Professor Hannah Fry introduces herself on her website as a “mathematician, science presenter and all-round badass”.

If badass means having a gift for making numbers understandable, then the 38-year-old is a badass and then some, as anyone who has read her books, or heard BBC Radio 4’s The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, or any number of other programmes and podcasts, will know.

What you may not know is that just over a year ago Fry was diagnosed with cervical cancer. As a way of coping what was happening to her, she began charting her experience on camera. Once a scientist, etc.

The result can be seen in an extraordinary film, Making Sense of Cancer with Hannah Fry (BBC2, Thursday, 9pm). True to form and character, Fry does exactly what she promises in the title. What she discovers leaves her questioning her assumptions about a disease that will directly affect one in two people in their lifetime.

The instinctive response of most patients when faced with cancer is to bring in the medical big guns. Cut it out. No hesitation. In Fry’s case, doctors recommended a radical hysterectomy.

But what of the additional treatments, chemotherapy chief among them, used to ensure the cancer does not come back? Should they be the inevitable next step, or in some cases do the harms outweigh the benefits?

Digging through the numbers and speaking to specialists, Fry learns the choices are not as simple as they first seem. In most cases, surgery will be enough and chemo, with all its debilitating side effects, makes no difference to whether or not the cancer comes back. What doctors and patients cannot predict, however, is who will be in the group that additional therapy does help, so everyone is offered it to be on the safe side.

It is not just the side effects of chemotherapy patients have to be wary of. What if the surgery gets rid of the cancer but proves harmful in other ways?

Fry starts to wonder whether we are we so focused on the best possible thing that could happen that we fail to prepare for what is happening. As she puts it, “Have we become so afraid of this disease that we’ll do anything to fight it no matter the cost?”

The most powerful moments in the film are the most personal, whether she is speaking alone to camera or interviewing other patients. As she goes through treatment, life in London with her husband Phil and their two young daughters, rolls along, the couple keen to keep things as normal as possible.

At one point Fry comes to Glasgow for an eye-opening interview with Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP and honorary fellow of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. Later in the piece she meets someone who has made the decision not to carry on with treatment.

A bold, thought-provoking, intensely moving film that could turn out to be the most important work in Fry’s career. A badass indeed.

How do you get to be an antiques expert? The question might have crossed your mind as you wander round a car boot sale trying to spot that bit of tat that turns out to be treasure. You could watch every episode of Antiques Roadshow, now in its 44th series, but a quicker, more enjoyable course is on offer in Big Antique Adventure with Susan Calman (Channel 5, Monday-Friday, 7pm).

“College” for the Scots comedian and filmmaker turns out to be Hemswell Antique Centres in Lincolnshire, the biggest of its kind in Europe with some 350 dealers setting up shop there. Her “lecturers” for the week are regular TV experts Danny Sebastian, Paul Martin, and Natasha Raskin Sharp.

Over the course of five nights, the trio will show Calman what to look for and, almost as important, what to avoid. She learns the art of haggling, or going in low enough to start a friendly conversation, but not so low that you get the seller’s back up.

There’s much to be gained by timing a visit just right. Should you go early bird to have your pick of the good stuff, or wait till nearer closing time when weary vendors are packing all that unsold stuff back in the van?

Calman also hears about the “antiques of the future”, including mobile phones, old VHS videos (really) and arcade games.

Some fascinating stuff turns up as the week goes on, including an old Singer sewing machine, made in Glasgow. Thanks to the Great British Sewing Bee, second hand or antique machines are much sought after, with this one, originally bought for £200, going for a tidy sum.

Calman has £150 a day to spend, and at the end of the week the items will be sold at auction. Will she prove to be the new Lovejoy, or is she more of a Del Boy and Rodney kind of antiques trader? Amid the mountain of daft jokes there is plenty of solid advice here and a few laughs to be had along the way. Calman to take over Fiona Bruce’s gig on Roadshow? Stranger things have happened in tellyland.