This weekend's TV highlights

RICK STEIN: FROM VENICE TO ISTANBUL, BBC2, 9.30pm
THE merry chef is on a gastronomic odyssey from Venice to Istanbul, stopping off at various small towns on the way to sample their cuisine then try to recreate it himself. In this episode he’s in Greece and that country does get a lot of attention in this series as Stein has declared its food to be the best in the world and he’s very happy to linger here.

He starts off trying a dish which seems so simple we might not expect to see it on a cookery programme: a plain old chicken pie.

Admittedly, it doesn’t look like a chicken pie. Being flat and plain, it looks more like a boring pizza, but Rick Stein says it’s the best pie he’s ever had.

Its flat shape comes from its filling. We might expect a pie to be a pastry case stuffed and bulging with chicken, onions and gravy, but this one is made from lots of thin layers of pastry and delicate filling. The chef raves about how great it is while the bemused Greek family who’re preparing it for him, and who don’t speak English, just quietly smile. It’s a lovely scene of how good food can unite us.

Rick Stein shares his enthusiasm for food

BAD ROBOTS, C4, 11.05pm

CHANNEL 4 just excel in creating brilliant titles. Last week they broadcast “Muslim Drag Queens”. Who could see that phrase in the TV listings and not be intrigued? And they’ve had documentaries with provocative titles like “My Granny the Escort” and “Sex in Class”, all guaranteed to snag the attention and get people talking and tweeting.

This new series has an equally brilliant title, albeit one suggesting mischief and mayhem rather than sex and controversy.

Bad Robots is a new six-part series filmed with hidden cameras. Imagine it as Beadle’s About, only with machines causing the mayhem instead of jolly little Jeremy. Cameras are carefully set up to watch the horrified and dismayed reactions of the public as they come into contact with “bad robots” eg machines and contraptions which have been rigged up to unsettle them.

This week, a manicure machine and a currency exchange booth start causing mayhem for their unsuspecting customers, and we get to secretly watch and laugh at their reactions all whilst feeling quietly glad it didn’t happen to us.

TOMORROW SATURDAY AUGUST 29

BUILDING THE ANCIENT CITY, BBC2, 7.40pm
WHATEVER great feats of building and organisation our modern cities invent, you can be sure that Ancient Rome thought of it first. When town planners gather in their little meeting rooms, you can imagine Ancient Romans sneering at them, saying: “It’s been done!”

We know to attribute nice straight roads and aqueducts to the Romans, all of which helped towns and cities function and grow, but this programme shows they also created the world’s first high-rise buildings, working sewers and fire brigades. I suppose you don’t get to build up the mighty Roman Empire without being at least a tiny bit ingenious.

The presenter, Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, strolls around the ruins of Ancient Rome, pointing out fragments and patterns which point to history, and he does it all with tremendous enthusiasm, often declaring “Fantastico!”

He shows us how Rome, the ancient world’s first megacity, with its population of one million, was able to function. Whilst the rest of us were moping around in damp fields and mud, Ancient Romans were enjoying having fresh water piped upstairs to their high-rise flats. Fantastico indeed.

SUE PERKINS’S BIG NIGHT OUT, BBC2, 9.10pm

Perkins is in Edinburgh for her night out

SUE Perkins presents a round-up of the best acts from this year’s Edinburgh Festival, promising us an hour of “comedy, music and spectacle.” Sadly, there will be no smutty baking innuendo – something we all love her for.

The promised live music comes from FFS – better known as Franz Ferdinand who formed a “supergroup” with a Californian rock band called Sparks – but if music’s not your thing there is also an extravagant circus performance. It’s the Festival at its noisy, spangly, chaotic best.

Phill Jupitus joins Perkins, a man who deserves a medal for endurance. At this year’s festival he’s been doing an art show in the mornings, then a play in the afternoons, and some poetry readings in the evening. People complain they’re overwhelmed by the number of shows on at the Festival, but nobody (as yet) has complained at the sheer number done by Phill Jupitus. Perhaps they’re just really good? This show will help us decide.

Other guests include the smiley Canadian Katherine Ryan and the ventriloquist Nina Conti.

SICILY UNPACKED, BBC4, 8pm
REMEMBER the old days when travel shows gave us things like hotel recommendations and told us the prices? I suppose the internet killed all that. You don’t need Judith Chalmers recommending a nice all-inclusive villa, or a lovely restaurant near the beach, when you have TripAdvisor or you can just send a tweet out to the whole world asking for a tip on where to stay. And so travel shows have evolved – thankfully. Instead we get wild, adventurous shows where the presenters climb mountains, dive through waterfalls and hang out in jungles, acting like amateur anthropologists, or we have the more luxurious show like this one.

Giorgio Locatelli is a chef, and his friend Andrew Graham Dixon is an art historian. Together they saunter through Sicily, stopping off for fine, sumptuous meals or to visit ruined chapels and cave paintings. Nothing as trivial as the price of the meal or directions to the chapel are given. That’s what TripAdvisor is for. These chaps are here to offer expertise, knowledge and their delight in Sicily’s treasures.

