Wednesday

Roots

9pm, BBC Four

Adapted from Alex Hayley’s novel about his own family history, the great 1977 US series Roots unexpectedly made UK headlines again last year, when there was an outcry following a line in Coronation Street delivered by Eva Price. Eva, who fits a particular line of Corrie level-two hero – not the most informed, but heart of gold – was bemoaning the state of her hair, when she said: “I’ve got more roots than Kunta Kinte. No idea who that is, by the way, just something my mum used to say...”

Whether you genuinely deem that racist or a trivialising of the subject Roots explores – the history of slavery, what it looked like up close, its legacy – depends who you are, I guess. Ofcom, who considered 473 complaints about it, decided it wasn’t, and was justified by character and context. From my place on the sofa, though, the most interesting thing about the controversy was how both the dialogue itself and the passion it aroused spoke to the power Roots had back then, and how we could do with some of it again.

Eva’s mum (Stella, the faithful will recall) is in her mid-50s, exactly of the generation of British teenagers who would have felt the phenomenon of Roots explode when the BBC first imported it, and who might otherwise never have considered the issues and history it raised. That Hayley’s fictional hero’s name should have lodged in her language, even as a thoughtless aside, is certainly believable – arguably even a good thing.

The new remake of Roots will, perhaps, never match the impact the original had, when TV was smaller and audiences larger (100 million watched the finale in the US in 1977). But it will leave an impression on anyone who does watch.

The filming is more sophisticated, of course. But the new series, showing in four 90-minute episodes, stirs potent sense memories of the 1977 mini-series. It’s not only that it closely follows the story (although there are additions, and omissions, that actually improve it). Simply that it feels big, and is serious and worthy in intention while, crucially, not coming across as merely worthy in tone. It’s deliberately aimed at the mainstream, to capture as big an audience as possible, and has sweep and romance, yet it doesn’t flinch from hard facts, horrific details. It’s that most old-fashioned of things: a TV drama that seeks to educate. It still feels necessary. It begins, though, like teenage adventure. The story opens in the town of Juffure, West Africa, in 1767 (15 years before Poldark begins, if you’re looking to orient yourself), where the young Kunta (Malachi Kirby) is about to start his training as a Madinka warrior, while falling in love with Jinna (Simona Brown), a character whose perspective is a new addition.

This opening is vivid and exciting, but there’s an undercurrent of dread that bursts when Kunta is abducted and wakes among countless others in the airless hold of a slavery ship bound for America. Here, an omission: in the original, Ed Asner played the slave ship’s conscious-stricken white captain, but there is no such character here, and this section grows tough and hopeless indeed.

It’s when Kunta arrives in the New World, however, that things grow truly grim, especially in the opening episode’s closing moments, as his new “masters” try to break him into accepting his slave name, Toby. The scene will register with viewers today as strongly as 40 years ago – and, if she sees it, Eva will understand why the name Kunta Kinte still means a lot.

Sunday

Apple Tree Yard

9pm, BBC One

Screenwriter Amanda Coe’s adaptation of Louise Doughty’s novel has delivered two terrific, tense and emotionally twisting episodes so far. But can it sustain that level? The final two parts are very different to the previous instalments, as we finally reach the point of the opening flashback, and the story becomes a chillier courtroom drama. (It’s maybe a reflection of this shift in tone and pacing that the BBC is putting these final episodes out as a quick pair, tonight and tomorrow.) In this setting, the two leads come under the microscope. Yvonne (Emily Watson) learns more about the mysterious Mark (Ben Chaplin), details that can seem both to contradict and confirm what she thinks about the kind of man he is. Meanwhile, as the case proceeds, Yvonne herself is subjected to another kind of assault. The entire cast is on great form, but this is Watson’s show. Yvonne shifts before your eyes, at times foolishly naïve, at others deeply sympathetic. She keeps shifting until the last moment. Concludes tomorrow at 9pm.

Monday

The Fake News Show/

Confessions Of The Paparazzi

8pm/9pm, Channel 4

With the announcement that MPs are to begin a parliamentary inquiry into “fake news,” timing is perfect for Channel 4 to launch a season on the phenomenon. That said, the programmes making up this Fake News Week don’t really go in too deeply – there’s no investigation into what is surely the most pressing concern, the rise of “troll farm” sites devoted to spreading misinformation, “alternative facts” and propaganda online. The closest we get is the Fake News Show, a fun panel quiz hosted by Stephen Mangan, with guests including Pointless guy Richard Osman and Katherine Ryan sifting some of the wilder stories doing the rounds, trying to say if any are real. Later, freelance photographer George Bamby dishes dirt on his paparazzi trade, with stories of trying to snap celebs for the tabloids. The season concludes tomorrow with another not-quite-the-point film, Britain’s Greatest Hoaxer (Tuesday, 10pm, Channel 4), about comedian Simon Brodkin (aka Lee Nelson) and pranks such as showering Sepp Blatter with fake banknotes.

Tuesday

The Moorside

9pm, BBC One

It’s become predictable to say how excellent Sheridan Smith is every time she turns up in something new, but there’s no way around it: here she is, brilliant again. Written by Neil McKay, who previously made the Moors Murders series See No Evil and the Fred West drama Appropriate Adult, the two-part story is once again drawn from the headlines, this time the Shannon Matthews case that caught the nation’s attention in 2008. When nine-year-old Shannon disappeared from her Dewsbury estate, word spread she’d been snatched, and friends and neighbours rallied around her mother, Karen, to offer support and keep the story in the public eye. But, as it transpired, Karen knew more about Shannon’s abduction than she admitted. McKay picks apart the elements in play in this spiralling situation with forensic skill. Smith plays Julie Bushby, the local woman who shouts loudest about the case and puts herself in the eye of the media storm. Gemma Whelan (Game Of Thrones’s Yara Greyjoy) is also superb as Karen Matthews.

