Welcome to our weekly What To Watch television and streaming guide. This week features Victorian Britain on Film, Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland, David Attenborough’s Global Adventure, All the President’s Men and more.
Victorian Britain on Film
Channel 5, Saturday 20 November at 6:30 pm
A unique window into a bygone era when a thrilling new invention, the motion picture camera, first captured a nation on film. Most of these films have been transformed by colourising them for the first time, allowing Britain to be seen as the Victorians themselves would have seen it.
Miriam and Alan: Lost in Scotland
Channel 4, Sunday 21 November at 10 pm
Actors Miriam Margolyes and Alan Cumming take off on a motorhome adventure to rediscover their Scottish roots. They start in Glasgow, visiting the street where Miriam’s Jewish family first lived in Scotland before heading north to the Highlands.
David Attenborough’s Global Adventure
Sky Nature, Monday 22 November at 8 pm
Catch this documentary capturing some of the greatest filming sequences of David Attenborough’s career, using previously unseen footage, from the deepest dives in a submersible on the Great Barrier Reef to watching a million bats take off in a cave in Borneo. Other highlights include life in the frozen tundra of South Georgia, a colony of King Penguins, and the world’s largest migration of Hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos Islands.
“House of Gucci” Costume Designer Janty Yates
V&A online, Tuesday 23 November at 7 pm
To celebrate the upcoming release of the “House of Gucci” film, join Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates and V&A Fashion Curator Oriole Cullen as they discuss drawing inspiration from the celebrated fashion house and the process of bringing the film’s iconic looks to life. The film is inspired by the shocking true story of the family empire behind the Italian fashion house. It spans three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder.
Great Film Composers: The Music of the Movies
Sky Arts, Wednesday 24 November at 10:45 pm
The first episode of this series charts the evolution of the movie soundtrack, beginning with the silent era when pianists would be employed to improvise music to the on-screen exploits. This episode looks at the decades before the first “talking picture”, where movies were utterly silent – or were they?
All the President’s Men
BBC Four, Thursday 25 November at 10 pm
Don’t miss the Oscar-winning thriller based on the real-life investigation by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. The film painstakingly reconstructs the events surrounding the most significant political scandal of the 1970s, Watergate. Starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.
The Shipman Files: A Very British Crime Story
BBC Two, Friday 26 November at 11:05 pm
Chris Wilson re-examines the case of Harold Shipman, exploring how attitudes to the elderly enabled the GP to get away with the murder of hundreds of patients. In this first instalment, Wilson reveals how the doctor’s crimes were first discovered and how he was finally apprehended and charged with the murder of 15 of his elderly patients.