THE X FACTOR, STV, 8pm
MOST of the furore about this new series of The X Factor has been about the new judges. Rita Ora has been poached from The Voice, leaving the BBC’s limp rival to The X Factor substantially weakened – especially as they’ve also dumped the brilliant Tom Jones.

So will the new judging panel, which also includes Nick Grimshaw in place of the nippy little gnome Louis Walsh, rejuvenate the programme? Probably not, but that’s a good thing. Those who watch The X Factor don’t want it to change.

There was uproar when the initial auditions moved from a conference room to a stadium, and it was soon changed back to its original set-up. Its viewers are hostile to change.

So, hopefully everything will be as absurd, ridiculous, cringeworthy and syrupy as ever: hopeless contestants will audition and be mocked and dismissed.

Some will provoke theatrical looks of shock, and some forced tears, from the judges, and others will try to win us over, not with their singing voice, but with weepy tales of how their gran/mum/budgie died last week and how they’re at the audition to sing for them!

Oh X Factor, never change…

SUNDAY AUGUST 30

SPECIAL FORCES: ULTIMATE HELL WEEK, BBC2, 9pm

Fit people get fitter, but is it worth it?

DIDN’T the SAS use to be regarded with some kind of awe? Weren’t they seen as black-clad heroes swooping into danger to liberate hostages? Perhaps they still are regarded as heroes, and maybe they indeed are heroes, so why are they cheapening the Service by having their men take part in this programme?

This new six-part series takes some of the fittest people in Britain and tests how tough and hardy they really are by subjecting them to training by the SAS and the US Navy Seals. I just wonder why such organisations are dumbing down by participating in what is simply a fitness reality show? Could it be a subtle recruitment campaign for the armed forces?

Also, when the population is probably the fattest and most sedentary it’s ever been, why show us fit people getting even fitter? A better programme would show the SAS putting the overweight through some exertions.

In this first episode, the “recruits” are subject to four hours of furious training by two former Navy Seals whilst being hosed with cold water. Watch fit people get fitter from the lazy comfort of your sofa.

DRAGONS’ DEN, BBC2, 8pm
AN entrepreneur enters the Den to ask for two million pounds, leaving the Dragons rather shocked. He wants to renovate a disused London Tube station to create adventure expeditions for tourists, where they will descend into the Tube and relive the experience of the Blitz. However, there was something rather tasteless in his boast that you could enter the Tube station and hear the sound of bombs exploding.

Then a very nervous mother appears – “I’ve never felt nerves like it!” – bringing her toddler along. She explains that her son was a terrible teether and used to nip and bite at her, so she was prompted to invent chewable jewellery. The mother can wear silicon necklaces and bangles which the teething brat can pull at and gnaw on without any pain or damage.

Then there is a horribly awkward encounter at the end when the successful owner of an agri-business seeks investment for her range of cassis drinks. Having claimed her existing business turns over £8 million, Peter Jones asks what her profit is. She refuses to answer as she is on “national television”. Rattled, he asks her why she chose to come on national television then!

TIME CRASHERS, C4, 8pm
REMEMBER Kirstie Alley? Remember Fern Britton? Yes, of course you do, but do you care about them? Not really.

This is a celebrity reality show, hosted by Tony Robinson, but it avoids being a tacky thing like I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! thanks to the inclusion of history.

The collection of vaguely recognisable celebrities are sent “back in time” to get an authentic experience of how life was lived in the old days.

In this episode, the gang are sent to 1468, making it an instant improvement on a similar show by the BBC called 24 Hours In The Past whose celebs played around in the Victorian era. At least this one reaches back into periods which aren’t quite so well-known.

The celebrities are made to become squires to knights, and are divided into two competing teams. Both must prepare their knight for a jousting contest, so they must groom the horses, which provoked a bit of tension between Fern Britton and Louise Minchin, and then get their hands sore and dirty mending clunky old bits of armour.

THE TRIALS OF JIMMY ROSE,STV, 9pm
THIS is a new three-part drama starring Ray Winstone and Amanda Redman.

Winstone plays Jimmy, a man who’s spent much of his adult life in and out of jail. His latest stretch was a long one, as he was in for armed robbery.

Nonetheless, Jimmy seems very cheerful: the first episode opens as he’s being released from prison and he heads home, singing to himself, whilst his family prepare a nice dinner to welcome him back.

Of course, that wouldn’t be much of a drama, would it? An ex-con learns his lesson, goes back to his family, and everyone is content.

Jimmy’s good mood is shaken when he gets home because his family have changed in his absence: his wife, Jackie, played by Redman, is cool towards him, being no longer sure if she loves him; his son has no affection for his wayward father, and his granddaughter has gone spectacularly off the rails.

Tough Jimmy suddenly finds he is an ageing man, with no prospects, in a changed world, and the lure of crime is always there, being the only thing he is sure of. Can he stay straight?