Pick of TV Monday, June 16 - Saturday, June 21, plus one to watch anytime on BBC iPlayer

BBC iplayer

Original Comedy Shorts

Original Drama Shorts

People Just Do Nothing

There's a lot of football on television this week, which - theoretically, anyway - is good if you like football. If you're looking for something else to watch, however, it's drought season.

There is life out there, though. With the World Cup washing away regular TV, I finally got around to watching the six Original Comedy Shorts created for the BBC's iPlayer which appeared earlier this month, and will remain available for the next year alongside two other recent iPlayer exclusives: the three Original Drama Shorts that went up in March and the sitcom People Just Do Nothing, which arrived in May.

Online shows are nothing new, but this is still relatively virgin territory for the BBC. The Corporation has created purely online content before, but these have tended to be mini-episodes tied to established series, like Dr Who. The impetus for this original, standalone content might be the impending axing from TV of BBC Three - for good and bad, the nearest the BBC has had to a testing ground for new talent over the past decade - which will become a solely online channel from autumn 2015.

The Drama and Comedy Shorts are very different beasts. The former, which average 15 minutes, are made by new writers and directors, while the comedies, which run around five minutes, but sometimes feel much longer, come from well-known names, including Meera Syal, Reece Shearsmith, Matt Berry, Frankie Boyle, Mickey Flanagan and Bob Mortimer.

In terms of strike rate, the dramas win. All three - Flea, My Jihad and Tag - are worthwhile, and those first two are excellent. Flea is the story of a girl facing regular hard times on a housing estate, delivered entirely as spoken-word rap rhyme (astonishingly, it works, thanks to lithe writing and a terrific performance by Alice Sykes). My Jihad sharply sketches a charming and surprising brief encounter springing out of Muslim speed-dating.

The comedies are a mixed bag, but two, both penned by Mortimer, are top notch. The Case Of The High Foot, starring Shearsmith as a Teutonic psychoanalyst and filmed as a flickering cross between 1920s expressionist horror and a WC Fields slapstick, is just daft as a brush. Best of all, though, is Wolf, which is basically old wildlife footage of wolves, with Matt Berry orating Mortimer's deeply stupid and wildly profane new narration on top, in his melted-cheese-and-exotic-plums voice.

What's encouraging about all the shorts is they see their makers trying stuff out. Syal's piece, Playback, about a vain Bollywood star and the voice artist who dubs her singing, has a solid idea, but suffers sledgehammer writing. Yet, even though it doesn't quite come off, it has an unusual, theatrical intensity. In this it is more interesting than People Just Do Nothing: a mockumentary about a pirate radio station, this is actually a pretty good sitcom; but it's also the kind of thing you'd expect on TV today anyway.

The best shorts have a sandbox nature, creators using the freedom low budgets offer to attempt things that wouldn't make it to regular BBC TV as it currently exists. None are hugely radical, but hopefully more experimentalism might flourish here, from both new and established voices.

Monday, June 16

The Dentists

9pm, STV

Football aside, trying to find something to watch on TV this weather is like pulling teeth. So you might as well just watch people pulling teeth. And drilling teeth, with their nasty, whining drills. And replacing teeth with hideous screws, so you get wee boys who have eaten too many sweets suddenly looking like the nightmare slavering steampunk offspring of Nosferatu and Jaws from the Bond movies. Our national fear of the Nazi villain from The Marathon Man means 90% of British adults have decaying or missing teeth, and dental problems are the fourth most common reason for people under 17 being admitted to hospital. This film climbs into the chair at Manchester's incredibly busy University Dental Hospital, where dentists battle to save the country's smiles. It's often hideous, but the stories of patients like James, having his face reconstructed after cancer, might prod you into keeping that appointment.

