JANE AUSTEN: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, BBC2, Saturday, 9pm
I’M beginning to tire of Grayson Perry constantly fronting shows on Channel 4, always making wee pots to go along with the theme of the programme. Lucy Worsley must be the BBC’s equivalent: she is everywhere, and goodness knows why.
I find her hugely irritating with her twee, cute, squeaky persona and can’t even say why she’s been chosen for this programme. Is she an Austen expert? She presents on every historical topic, so what is her speciality? Who knows? Is it simply dressing up? Does she wear frills just as Grayson makes pots?
The idea of this show is that we can learn a lot about Jane Austen by studying houses: the ones she lived in; those she visited; and the various grand estates which appear in her novels, those great books which contain “homes lost and mansions gained, the threat of poverty and the promise of wealth”.
Despite saying “I think that knowing where Jane lived can tell us who Jane really was”, this is really just a pretty road trip through pastoral England.
DOCTOR WHO, BBC1, Saturday, 7.45pm
I LOVE the title of this episode, which seems to be a great lunge at everything in the worlds of the occult and the creepy: The Pyramid At The End Of The World.
It also calls to mind the classic Star Trek episode, famous for being “the one with Joan Collins”, The City On The Edge Of Forever. Tonight, the time-travelling trio arrive in the middle of a war zone. A terrible battle is about to be fought between the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians, but there’s a strange problem in that a huge, ancient pyramid is planted right in the middle of the battlefield — surely it wasn’t there yesterday? It is 5000 years old and yet it has also just appeared. This presents a few mind-bending problems.
But try telling the three warring nations to stop and ponder this!
They’re all set on kicking off a war which will end mankind, and the only possibility of help seems to be a message from some dodgy aliens.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HANDMAID’S TALE, C4, Sunday, 9pm
THERE are no special powers awarded when you become a TV critic, so I can’t actually force you all to watch this but, oh, I would if I could. Elisabeth Moss stars in this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel.
Set in a future America, known as Gilead, the country is permanently at war, which has sparked a plague of infertility.
The regime is desperate to create children and so it forces women of reproductive age to become “handmaidens”. Dressed in red, they are assigned to live with Commanders, powerful government men whose wives are infertile. They are compelled to have sex with them in a carefully staged, hideous ceremony so they may create babies for the state.
It is a nightmare vision of America where women mean nothing beyond their ability to reproduce, but the story is especially chilling as the heroine, given the new name Offred, often speaks in a slang, sardonic tone and the soundtrack contains modern pop tunes, which makes this horror seem distressingly close and plausible. I urge you to watch it, and to re-read the great novel whose author makes a small cameo appearance.
PAUL HOLLYWOOD’S BIG CONTINENTAL ROAD TRIP, BBC2, Sunday, 9pm
OBVIOUSLY you’ll all be watching Channel 4 at 9pm, but you might want to catch up with this afterwards if you need something light-hearted. In this new series, Hollywood visits Italy, Germany and France to travel their roads in cars which represent the country’s motoring history. His theory is that you can learn something about the country by looking at what they created, and the pride, or otherwise, the population takes in its famous cars.
I can tell you already that next week’s episode, the German one, is the best, but he kicks off in Italy, accompanied part of the way by a very effusive and annoying Bruno Tonioli.
They start in Rome, navigating the cobbled streets in a monstrous orange Lamborghini (“Lambo” as the car nuts call it).
For each day of his road trip, he visits a different city and tries a car associated with that region. Motoring geeks will have great fun guessing what’s up next.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here