DIY SOS: The Big Build, BBC1, 8pm

IN March 2015 the life of Simon Dobbin, a loving father and husband from Mildenhall, Suffolk, suddenly changed forever. After supporting his football team at an away game, he was set upon by a gang of men in a brutal and unprovoked attack. Simon’s wife Nicole rushed from her job at a nursing home to find him fighting for his life in intensive care after a massive stroke and bleed on the brain. Tragically the vicious 90-second attack had left him permanently brain damaged, paralysed and unable to walk or talk.

Back in Time for School, BBC2, 8pm

THE time-travelling documentary reaches the years following the Second World War, when a revolution in education south of the Border resulted in children being separated into one of three types of school: grammars, secondary moderns and technical. The volunteer pupils attend grammar, representing the one in four children who won a coveted place by passing the 11-plus exam.

American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley, BBC4, 9pm

APPARENTLY fake news isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. In this new series, Lucy Worsley will be exploring how US history is a concoction of stories and untruths manipulated by whoever was in power at the time. Among the issues she’ll be addressing is the Civil War, as she looks at Abraham Lincoln’s status as the Great Emancipator and discovers why some of the statues honouring Confederate generals may not be as historic as supporters like to think.

Death in Paradise, BBC1, 9pm

DI Jack Mooney has a fresh mystery to solve when zoo owner Xander Shepherd is killed by a tranquilliser dart in the middle of the grounds. With the park shut to the public at the time, suspicion falls on the victim’s colleagues but, given that they were all in the staff area when the shot was fired, how could any of them have done the deed?