TV: Damien Love reveals his pick of the week's TV

British Art At War: Bomberg, Sickert And Nash

9pm, BBC Four

It seems like he's only just back from China, but Andrew Graham-Dixon already has a handy new three-part art guide. The series focuses mainly on the First World War, as documented, reflected and refracted through the work of three artists: David Bomberg, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash. He begins with the last, tracing how the painter's lifelong love of nature began in a childhood both troubled (his mother suffered mental illness) and idyllic: moving to the Buckinghamshire countryside for her recuperation, he, his brother and sister lived a Swallows And Amazons existence in the local woods. As he developed, that fascination with landscape fused with a modern-surrealist sensibility to produce some of the most iconic yet mysterious and psychologically acute depictions of both world wars. Nash served as an officer in Flanders in 1917, but an accident saw him shipped home to recover; in his absence, his entire regiment was wiped out. He returned guiltily to the killing fields that year as an official war artist. What he witnessed haunted his work for the remainder of his life, including the controversial, brilliant pieces he made for the RAF during the Second World War.

Monday, September 15

Cilla

9pm, STV

So, you know how you got really, really, really drunk that night and ordered us up a massive three-hour biopic of Cilla Black? Well, surprise, surprise. It's here, man. It's here. Written by Jeff Pope, who did such careful, gripping work with his Moors Murders piece See No Evil and the Fred West drama Appropriate Adult, this faintly baffling expense of time, resources and energy sees Sheridan Smith throwing herself gamely at the central role and disappearing convincingly into it. Only trouble is, she never really convinces you that what she's doing has anything to do with Cilla Black, or that we should care much. The first part of a long haul covers the early 1960s, as the first stirrings of Merseybeat begin in Liverpool, and Our Cil, a young typist dreaming of being a young hairdresser dreaming of being a young singer, hangs out with the crowds at the Cavern, where her pal Ringo plays in a couple of bands, leading to a fateful audition with impresario Brian Epstein. Could this be her big break? Beatles people will tear their hair out at how amazingly bad they manage to make absolutely everything look and sound.

Tuesday, September 16

The Leftovers

9pm, Sky Atlantic

And suddenly, all at once, a swathe of the population is just gone. Disappeared. The majority left behind in their somehow altered world look at each other, some stunned, some angry, some mourning, some numb, all wondering why it happened, how it happened, why it didn't happen to them, whether the ones who went are in heaven, hell or limbo - and whether it might happen again.

No, not a controversially timed indyref UK apocadrama. Rather, The Leftovers, the latest good-looking HBO mega production, and the latest from Damon Lindelof, a name that may either pique your interest or make you want to perk up your television screen with an axe, depending how you felt following the 90-odd hours of his most famous show, Lost.

Adapted from Tom Perrotta's novel, the series concerns the aftermath of a worldwide event dubbed Sudden Departure. One day, one in 50 people simply vanished, seemingly at random. An effective prologue flashes back to the moment: a mother with a bawling baby looks away, looks back, and her kid is no longer there; meanwhile, in the street beyond, a child cries after his dematerialised dad, while driverless cars smash into each other. What the hell's happening? What's the big mystery? Reasonable questions. But perhaps not the right ones to ask here, at least not if you plan to watch this series without, at a certain point, throwing your TV out the window while a resolution dances farther and farther out of sight.

The story proper begins three years after Sudden Departure, by which point many of the 98% of society left behind have admitted they don't know what happened, and are just trying to get on or are giving up. Others, meanwhile, are certain what occurred was some kind of Rapture.

We focus on the small town of Mapleton, specifically its troubled police chief, Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), whose family has been torn apart. None of his brood were actually spirited away, but his wife left for a cult-like community, The Guilty Remnant, who dress in white, chain smoke and never speak, conducting conversations by scribbling on notepads (scenes that make you wish Harry Hill was still doing TV Burp). Meanwhile, his father (the magnificent Scott Glenn) has gone nuts; his son is off following another culty leader (Paterson Joseph); and his daughter is a swearing teenager.

As Garvey tries to keep peace, and his mind, dark clues, portents and herrings of deepest crimson pile up: the dogs have gone strange, his bagels have gone missing and he keeps dreaming about deer. Mostly, though, people feel sad and cry, sensitive piano tinkles on the soundtrack, and you get the creeping, sinking feeling that, rather than some big mad spooky surrealist mystery, what you're being handed is a woolly self-help parable on grief in its various permutations, dressed up in dark gloom chic to look cool.

