Pick of the week
Walking with Dinosaurs
Sunday, BBC One, 6.25pm
When Walking with Dinosaurs launched its first series back in 1999, we gasped at the special effects, which made it look like a cross between Jurassic Park and David Attenborough’s Life on Earth. More than 25 years later, we don’t bat an eyelid at eye-popping special effects, but the BBC promises that this reboot will blow our highly evolved minds. The actor Bertie Carvel narrates this new six-part series, and each episode will focus on an individual dinosaur, using fossil remains to build up its life story. Science has come so far that we now have much more accurate data on dinosaurs’ lives, and this will be reflected in the details in this new series. Among the dinosaurs we’ll encounter are the Albertosaurus, which, despite its benign-sounding name, is an equally ferocious cousin of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Then we’ll meet one of the Jurassic era’s biggest headbangers: the Pachyrhinosaurus, a close relative of Triceratops, which battles other males by headbutting them with their “boss” – a thick slab of bone covered in keratin over its nose.
Highlights
Death Valley
Sunday, BBC One, 8.15pm
Who’d be the last person you’d ask to help you solve a murder? Certainly not the retired actor who played your favourite TV detective, and who now lives just down the road from the victim. Detective sergeant Janie Mallowan is investigating the death of a property developer in rural Wales, and finds help in the unlikely form of retired John Chapel, famous for his role as Inspector Charles Caesar in a hit TV series. Chapel can certainly act, but can he solve crimes? We’ll soon find out as this odd cop-thesp partnership delves into the apparent suicide of wealthy developer Carwyn Rees – and finds a lot of buried secrets. Timothy Spall plays the reclusive Chapel, with Gwyneth Keyworth as DS Mallowan, and we’re sure to get a few glimpses into the cop show within a cop show featuring Inspector Caesar.
Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius
Monday, BBC Two, 9pm
In the tiny English village of Steventon in Hampshire in the late 18th century, no one would have believed that the vicar’s teenage daughter would become hailed as one of the greatest novelists of all time. Jane Austen was one of a large family, but she soon established her own identity through her short stories inspired by her siblings and cousins. The young Jane also found inspiration from her father’s library of 500 books, which opened her eyes and imagination to the wider world. This three-part documentary looks at how events in Austen’s life – including the death of a suitor – fed into such novels as Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion, and how, unlike her heroines in search of the perfect marriage, she chose independence, turning down a marriage proposal to concentrate on her craft.
The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone
Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm
This three-part series tells the intriguing story of Michelle Mone’s rise from growing up in working-class Glasgow to running her own successful fashion business to her elevation into the House of Lords. Along the way, Lady Michelle Mone has stirred up a rivalry between two of pop star Rod Stewart’s wives, and become embroiled in scandal over a PPE contract during the Covid-19 pandemic. The first programme tells how Mone began her career as a model and ring girl at boxing matches, then formed her own lingerie company, launching the Ultimo push-up bra which became hugely popular in the cleavage-obsessed lad culture of the 1990s. She got up Rod Stewart’s nose by firing his wife, Penny Lancaster, as the face of Ultimo and replacing her with Stewart’s ex-wife Rachel Hunter, but it was the PPE scandal of the early 2020s that put her in the news, when questions were asked about her links to a business that bagged a “VIP fast lane” PPE contract.
Uncharted with Ray Goggins
Wednesday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm
So far in this new series, former Special Forces professional Ray Goggins has brought Lyra and Leo Varadkar close to breaking point climbing a vertiginous waterfall, and caused Kneecap to nearly buckle under the pressure on an Arctic expedition. This week he takes Paralympic gold medallist Ellen Keane and All-Ireland camogie winner Ashling Thompson on the aptly named Death Road, a perilous trek deep into the wilds of Bolivia, which will take them high up the Andes mountains and across snow fields, ice walls and glaciers. But this time it’s Goggins who seems to be having the most difficulty, developing a rasping cough at high altitude. Can he lead his charges on the 6,000m-plus trek to the peak of Huayna Potosi?
