pond. Such is the way with Awake. Debuting on NBC, it initially looked promising, with Homeland/24 writer Howard Gordon as one of its main creative forces. In recent weeks, however, audiences have slid downwards, and a second season is already in jeopardy. You should probably decide for yourself. It follows detective Michael Britten who survives a fatal car accident but wakes up every day living in two separate realities.