THE shadow of Bible John still hangs heavy over Glasgow, half a century on from the unsolved murders that bear his name. The case crops up in the media so often you could be forgiven for greeting yet another exploration with a sigh. Who will be the suspect this time, what new theory explored?

The Hunt for Bible John (BBC1, Monday) could have been just more true crime fodder, had it not been for the filmmaker, Matt Pinder. As he showed in his Bafta-winning Murder Case, and Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming, Pinder can tell the most shocking of stories in a way that is always dignified, never sensationalist.

The two-part documentary took viewers back to the east end of Glasgow in 1968, the year the killings started.

Grim barely begins to describe the violence, poverty and misogyny in the everyday life of the time. It said a lot that it took the discovery of a third beaten and strangled woman for the city and police force to be galvanised into real action. By then, of course, it was too late; the killings had stopped and the murderer has never been caught.

Pinder charted the steps and missteps in Scotland’s largest murder hunt via a superb cast of contributors that included crime reporters and detectives from the time, contemporary observers, and, most memorably of all, the husband of one of the women.

There will doubtless be more retellings of the Bible John story, but it is hard to imagine any as informed and compassionate as this one.

Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby (BBC2, Tuesday) found chef Monica Galetti and columnist Giles Coren staying at the ION Adventure Hotel in Iceland.

The angle of this show is that the presenters, while lapping up the luxuries in the many-starred hotels, also “work” at the place. But no regular staff, I would imagine, stay in rooms costing £358 a night.

The pair tried various activities, including snorkelling in a fissure, so that they could in turn sell the trips to guests. While the sights were spectacular, almost every time you saw Coren he looked frozen to the bone and miserable. There's entertainment to be had in that, but after a while I longed for sunshine and a beach. Isn't that the deal with travel shows?

There was not much song and dance to mark the arrival of the comedy pilot Britney (BBC1, Tuesday) so you might have missed it. That would be a pity. At first glance the story barely amounted to much. Two young women, lifelong friends, dreamed of moving to London and sharing a flat. Except the best laid – and true – plans of writers and actors Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson did not work out like that, courtesy of the titular Britney. It would spoil the fun to say who or what Britney is, but there is no doubting the talent of Clive and Robertson.

Another pair, and their four sons, have done the London thing in reverse, selling up and moving to the sticks. The first series of Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country (Channel 4, Tuesday) followed the family as they came up against no end of hitches, as is the norm in such shows, and then Covid came along.

A couple of years on, the outside of the new build country home in Somerset looked the very dab, but inside it was still a work in progress. In the first episode the grand entrance hall finally came together, but what a labour it had been.

Beeny was one of the first property show renovators and one of the best, because the advice she gave to others came from her own hands on experience. She hasn’t changed, even if the homes have grown grander.

How much easier it would have been to forget about building an actual house and simply slip into virtual reality. BBC2’s Your Home Made Perfect already uses VR headsets to let people see what their architecturally remodelled home will look like. Virtually Home (BBC1, daily) did the same with interior design styles. So no more Changing Rooms-style horror "reveals". No more picking a colour off a chart and hoping for the best. The home owners were happy, but for the love of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, where’s the fun in playing it so safe?

Farewell to Showtrial (BBC1, Sunday) after five weeks of did she, didn’t she featuring the year’s most unlikeable heroine, posh girl Talitha. The finale featured the usual pulling of rabbits out of the hat (missing footage found, etc), and ends were left loose (what happened to the mother?). On the whole, though, it turned out better than the first episode would have led you to expect (chronic mumbling aside). Right to the end, viewers were left wondering if justice had really been done, or if we had all been fooled again. Crown Court was never this complicated.