It is not often I visit a crime scene when on holiday, but sometimes an exception demands to be made. In this case the crime was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the location was Ford’s Theatre at 511 Tenth Street, Washington DC.

Ford’s was where John Wilkes Booth, an actor by trade (the profession has never quite recovered from the association), shot the president in the head at close quarters while he sat with his wife watching Our American Cousin, a comedy.

Despite the theatre being full of people, Booth managed to leap from the president’s box to the stage and escape. Manhunt (Apple TV+, episodes 1-2 available Friday) is the story of what happened next.

Adapted from the non-fiction book by James L Swanson, Manhunt is a terrific story that is as much an action thriller as political drama. Booth was a known Confederate sympathiser. He struck shortly after General Robert E Lee had surrendered to Union forces, bringing an end to the Civil War. But was the assassin acting alone, or was this a wider conspiracy? If the latter, how far up did the plotting go? If it turned out that this was an attempt at a coup d’etat the newly found peace would be shattered and the war reignite.

The story is told from the viewpoint of Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, played by the British actor Tobias Menzies (Prince Philip in The Crown). Belfast-born Anthony Boyle (also in Masters of the Air) is Booth, with Hamish Linklater (American) as Lincoln.

There is a lot of facial hair going on as you might expect, and the setting is authentically grungy. The pace in the first episode is blistering and bodes well for the six further episodes to come.

As for Ford’s Theatre in DC I can wholeheartedly recommend a visit. You can also visit the lodging house across the road where Lincoln passed away the next morning.

There is nothing grungy about Interior Design Matters with Alan Carr (BBC1, Tuesday, 8pm), unless that’s the look judge Michelle Ogundehin has requested. Only host Alan Carr gets to tease our Miche, and even he looks nervy.

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When not on tour, Carr seems to spend much of the year with a paintbrush in hand. Having just finished renovating another Italian property with Amanda Holden, here he is embarking on an eight week series featuring ten novice interior designers.

The first episode has traditionally involved decorating a new build property. Not this time. (Watch and learn, Apprentice producers.) The setting for the task is a converted Abbey and the commission is to turn former nuns’ cells, all four metres by two metres of them, into bijou B&B accommodation. There is a lot to do in two days, but the beauty of Interior Design Masters is that there are plenty of tradespeople on hand to help. Tradespeople, moreover, who turn up on time and are only too delighted to do whatever is asked of them. Imagine.

Now in its fifth series, the standard on Interior Design Masters climbs higher every year. You won’t see this lot mucking around with MDF. While the contenders are not professional designers they are a creative lot, counting an upholsterer, a weaver and a graphic illustrator among their ranks.

Some of the transformations in the Abbey (two of them inspired by the Sound of Music) are superb and the ideas would work in any small room. At the end of the week, as per television law, someone has to leave the competition. Good luck with that further down the line.

A grim phone call from a waste disposal firm opens Forensics: the Real CSI (BBC2, Sunday, 9pm). A freezer has been dropped off as part of a flat clearout. Inside is a body. No identity, no idea how it got there. A job for forensics, but where to begin?

The team at West Midlands Forensic start with the liquid remaining in the freezer to see if it will yield usable DNA to identify the body, or the person who put it there.

The freezer is eventually traced to a flat in Birmingham, the tenant identified and a person taken in for questioning. What police need to find out is whether they are dealing with a death from natural causes or something more sinister. It’s back to the science for answers.

The scientific techniques are impressive, yielding so much information from what seems so little. What makes the difference is the willingness of the staff to go all out in search of answers. There’s a feeling that whatever has happened in this case there is someone who has not been laid to rest peacefully as is their right. If no-one else will speak up for the dead, these officers will.

At the end there’s a link to find out what it takes to become a forensics officer. Perhaps watching Forensics: the Real CSI on television is as close as most of us would want to get to that goal.