Bloom
Thursday, RTÉ One, 7pm
It’s Bloom day once again as Ireland’s popular horticultural festival kicks off in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, with garden designers displaying their amazing creations over the bank holiday weekend and hoping to collect that coveted gold medal for the most spectacular show garden. Áine Lawlor and Marty Morrissey are back to present this year’s coverage of Bloom, with Lawlor meeting the talented gardeners who have created stunning spaces for the delight and delectation of the crowd flocking to this year’s event. Meanwhile, Morrissey will mingle inconspicuously through the crowds (yeah, right) and visit the food village to get a taste of what foodie treats are on offer. We’ll also get a good look at the colourful contenders in the Floral Art Competition.
And Just Like That…
Friday, Sky Comedy & Now, 9pm
Put on your strappy Louboutins and grab your Bottega Veneta handbag – we’re sashaying back into the Sexoverse via the third series of the Sex and the City spinoff. SATC followed the adventures of four fashion-forward New York women in their 30s; And Just Like That… revisits Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda as they navigate the even trickier relationship terrain of their 50s. But there’s disappointment in store for fans: Kim Cattrall, who played the sexually voracious Samantha in SATC, got fans’ hopes up that she would finally join the show when she made a cameo appearance in the last series, but it turns out she was only teasing. Never mind – Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristen Davis and Cynthia Nixon are all blinged up and ready for some more cosmopolitan comedy, and they’ll be joined by new cast member Rosie O’Donnell as Mary.
The Power of Parker
Friday, BBC One, 9.30pm
Conleth Hill returns as the suave, self-centred electrical goods entrepreneur Martin Parker in this second series of the comedy set in Stockport in the 1990s. Martin is the Swiss Tony of home electronics, convinced of his unerring sales acumen and his irresistibility to women. He’s juggling his marriage to Diane (Rosie Cavaliero) and his long-term affair with her sister Kath (Sian Gibson), and making a bit of a balls of it. Series one tracked Martin’s downward trajectory as the two women in his life team up to give him his comeuppance. Series two begins in 1992, the queen’s “annus horribilis”, when the air is filled with the inescapable strains of Whitney Houston‘s endless number one hit I Will Always Love You. Diane is now running Parker’s electrical shop, having executed a hostile takeover, and Martin has no choice but to apply for a menial job. Meanwhile, the store is up for a gong in the highly prestigious Stockport Trade Awards – the Oscars for local salespeople – but the big awards night turns out very differently for all concerned.
Streaming
The Better Sister
From Thursday, May 29th, Prime Video
Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star as estranged sisters Chloe and Nicky in this twisty, thrilling whodunit based on the 2019 novel by Alafair Burke. Chloe has the charmed life, married to a handsome, successful lawyer (Corey Stoll) and working in a high-flying media job. Nicky has been dealt a bad hand: she’s an addict who is just barely holding it together. The siblings are brought together by an unlikely event: the brutal murder of Chloe’s husband. The sisters must find common ground if they are to learn the truth about Adam’s murder, but soon long-buried family secrets come to the surface that test the sisters’ loyalties.
Dept Q
From Thursday, May 29th, Netflix
Don’t be fooled by the cool-sounding name: Department Q is where cops’ careers go to die, and it’s where DCI Carl Morck ends up following a botched operation that has left one officer dead and another paralysed. Morck is banished to the titular section of the Edinburgh police, a cold-case unit of which he is the sole member, and where his colleagues no longer have to put up with his cutting sarcasm. But rather than sit in the basement and rot, Morck gathers a motley crew of castaway cops, and Department Q soon becomes a force to be reckoned with. So: a sort of police version of Slow Horses, with Morck in the Jackson Lamb lounger, getting up the noses of his superiors and getting the job done. Matthew Goode stars as Morck, with Kelly Macdonald, Mark Bonnar and Chloe Pirrie among the cast.
Bono: Stories of Surrender
From Friday, May 30th, Apple TV+
The U2 frontman’s bestselling memoir, from 2022, has since grown legs and travelled across Europe and the United States in the form of a one-man show featuring storytelling, readings and renditions of the Irish band’s best-known tunes. Now comes the Apple TV+ film, which takes us deeper into Bono’s world and features exclusive footage from the stage tour along with insights into Bono’s family, friends and faith, and candid stories from his remarkable life and career as a singer and activist. The film will feature unique versions of U2 songs, with Bono accompanied by the DJ and producer Jacknife Lee, the cellist Kate Ellis and the musician and composer Gemma Doherty.
