After 15 years, it’s a long, 10-episode goodbye to the fictional Cornish harbour town of Portwenn and the much-loved antics of Martin Clunes’s grumpy GP. And after having his career scrutinised by the General Medical Council because of his blood phobia, Martin makes efforts to overcome his fear and begins to question whether he made the right decision about resigning.
8pm, BBC Two; 8.30pm, BBC Two
It seems fitting that Mary Berry and Nadiya Hussain should appear in a cookery double-bill, as it was the former who, as a Bake Off judge in 2015, helped to choose the latter as that year’s champion. In Berry’s new series she begins by working behind the scenes at an Indian wedding, while Hussain begins with treats for “an easy afternoon tea” (do people still take afternoon tea?), from meringue lollipops to coffee cake.
“Nothing happens… a man walks around Dublin,” says Salman Rushdie of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in a documentary marking the centenary of the publication of the modernist masterpiece, while Howard Jacobson adds: “I think you’re allowed to do a bit of skipping here and there.” Jacobson won his copy as a school prize and at first only read the rude bits – and there were enough of those for Ulysses to be banned in the US and Britain in 1922 (apparently the novel evolved from the fruity personal correspondence between Joyce and his wife). Other illustrious contributors to Adam Low’s smartly executed film include Colm Tóibin and Anne Enright.
Kevin McCloud meets Kate and Rob, who have lived for the past eight years in a 1940s prefab house built by Rob’s grandfather. Designed to be a dwelling for just 10 years, this factory-built home is well past its sell-by date. Now, Kate and Rob are at last in a position to replace it with a bespoke, modern and (crucially) warm home – which will also be built in a factory using a process called “volumetric modular construction”. This means that in just six weeks, their new house will be manufactured on a production line, complete with insulation, tiling and fitted kitchen.
Dr Xand Van Tulleken and Raksha Dave investigate the Great Smog of 1952 – the deadliest environmental disaster ever recorded – that cost as many as 12,000 Londoners their lives as (mostly) coal smoke and unusual meteorological conditions caused one of the capital’s most infamous “pea-soupers”. Lasting just over four days, the acrid pollution seeped into homes, shutting down transport and emergency services, and overwhelming hospitals and undertakers alike.
Danny Brocklehurst and Joe Gilgun’s rowdy comedy-drama set in the fictional Lancashire town of Hawley returns where the last series left off – with single mum Erin (Michelle Keegan) lying low after the gang crossed local mobster McCann (Ramon Tikaram). But it’s Babs (Mali Harries) who suddenly appears at Vinnie’s (Gilgun) railway-carriage shack in the woods and provides the line of the episode when she ruefully declares that “ketamine and roller skating do not mix”.
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