In Chris Patten's East and West (BBC2, 7.15 p.m., tomorrow), the former Hong Kong governor travels to Korea and Indonesia to find out what went so wrong with the Asian boom economies - and finds a lot of it was to do with corruption and cronyism in the boom years.
One of the characters he meets is a Korean chief executive who has been forced to re-train as a waiter.
More eastern economies on The Money Programme (BBC 2, 7.30 p.m., Sunday) which looks at China, and asks whether it can avoid catching the Asian economic flu: prospects are not good. Demand for exports is falling, foreign investment is drying up, and the property bubble looks set to burst.
For those looking to export markets closer to home, RTE 1's big push on language learning starts on Sunday morning, with the first episode of German beginners series Learnexpress, 10 a.m; part two of French In Action at 10.15 a.m; then Italianissimo at 10.45 a.m., and lastly Suenos: World Spanish at 11 a.m.
There's a faint possibility that Linus Torvalds's software could topple Microsoft. Why? Because he is a geek: he created an ingenious operating system and gave it away free on the Internet. Connected (Channel 4, Saturday) tells how other geeks sent Linus ideas about how to improve it. How can a corporation that attacks its opposition by undercutting them on price, fight against those who do it for love, not money?
Successfully revamping a longstanding business is a tricky endeavour. Health Farm (BBC 1, 9.30 p.m. Monday) looks at how £14 million transformed the old-fashioned and genteel Forest Mere health farm into one of the biggest in Europe - and this new series follows its fortunes as it opens, and beyond.
Retailers about to launch into Christmas (yes, even though it is only October) may want to turn to this week's The Shop (BBC 1, 8.30 p.m., Thursday) to see Christmas season 1997 (remember Tellytubbies?) descend on the London store Selfridges, which is trying out a modern, tinsel-free Yule.
A cautionary tale for those in charge of the publicity budget. Arguably the most important and under-rated aspect of movie-making is marketing and publicity and in How To Make A Movie (BBC 2, 7.30 p.m., Friday) film distributor Pathe is spending as much promoting a low-budget, black and white film, Twentyfour Seven, as it cost to make in the first place. But it doesn't work.
True Lives (RTE 1, 8 p.m., Monday) is the story of the last year of the life and the death of Robert Maxwell.
