Lady Television

Costume dramas belong on a Sunday night. My only real concern about Parade’s End was the somewhat perverse decision to broadcast it on a Friday.

Conversely, a good detective yarn finds its natural home at about 9pm on a midweek evening.

The Bletchley Circle is both costume drama and good detective yarn. Combining those elements has conjured a mystical alchemy that makes the show watchable on any day of the week.

I suspect that an awful lot of people who watched Parade's End last night will be half-way to work this morning before they realise it’s Saturday. There’s something about a lush, glossy period drama that just says ‘Sunday Night’.

And Parade’s End is the lushest, glossiest period drama imaginable. Seeing it wash up on our televisions on a Friday seemed wonderful, but unnatural. Like a kangaroo in the Arctic. Or an honest man in Parliament.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in this Tom Stoppard adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s ponderous four-volume novel. Fresh from winning the nation’s hearts as an aloof cove with preternatural general knowledge in Sherlock, he’s an engaging lead as Christopher Tietjens, an…er… aloof cove with preternatural general knowledge.

Pop music, and pop culture generally, changed forever in June 1972. When David Bowie And The Spiders From Mars performed Starman on Top Of The Pops they rewired the brains of a generation.

This documentary focuses on that extraordinary year when David Bowie managed to make three great LPs of his own – every one now acknowledged as a classic – and almost as an afterthought produce hit albums for two of his major influences and write a smash hit single for a third.

We’re often warned about the dangers of power without responsibility, but Selina Meyer has the opposite problem.

As Vice-President of the USA Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) has numerous responsibilities, but little actual power. The central character in Veep is a political star who has somehow been sidelined into impotent vice-presidency.

We all know a little bit of Shakespeare. The plays of the world’s most famous Brummie supply practically every well-known English saying that didn’t come from their near-contemporary the King James Bible.

The plays, especially the histories, are quite often updated in production to emphasise their timeless relevance. That’s what the Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director Gregory Doran has done with Julius Cæsar.

The schedules are calf-deep in football at the moment, with the Euro 2012 tournament expanding to fill every minute of early-evening prime time.

Which is all very well, if you like football.

If not, there are a few isolated gems hidden away which might appeal. The Secret History Of Our Streets takes as a jumping-off point Charles Booth's socially-annotated 'poverty maps' of London, produced in the late 19th Century.

The birds are singing, the sky is unbroken blue, it’s not a great time to be stuck indoors watching TV.

And, by and large, the broadcasters seem to know it. Unless you’re a huge Eurovision fan it’s a thin old schedule this weekend.

It seems particularly infelicitous scheduling to run a bleak, postapocalyptic drama set in an alternative 1984. But that’s what Sky Arts are doing, bless them.

BBC Television Centre was a one-of-a-kind institution. It served not only as the technical model for media facilities the world over but also a clearing-house of ideas that still form the basis of the best TV drama and comedy today.

It was also a sort of university, training some of the most able broadcasters and production staff we’re ever likely to have in the UK. So, understandably, quite a few people are sorry to see it go.

Regular readers will know that I thought a great deal of Silk,

With the new series starting tonight, I thought today might be a good day to have a chat with the formidable (and fun) Frances Barber, who plays formidable (and fun) new character Caroline Warwick QC.