RILLINGTON PLACE, BBC1, 9pm
LAST week’s brilliant episode focused on Ethel Christie, the sad, drooping woman who became an accessory to murder and was so defeated and powerless she could do nothing to change it.
This week, the story shifts to Timothy Evans (Nico Mirallegro), the young man we saw being hanged at the start of the series.
There is a great change in tone as Timothy is gallus. He’s newly married, boastful and energetic, and feeling optimistic about life as he and his young wife, Beryl (Jodie Comer), move into the flat above the Christies in Rillington Place.
Watch as Timothy’s energy is gradually smothered by poverty, disillusionment and his wife’s increasing despair at life as a worn-out housewife and exhausted mother.
Beryl is horrified to find she’s pregnant yet again, but then Christie comes padding around with some discreet suggestions on how to get rid of the baby. You can trust him, he says. He trained as a doctor. He knows what he’s doing…
THE COMING WAR ON CHINA, STV, 11.05pm
THIS is a long and troubling film from the journalist John Pilger.
He says there is a risk of conflict between the USA and China and claims “the media is beating the drums of war as the world is being primed to regard China as a new enemy.” I’d thought we were preparing for a resurgent Russia but for Pilger it’s all about China.
He points to the huge military build-up in the South China Sea as proof that the US is trying to encircle and contain China, and says it uses Japan as “a glove over the American fist.” “The Chinese are not that stupid” says one commentator, adding there is no appetite in China for war, but Pilger claims the American arms industry needs “perpetual war" and will seek it out if necessary.
Pilger is clearly anti-American, which isn’t a criticism, but it can make the film rather melodramatic and overblown in places, especially in the first section about the US’s alleged cruelty to the Marshall Islanders whom he claims were used as radiation guinea pigs.
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