Damien Love reveals his pick of the week's TV

An Adventure In Space And Time

10pm, BBC Two

To coincide with the return of Doctor Who, another showing for Mark Gattis's deeply affectionate behind-the-scenes drama on how the programme was first brought to the screen back in 1963.

David Bradley stars as William Hartnell, the famously grumpy actor who became the famously grumpy first Doctor.

At 71, Bradley is arguably too old for the part (a point underlined by the fact that, when he started the show, Hartnell was the same age as Peter Capaldi is today), but he always played him as an old man, and Gatiss's story is more a bright sense-memory love-letter than a factual biographical drama.

It's a fan's delight, anyway, stuffed with arcane detail, trivia and fleeting cameos from Tardis travellers gone by.

Shot in the old BBC TV Centre, it looks fantastic, as much a eulogy for that abandoned dream factory and a lost way of making TV as the specific programme it celebrates.

Monday

Gomorrah

9pm, Sky Atlantic

A bitter and bloody turf war is raging, and neither side can afford to back down.

As the flak and fallout rages around them, all that the innocents on the streets can do is run for shelter, hope it'll all be over soon, and pray that whoever comes out on top will just leave them the hell alone. Enough, though, about Scotland Decides: Salmond Versus Darling (8.30pm, BBC One).

There's plenty of light relief on offer over in sunny Naples, where incarcerated ganglord Don Pietro is flexing his muscles behind bars in a battle of wills with the prison governor.

He is doing his best to prove he still controls the streets beyond his grim jailhouse, too, as a Nigerian drug gang begins to dispute the terms of their agreement.

On the outside, it's left to Ciro to put his vile plan into horrendous action, while trying to steer Pietro's son Genny through the ensuing slaughter.

But there are other plans in place, too... The game is about to change; this series is simmering terrifically.

Tuesday

Super Senses: The Secret Power Of Animals

8pm, BBC Two

Oh, these animals and their secrets. Over on Channel 4, Mark Evans is leading us through Dogs: Their Secret Lives (8pm).

But he's only got dogs: presenters Patrick Aryee and Helen Czerski give you many more animals with secrets for your money, bats and elephants and frogs and moles and all sorts.

Following last week's eye-opening programme on sight, the second episode of the series focuses on sound, exploring how animals can hear things in sonic ranges far beyond the spectrum of the human ear, from the deepest of rumbles to the highest of squeaks.

This is bad news for voles, who make little squeaks, but good news for owls, who home in on them to eat the voles.

Elsewhere, we get to watch bats being amazing as they use sound to "see"; and the presenters use a camper van as giant speaker to demonstrate the impressive hearing of a herd of elephants, who can pick up the noise of a rainstorm over a hundred miles. Still, with ears like that...

Wednesday (Main Event)

Star Paws: The Rise Of Superstar Pets

9pm, Channel 4

Yo. Let me introduce myself. You know the guy who usually writes this stuff? I'm that guy's cat.

Well, one of them. The other cat's under the bed. What can I tell you? He loves it under that bed.

Me, I don't see the big attraction. Duvet, fine. I can lie under a duvet till the cows come home.

Or somebody sits on me. Whatever comes first. Under the bed, though, not so much.

Although you can sometimes get spiders down there. I can dig that. Each to their own, right?

So, anyways. The guy asked me to write a critique of this TV show.

Says if I do, he'll drag the feather on a string around for me.

Hot damn, I love that feather till I'm sore and weary. And the string, come to that.

Always different, always the same. Ironic he should ask, though.

Usually, I go anywhere near his keyboard, I get the bum's rush. I mean, what's the point of a laptop if it's not for sitting on, huh? You tell me.

Actually, let me tell you. Cats. That's the point of a laptop. And that's the point of this documentary. Humans are watching cat videos online like it was going out of fashion. Like, they're watching, I dunno, seven gazillion cat clips every millisecond or something.

They gave an actual statistic, but I missed it because there was a wasp at the window.

But it was a whole lot. You know: Grumpy Cat, the cat playing keyboards, the kitten getting tickled and looking all surprised. Cute as lace pants, right?

Wrong. This is just my take, dig, but you know how campaigners have worries about online pornography giving a generation downright warped ideas about sex?