In some respects, The Leftovers is reminiscent of France's great anti-zombie series, The Returned, but it's a Returned pulled inside out, not merely in plot (rather than a guilty community dealing with people inexplicably coming back, they're dealing with their inexplicable absence) but in style and attitude. If you felt burned by Lost's ratio of two hours of doomy cod-philosophising for every five minutes of actual interesting action and its - let's say "debatable" - final reveal, you will recognise the endless, boggy territory, sucking you down while you wait for something to happen. Be warned: HBO has already commissioned a second series. Excuse me while I disappear.

Wednesday, September 17

Legends

10pm, Sky 1

After months of chatter, hope and anxiety, this week finally sees the arrival of the date most of us have had circled in red for the past year: that's right, Wednesday September 17, and a new series for Mean Sean Bean! The odd one-off aside, this US import is the cruel-mouthed one's first big outing since Game Of Thrones, but the legends here are not of the swords-and-sorcery variety. Rather, Bean plays a doughty FBI agent by the name of Martin Odum - OR DOES HE? See, Odum is a deep-cover specialist, donning a new personality to infiltrate wrong 'uns every week: the "legends" are the densely detailed backstories he creates for each of his multiple personalities. Thing is, he goes so deep into character he's losing track of who he really is, a situation not helped when a shambling derelict stranger appears to tell him he's not who he thinks he is, and They don't want him to remember who he really is - before being promptly murdered. Produced by Howard Gordon, there are heavy shades of his other hits, 24 and Homeland, along with heavier dollops of the Bourne movies and every deep cover thriller ever made. Nonsense, but it's light on its grim feet, and fairly watchable.

Thursday, September 18

Scotland Decides

10.25pm, BBC One

10.40pm, STV

Yes, it's a tricky decision. But it's one that we're all going to have to make up our minds about - do we watch this unfolding via the BBC or STV? Or over on Sky News? Or online? All the broadcasters have units reporting from each of the 32 counts across the country, so it all comes down to personalities in the end. The BBC are pitching a crew led by Glenn Campbell, Brian Taylor and Jackie Bird (with optional access to Huw Edwards and Nick Robinson on the BBC News channel), while STV is rolling out Team Bernard Ponsonby and Aasmah Mir. All, of course, will be aided by the various circling pundits. The polls close at 10pm, but there's still plenty of time left for spinning before the first of the actual declarations begin to come in from around 1am onwards. Coverage continues through until breakfast time tomorrow, by which point, of course, everything will be utterly clear and all settled. Drink 'em if you got 'em.

Friday, September 19

Hello Quo

9pm, BBC Four

Friday night is Repeats Of Music Documentaries Night. It doesn't have quite the grandeur of This Is Spinal Tap, perhaps, but director Alan G Parker's fond Status Quo documentary is equally entertaining: where the Tap's drummer exploded, original Quo drummer John Coghlan simply caught fire, thanks to the inflammable cape he was forced to wear during the band's brief psychedelic period in the late 1960s. It's one of a string of stories relayed with relish by mainstays Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, who prove raconteurs on par with Peter Ustinov, albeit with more tales involving cocaine and pornography. Paul Weller, who joins Noddy Holder and Jeff Lynne to pay tribute, admits to being an admirer of the Quo's 1960s sartorial style, but the film makes clear the heart of this band is made entirely of denim. Look out later for an archive concert from the anti-Quo, Roxy Music At Frejus (11.50pm), a 1982 outing from Bryan Ferry's gang in their Avalon epoch.

Saturday, September 20

Doctor Who

7.30pm, BBC One

Decent monster alert! Tonight's escapade sees the Doctor and Clara join forces with a shape-shifter and a cyborg with attitude, to attempt to break into the private vault of a mega-space-bank in a galaxy far away, even though none of them know why - they've all agreed to have their memories temporarily wiped by the mysterious Mr Big behind the scheme. Bafflingly staged as a tribute to the BBC's own Hustle, it's inconsequential, basically dumb and surprisingly 1980s in tone, but compared with the two episodes that preceded it (Robin Hood and whatever the hell last week's was supposed to be), it's a fairly decent romp, and actually has something strongly resembling a story. Capaldi's Doctor remains set to abrasive, and Clara rocks a bit of a Patti Smith Horses look, but best of all, there's that decent monster guarding the bank, a big thing stomping the corridors, screaming and sucking people's brains out. More of that stuff, less of Clara's portentous love story with the crying teacher with the bruised secrets, and it would almost be like watching Dr Who. Almost.