FROM Last Chance U to The Last Dance, sports documentaries are hitting it out of the park at the moment. Usually the best are the most expensive to make and therefore to be found on streaming services, but Auntie gets in on the action this week with The Australian Dream (BBC2, Sunday, 10pm).

Directed by Daniel Gordon (George Best: All By Himself) and written by Stan Grant, the 100-minute film is the story of Australian Football League player Adam Goodes. No worries if you don’t know one end of Aussie Rules football from the other – this is a tale about so much more than 36 sweaty men in sleeveless shirts and too short shorts.

By all the accounts of the talking heads here, Goodes was a natural born superstar athlete from the off. Fast, smart, powerful, charismatic and cool-headed, he had it all and his path to fame and awards was smooth and swiftly navigated.

Besides being a leading light in the game there was one thing that marked Goodes out from the majority of his sporting peers: he was an Indigenous Australian, one of the Aboriginal people whose roots in the country went back thousands of years, to long before British colonisers arrived in the 18th century to steal the land and terrorise the men, women and children already living there.

Goodes knew all about racism in the game and in wider Australian society. As a teenager he witnessed the famous moment in 1993 when player Nicky Winmar, in response to racist taunting from the crowd, lifted his shirt, pointed to his skin, and stood before the mob defiant and proud. Here was Australia’s equivalent to John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their fists on the podium at the 1968 Olympics, a landmark event after which it was hoped attitudes would change.

Except they did not. In 2013, two decades after Winmar took a stand, Goodes was on the field for another match. In Aussie Rules the crowd is within touching distance of the players, so when someone shouts something it is easy to see where it came from.

That day, someone shouted something. Goodes’ reaction was wholly understandable, but what followed opened him up to a world of more pain than he could have imagined.

The Australian Dream is centred around that incident but it takes a far wider approach to its subject, looking at historic and contemporary treatment of Indigenous Australians. The images are shocking, the experiences, some of them recounted by Goodes’ mother, are heartbreaking.

The film also functions as a guide to what it feels like to be in the eye of a social media hurricane.

There are huge emotional swings in what is a constantly surprising story, and at the heart of it all is Goodes.While he has the backing of many fellow players and observers of the game, he’s a persuasive enough advocate of his own case. Mark the name, you will hear of him again.

Now, you do know Diane Morgan. You may be more acquainted with her as Philomena Cunk, bizarro documentary maker (“Where does your lap go when you stand up?”), as Kath the ad sales manager in Ricky Gervais’s After Life, or perhaps slummy mummy Liz in Motherland. Always someone else’s character.

Well now Morgan has been given a train set of her own to play with in a new sitcom, Mandy (BBC2, Thursday, 9.30pm/9.45pm, above).

Morgan writes, directs and stars in the title role as a gobby, workshy northerner with an Ab Fab Patsy hairdo and a fag hanging from her lips. The latter is quite an achievement given the amount of gurning she does. In the first episode (which follows a pilot last year, still available on iPlayer), Mandy is forced to take a job as a pest controller in a banana factory. Not so hilarious results follow.

I found the first 15-minute episode a struggle, unable to get a handle on our Mandy – who, what, why was she? – but the second, complete with special guest star (one of several in the series it turns out), was more like the real, laugh out loud deal. Sign me up for the rest of the series Diane/Mandy, whoever you are. Oh, and the music, from the Bazza Manilow title tune onwards, is terrific.

No in the flesh International Festival, Fringe and book festivals this year due to You Know What, but you can see some of the highlights from the various virtual events taking place in The Edinburgh Show (BBC Scotland, Thursday, 8.30pm). Grant Stott is your host with the most in what is the first of two programmes.

There is also a 90 minute package of past highlights from The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo (BBC Scotland, Friday, 7pm), with a further one-hour programme on August 21). Arts strand Loop has an Edinburgh special on August 19. Enjoy.