What to watch on TV this week
The remaining 12 contestants have made it out of the judges’ houses and get to perform for the first of the live shows. Simon Cowell is mentoring the girls, Louis Walsh has the groups, Nicole Scherzinger looks after the boys, while Sharon Osbourne mentors the over-25s.
The 1980s pop star looks back at his formative years and his emergence in 1982 with Culture Club and their number one smash, ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?’.
George’s androgonous appearance caused many a raised eyebrow in sitting rooms all over Britain and Ireland, but the flipside of that was the standout star quality that appealed to legions of younger fans.
As such, he also blazed a trail for diversity and the acceptance of gay people.
Much of this show has him talking about the era before he became a star, as the glam and punk movements of his teen years gave him the space to escape the drudgery and intolerance of Britain at the time.
Comedians Jack Whitehall and Alan Carr are among the guests on the show, while Years & Years provide the music.
A rare TV airing of the 1972 film starring Liza Minelli as a nightclub singer in Berlin in the 1930s, just as the Nazis began to tighten their grip on Germany.
With Westworld up and running on Sky Atlantic, this three-part documentary is a timely exploration of a region that still fascinates.
First up is a focus on the desert regions, and we hear about the agricultural traditions of the Hopi tribe, with corn occupying a particularly exalted status and nature’s cycles being a central part of their belief system.
There’s also a look at how animals such as mustangs and coyotes eke out a living in this difficult environment.
A second season of the series on how various people fell foul of GAA doctrine through the decades. The opening episode looks back to 1938 when president of Ireland Douglas Hyde attended a soccer match at Dalymount Park, and was therefore subjected to a ‘ban’ by the GAA.
After American police killed yet another innocent black man earlier this year, Rudolf Guiliani made the point that a far bigger problem was black-on-black violence.
It wasn’t a very sensitive thing to say, but Reggie Yates’s visit to Chicago shows there is some truth in the conservative politician’s point.
The Windy City has an average of more than one murder a day, with the vast majority of perpetrators and victims being black males.
Yates visits some of the affected areas, hearing how a lethal mix of gangs, drugs and poverty help to fuel the situation.
At last some relief following years of austerity? Coverage of the Budget continues through the afternoon, while Prime Time (9.40pm) will offer more analysis.
The fourth and final episode of the excellent drama starring Robbie Coltrane as a celebrity facing trial for a rape he’s accused of perpetrating 15 years earlier.
The jury reaches a decision, and his wife must also decide about their marriage.
If episode one aroused your curiousity for this rather unconventional series, tonight’s episode will draw you in further.
Issues about some of the androids’ behaviour come to the fore, while the humans visiting the fantasy theme park continue to indulge the darker side of their natures.
Lucy Kennedy spends time at the Tallaght home of comedian Al Porter.
The Irish presenter continues his tour of the US with a look at the online sex industry, complete with a visit to Ceara Lynch, a 28-year-old cam model, whose niche is working as a humiliatrix.
Amidst the insults, underwear sales and other facets of her job, perhaps the most bizarre aspect of it all is the ‘ignore line’ – clients ring it, and get put on hold, thus incurring quite sizeable charges before she will even speak to them.
Series three of the drama series introduces a new case in which retired French detective Julien Baptiste tries to find who abducted two girls in a German town 11 years previously.
One of the girls has shown up after over a decade in captivity, and Baptiste travels to Iraq to find out more about the perpetrator.
The final episode looks at what DNA analysis has told us about the similarities and differences between Travellers and settled people.
Neven Maguire tries some of the spectacular fish dishes of the Basque region, cooking octopus and tuna, and also visiting the famed Portu-ondo restaurant.
Colin Stafford-Johnson goes catching fawns in the Phoenix Park, and also sees some of the new technologies used to study some of the huge whales that visit our coasts.
Some might see it as ironic that a black man with dreadlocks should be introducing a documentary on a shaven-headed subculture that’s synonymous with racial prejudice.
As Letts points out, however, Britain’s skinheads emerged from working-class areas where West Indian immigrants lived, and in its early days was very multi-cultural movement based around music and fashions.
He traces its history from those seminal ska days, through punk and 2Tone, and right up to the modern era.
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