TV highlights 31/01/14 (original) (raw)

Room 101

8.30pm, BBC1

The laugh-per-half-hour quota is guaranteed to stay steady with crooner Michael Ball and one-woman comfort blanket Caroline Quentin trying not to be upstaged by comedy German Henning Wehn. While Quentin attempts to banish control pants into the legendary room, Wehn goes straight for the jugular with fundraising. And don't get him started on the royal family. Ball, meanwhile, can't stand being showered with soft toys. "You want to toughen up your image," suggests Henning as the heart of many a fan breaks. Hannah Verdier

Video Killed the Radio Star: The Artist's View

8.30pm, Sky Arts 1

Another edition of the gossamer-thin show telling the stories behind iconic music vids. Did you know, pop-pickers, that Elton's riotous I'm Still Standing video was improvised on the spot, in a day, after director Russell "Highlander" Mulcahy fell into the Med with the original film? Elsewhere, Elton talks about Sam Taylor-Wood's affecting video for I Want Love, featuring a lip-syncing Robert Downey Jr: "The lyrics were so pertinent to what he was going through." Ali Catterall

Vultures: Beauty in the Beast – Natural World

9pm, BBC2

Charlie Hamilton James is on a mission to change the way we think about vultures. Not an easy task considering the birds feast on rotting corpses, and are mainly caught on camera neck-deep in decomposing wildebeest. But while the presenter struggles to find anything appealing about the birds , he does discover just how vital vultures' waste removal services are to the east African plain. Rachel Aroesti

Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild

9pm, Channel 5

Very much the Jack Whitehall of documentary TV, Ben Fogle brings amiable poshness to a series about living off the grid. Here, he meets Colbert: once a financier, now living in the Georgia swamps in a self-built cabin, where he spends his time pickling beaver and researching the female orgasm. Fogle takes all this in his stride, although a scary night excursion with his host may test his resolve. "If you see something that looks like a couple of red marbles," says Colbert, "that would be an alligator." John Robinson

The Last Leg

10pm, Channel 4

Adam Hills, Josh Widdecombe and Alex Brooker return for a new series of the enjoyable if slightly vague weekly round-up show. It all went a bit good-natured Top Gear when London 2012 finished. Finally, they have the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics to look forward to, giving proceedings a renewed sports focus. Hills and co should also include a weekly "gay propaganda" item to make up for the shortfall created by Russia's legislation. It's only fair. Elsewhere, Brooker continues on his quest to compete in the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. Julia Raeside

Mob City

10pm, FOX

Although done in by Joe Teague in the first episode, Simon Pegg's Hecky Nash appears to be having the last laugh from beyond the grave as his blackmail plot over Bugsy Siegel is still proving to have wide-reaching ramifications, not least for his and Teague's ex, the smouldering Jasmine. Meanwhile, Parker is hauling in all manner of mob types to grill over the restaurant murders, and Mickey Cohen and the sociopathic Sid Rothman pay Jasmine a visit. It's a tangled web indeed, but not necessarily anything we haven't seen before. Ben Arnold

Sound City

10.15pm, BBC4

"Kinda dumpy", "something of a time warp", or simply, "a shithole". As the likes of Josh Homme and this film's director Dave Grohl attest, LA recording studio Sound City isn't much of an oil painting. But it was here that some amazing rock albums were laid down, including Neil Young's After The Gold Rush and Nirvana's Nevermind. While it's often insanely tedious for non-musos to hear musicians bang on about the technical aspects of recording, Grohl's involvement ensures a warm, involving and very personal tribute. Ali Catterall