Tuesday, June 17

The Girl Who Talked To Dolphins

9pm, BBC Four

Not a new title in the Stieg Larsson franchise, but a documentary on one of the most extraordinary, flaky and depressing stories from the wilder end of 1960s utopian science. In the early part of the decade, American neuroscientist John Lilly embarked on a project to learn to communicate with dolphins. NASA, who were looking for ideas on how to talk to extraterrestrial life should they ever find it, pumped funding into his research and, in 1965, Lilly customised a large concrete villa on the coast of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, flooding the house so his researchers and the animals could live together. One young assistant, Margaret Howe, was tasked with trying to teach an adolescent bottlenose named Peter to speak English words through his blowhole. Working and living together in intense proximity for a year, the two formed a very strong bond, but it gradually became clear that Peter had developed unexpected feelings for Margaret. As time went on, lines blurred - and then Lilly started wondering what effect LSD might have on dolphins. What started out as a visionary project soured and ended weird and bad; a strange, strangely poignant exploration of an astonishing story.

Wednesday, June 18

Majesty And Mortar: Britain's Great Palaces

9pm, BBC Four

Whispering Dan Cruickshank returns with another one on old things. This time out, he's getting very enthusiastic indeed about the history of the royal palaces that various monarchs decreed built in their image around the place over the past 1000 years or so - great piles from the Tower of London to Hampton Court Palace. Whether to indulge their mad taste for luxury, to keep out the angry mob, or to promote their special, severe relationship with God, these buildings reveal much about the kings who built them and times they ruled over. Examining nooks, exploring crannies and fingering imposing fortifications, Cruikshank relates how these buildings have been at the centre of some of the most dramatic historical events. Some have survived in all their splendour; but it's the palaces that didn't survive that might have the most fascinating stories to tell.

Thursday, June 19

Fostering And Me With Lorraine Pascale

9pm, BBC Two

The former model turned baker of exceedingly nice-looking cakes, Lorraine Pascale is among the most likeable of the recent crop of TV chefs, and brings a light, but frank touch to this intimate film about how the fostering system works in the UK today. She knows whereof she speaks: Pascale was herself fostered as a new-born baby, subsequently given up for adoption at 18 months, and then fostered again at the age of eight, when her adoptive parents' marriage broke down. Looking back over her experiences in the system, she meets up for the first time in three decades with the carers who looked after her as a child, and uncovers some surprising details about her time with her adoptive family. But more than celebrity personal history, this is a sincere, insightful examination of what fostering means, and what it demands, as she meets people at every stage of the process, from social workers and carers, to children currently in care - including Jordan, a super-bright 10-year-old boy who is probably the most splendid person on TV this week.

Friday, June 20

Billy Joel: The Bridge To Russia - A Matter Of Trust

9pm, BBC Four

If you're already missing The Americans, with its mix of Cold War shivers, jacket-sleeves-rolled-up fashion tips and toe-tapping big hair AOR soundtrack, this documentary on the piano man's headline-making 1987 tour of the USSR offers an unexpectedly decent companion piece. Out to break the taboo - he was the first American rocker to play in Soviet Russia - Joel headed behind the Iron Curtain while Gorbachev's glasnost was beginning to rumble, but the idea that the Berlin Wall was coming down anytime soon was not even a pipe dream. The film details the difficulties in setting the tour up and Joel's admirable determination to make it happen, and it sets the grey, grainy context of the shows, which saw him treating the slightly uncertain, rock-starved Soviet audiences with what might count as the world's first example of doo-wop crowd-surfing. It's followed by a concert film of the enthusiastic Leningrad gig, complete with Uptown Girl. If that's not enough 1980s piano magic for you, it's followed by Barry Manilow At The BBC (11.35pm). There will be Mandy.

Saturday, June 21

Wallander

9pm, BBC Four

It's Christmastime in Ystad, the decorations are up, the smell of cooking is in the air and… yes, well, we know this kind of thing can't end well. Regulars are advised keep a box of tissues handy as we pay our final visit to Kurt and the gang. The feeling of a small era quietly ending is everywhere. For one thing, following the force's latest cost-effectiveness review, budgets are being slashed, and the Ystad CID is in danger of being shut down and merged with Malmo. More painfully, Kurt continues to struggle with his Alzheimer's, with daughter Linda now trying to shield and cover for him too; but it's becoming clear that the truth will have to come out, and soon. Meanwhile, a well-known restaurateur is brutally kidnapped, and the Ystad crew begin reluctantly working on the case with their Malmo colleagues - or not so reluctantly in Kurt's case, as he starts to get close to his new partner, Jenny. One last blinder from the boy Henriksson. It's all a bit heartbreaking, really.