Exact same thing with cat videos, man. I'll just say this: you come try sitting me in a basket on a bike being rode by a small girl singing We Built This City, and you better come wearing leather gauntlets and a visor, friend. These claws aren't just for Christmas.

Like I say, though, that's just my personal philosophy. You don't get this kind of thinking in this film.

Or any thinking. What you get are clips you've seen anyway, interrupted by advertising people talking about how cats are popular online, and so they're using them in adverts.

Yeah. Stop the presses, right? But here's the kicker: halfway through, the programme stops even pretending to be about YouTube celebrity and internet memes and all that hot viral jazz, and starts dribbling on about how they've always used dogs - dogs! - in TV ads anyway.

The last 25 minutes is all Andrex puppies and that big Dulux bastard.

My last hairball had more content and structure. Literally.

If you're a Grumpy Cat fan, though, you should catch the first ten minutes. He's filmed making a live appearance and, oh, but the glamour: dragged onto a table while two million American women with issues come screaming at him flashing flashbulbs and wanting a stroke.

I'll tell you this: that poor schlub's not grumpy. He's depressed.

So there's your review: stick to YouTube, it'll save time.

The writer guy's plan was to make this a regular deal. You know, I'll get famous as the cat who writes about TV, and he can retire and pimp me out. No dice.

If this show is anything to judge by, I'd rather clean my own tray. Now, if you don't mind, there's a feather needs chasing.

Thursday

Who Do You Think You Are

9pm, BBC One

There have been some surprising and emotional revelations down the years in Who Do You Think You Are, but few have left me reeling quite like the thunderbolt right at the start of this week's episode. Look away now if you don't want it spoiled. You know Mrs Brown, star of the popular-among-grannies sitcom Mrs Brown's Boys? THAT'S A WEE MAN. I know. I'll need to watch the entire thing again from scratch now - it puts the whole narrative in an entirely different light, like Mona Lisa. Brendan O'Carroll is his name, and WDYTYA catches up with him while he's in Dublin for the latest Mrs Brown Christmas stage show. He already knows a bit about his family's history, and there is one tragedy that has long haunted him: one dark October night in 1920, his locksmith grandfather Peter was shot dead in his shop. A note left by the body claimed the murder for the IRA; yet Peter was an IRA supporter. O'Carroll's journey through the past becomes a curious kind of private eye show, as he sets out to crack a cold case almost a century old.

Friday

Blondie's New York... And The Making of Parallel Lines

9pm, BBC Four

You could be forgiven for thinking this is another repeat of the Blondie documentary BBC Four usually puts on when it has nothing else in the cupboard.

But it's actually a new one, focusing on their breakthrough LP of 1978, the shimmering slab of vinyl that took New York punk overground via singles Heart Of Glass, Sunday Girl, Hanging On The Telephone, One Way Or Another and Picture This.

Debbie Harry, band members Chris Stein, Frank Infante, Jimmy Destri, Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison, and producer Mike Chapman are all present to discuss each song and the influence their city had on their music, at the moment when CBGBs punk, Studio 54 disco and the nascent rap scene were all bubbling.

Alongside molto archive shots of Harry looking unbelievable (and Harry talking about how the media always focused on the way she looked), they get into the nit and grit of the recording by doing music-nerd heaven stuff like listening back to the original multitask tapes, so we get to hear Harry's a capella vocals.

Another showing of Blondie's set at this year's Glastonbury follows at 9.50pm.

Saturday

Doctor Who

7.45pm, BBC One

Tonight's adventure unfolds in deep space, where a lone ship is holding out against the onslaught of a Dalek fleet. Except it doesn't.

Most of the episode is actually set deep inside a lone, damaged Dalek, as The Doctor leads a miniaturised team inside the beast for an unexpected remake of Raquel Welch's greatest movie. Despite some noise and flirting, good stuff in general: turns out, the inside of a Dalek resembles a 1960s-70s Doctor Who set, and The Doctor is on brilliantly unfriendly form.

It would still have worked much better as four 25-minute episodes with cliffhangers, mind.

Like last week's opener, tonight's episode is directed by Ben Wheatley, the sterling maniac behind movies like The Kill List and A Field In England.

Sadly, inevitably, he's been forced to rein in the psychedelic folk-horror, but he sneaks in a couple of his favourite actors, and a few trippy freak-out seconds as the team penetrate the monster's eyestalk.