Thursday

Legion

9pm, Fox

Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens makes a radical shift of gear with this wild, woolly, possibly wonderful series. Legion is loosely based on a Marvel Comics character connected to the X-Men, but this isn’t like any of the other comic book adaptations around at the moment. Stevens plays David Haller, a troubled young man in a psychiatric hospital. But is he schizophrenic? Or are his fantasies and mental instability actually the signs that he’s the most powerful mutant on the planet? Or … both? Created by Noah Hawley, the man behind the Fargo series, Legion is a good-looking beast, coming at you with one of the trippiest pilot episodes in a long time. Adopting David’s fractured psychic perspective, it’s is a wilfully disorienting, even confusing blast, replete with great retro 1960s/70s styling (and tunes), compositions that suggest Wes Anderson playing Kubrick, memory glitches, jumps in time, body swaps, and the odd dance routine. Whether it can hold up over the long run remains to be seen, but it should be fun finding out.

Friday

Arena: Alone With Chrissie Hynde

9pm, BBC Four

If there’s a more life-affirming sight on TV this week than Chrissie Hynde milking a cow, I haven’t been able to find it. Late in this damned charming film about the great Pretender, Hynde mentions to her pal, Sandra Bernhard, that, when she was approached about a documentary, she agreed only if it wasn’t going to be “a retrospective thing with people talking about me – gross.” Actually, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But the film we’ve got instead is wonderful. Essentially the camera just drifts after Hynde while she does what she does: visiting Paris, London, New York and her childhood hometown of Akron, doing some painting, doing some performing (that unmistakable voice as glorious as ever), and doing a whole lot of just wandering around in her excellent vegetarian boots, musing, with pocketsful of attitude. The effect is like hanging out with her. The final scenes of Hynde and Bernhard chewing the fat are like a pilot for a New York sitcom, a crankier, finer Laverne And Shirley.

Saturday

Terry Pratchett: Back In Black

9pm, BBC Two

This film opens with very moving private footage of Terry Pratchett attempting to work on what he thought would be his last piece of storytelling. The onslaught of Alzheimer’s meant another novel was impossible, but he still hoped to tell the tale of his own life – even as he tries to recount anecdotes for his assistant, Rob Wilkins, to record, however, we see the words betraying him and slipping away into the haze. The book was never finished. He died not long after, in 2015, aged only 66. Now, though, for 50 minutes or so, his spirit lives again to complete the job, kind of. In a dramatised documentary, Paul Kaye wears the famous black hat to play Pratchett’s avatar, leading us through his life – his troubled school days, his first books, his snooty critics, his success, his illness – in the writer’s own words. Along the way, fans, friends and collaborators including Wilkins, Neil Gaiman and Val McDermid offer help, gags, fond memories and the odd tear.

LAST WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS

Seventy-two years since it was released, the movie Dead Of Night – specifically, the sequence concerning Michael Redgrave as the cracked ventriloquist under the sway of his soul-devouring dummy, Hugo – remains one of British cinema’s most authentically eerie achievements. There have been many attempts to remake that story, but none have come close to recapturing its uncanny chill until last Monday, in Coronation Street (STV), where weird scenes unfolded within the sacred chapel that is Roy’s Rolls.

Recently, Brian Packham – ex-headmaster, colleague of the fabled Stape, disappointing lover of Julie Carp, and now Environmental Mental Health Officer – has moved in to share the flat above the café with Roy, taking up residence among the last belongings of Roy’s recently-departed not-quite-partner, Cathy. Among these is The Bear: a small, hand-stitched teddy, with baleful red eyes. “He’s been giving me nightmares,” Brian murmured. “Dreamt he came alive at the witching hour and gave me a catastrophic haircut. Made me a dead ringer for Les from Bay City Rollers.”

Already, the scene was enough to curl your lettuce. But things grew more deeply disturbing when Cathy returned, and Brian, crouching behind The Bear and waving its blunt little paw, became fully possessed and began speaking in its hideous voice: “Hello mummy. Why did you leave me behind mummy? I love you mummy!”

This kind of thing, the psychedelic prospect of watching Brian and Roy share a flat, is reason to believe Corrie is beginning to find its particular spark again. The show has been in the doldrums for a while. The nadir was possibly the tortuously constructed and achingly predictable storyline involving Cathy overhearing Roy’s thoughts on marrying her when he accidentally recorded them to a digital recorder. It’s never been as bad as EastEnders, of course. But the shrivelled peas you find rolling loose around the freezer when you have to defrost are better than EastEnders.

Recently, though, the green shoots of recovery have been poking between the cobbles. Much is due to the brilliant decision to gather the Barlow clan together again at Number 1. Consider: the same episode that saw Brian possessed by an evil teddy bear also saw Ken and Daniel discussing Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Add that Tracy has just turned 40 and is only growing more magnificently Tracy with every second; that Mike Baldwin’s rogue genes are coursing through Adam; and that Daniel is poised to replay Ken-and-Deirdre with the miraculous Sinead, and there is every reason to be hopeful.

Sauntering through the centre of it all with a fag on, of course, is the demi-god with clay feet that is Peter Barlow. Corrie ups its game whenever PB is in town, and remembers layers of subtlety. I can’t be the only one to have noticed that, ever since he started work as a taxi driver, he’s been wearing Travis Bickle’s flak jacket. The last words, though, go to Brian and Audrey: “He represented optimism, hope. A world of possibilities.” “You got all that from a snake made of tights?”