Tuesday

One Of Us

9pm, BBC One

So far, I’ve only seen two episodes of the four-part mystery One Of Us. But having reached the halfway point, I can’t recall a programme that has left me quite so clenched up inside, simultaneously tense and trembling with anticipation, desperate to get to the next instalment to see if what I think must happen actually will. They tease it out, and, just when you think it’s unavoidable, they cannily manage to somehow keep avoiding it – but surely, at some point, they’re going to have to put John Lynch and Steve Evets together in the same scene.

Anyone who has spent any time tracking the careers of these two fine actors will realise why this is of high importance. On TV, Evets is most familiar from the sitcom Rev. Before that, though, he was best known for the movie Looking For Eric, Ken Loach’s brilliantly barking update of Harvey, in which he plays a postman who hangs around with an imaginary Eric Cantona, played by Cantona himself in an excellent display of Cantonism.

Meanwhile, John Lynch has devoted the past few years to making himself look as much like Eric Cantona as is physically possible, a project he takes to startling new Cantonanic peaks in One Of Us. Putting these two together in one show – an actor best known for working alongside Eric Cantona; an actor who looks exactly like Eric Cantona – then conspicuously keeping them apart can surely only be deliberate.

What it means, I don’t know. But you take your thrills where you can, and I have happily accepted that the only reason for watching One Of Us is waiting for the inevitable moment when Lynch and Evets finally share screen space, just so I can point and shout “Hey, look: it’s Looking For Eric!” It’s not much. But it’s more than you get from a lot of TV shows.

Otherwise, One Of Us is a baffling misfire. Baffling partly because it was written by Harry and Jack Williams, the brothers behind 2014’s The Missing. Split between Edinburgh and “The Scottish Highlands,” the new one revolves around the killing of a newly married young couple. Childhood sweethearts who grew up on neighbouring farms, the pair are slaughtered in their city flat shortly after returning from honeymoon. Back out in the countryside, their families are united in grief – and, when the chief murder suspect turns up one dark and stormy night, they become bound even closer together by a web of secrets and lies.

Like The Missing, there’s a lot of coincidence and implausibility. Sadly missing, though, is the atmosphere, the sense of panic, place and pace that made the James Nesbitt thriller fairly compulsive. The script starts out overwrought, then stays there. A very good cast has assembled – Juliet Stevenson, Gary Lewis, Kate Dickie, Julie Graham, Adrian Edmondson and, as the cop on the case, Laura Fraser – but they’re generally left stranded by the dialogue.

Cutting though it all, however, is Evets. Cast as Fraser’s detective partner, it’s perhaps because he’s been given a secondary character, but he finds a lightness of touch eluding everyone else. Whenever he turns up, he’s the only human on screen. I was reminded of watching Columbo, the way Peter Falk’s scratchy cop always seemed to be in a different show to everyone else. One Of Us is a dud. But if it makes someone give Evets his own series as a Manc sleuth, it will have been worthwhile. If he gets an imaginary sidekick, even better.

Sunday

Fleabag

10pm, BBC Two

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s abrasive crisis-com debuted on the iPlayer in July, but might snare a few more eyeballs now it lands on BBC Two. It deserves to. Adapted from her one-woman Edinburgh festival play of 2013, she plays the confused, angry, cash-strapped and secretly wounded anti-hero, Fleabag, trying to navigate modern life against waves of cynicism, lifestyle pressure, self-loathing and internet porn. The tone is captured in this quote: “I have a horrible feeling that I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical depraved, morally bankrupt woman...” And that’s without going into her Barack Obama habit. There are a few rough edges from translating a monologue into a full-cast piece, but when it gets going, it’s awkward, filthy and heartfelt, like a slightly younger, slightly more desperate Sharon Horgan piece. A fine cast is assembled, including Olivia Colman and, as Fleabag’s weary dad, Bill Paterson, who responds to the quote above with beautiful resignation, and the best punchline of the first episode.

Monday

Ripper Street

9pm, BBC Two

It looks as if the end is in sight for the Ripper Street faithful. The BBC created the pulpy, two-fisted Victorian crime saga in 2012 and unceremoniously cancelled it following the second series in 2013, leaving loose ends dangling. Amazon resurrected it for its Prime Video streaming service the following year, successfully delivering a third then fourth season, but it has been confirmed that the forthcoming fifth (due on Amazon later this year) will be the last. Fans stuck playing catch-up on terrestrial TV, meanwhile, at least have a little longer left to go, as season four is only just arriving on BBC Two tonight. It’s 1897 now – three years on from the events of series three – and Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfadyen) has quit to live a quiet life by the sea with his daughter. He’s called back to Whitechapel’s mean streets, however, when an old friend prevails upon him to reinvestigate a murder case his old colleague Drake (Jerome Flynn) recently closed. Two great Davids – Warner and Threlfall – add to the whiskery fun.

Wednesday

The Watchman

9pm, Channel 4

All right, okay: The Great British Bake-Off is back tonight on BBC One at 8pm, in a double-bill with a two-part documentary on last year’s winner, The Chronicles Of Nadiya (9pm). But you’ll be hearing enough about the bakers and why you should love them over the next 10 weeks. So allow me to direct your attention to this taut little one-off drama, which you can catch on catch-up after you’ve finished picking the crumbs from Mary Berry. The one-man recipe for disturbance Stephen Graham stars as Cal, a CCTV operator who, working alone with his all-seeing screens, has become a little blinded by his sense of omniscience. Disgruntled by the local police’s refusal to treat him seriously, when they fail to act on his reports about a group of local drug dealers, he resolves to take action himself, stepping out into events he was only supposed to be monitoring. Set across one claustrophobic night, it’s another cautionary urban parable in the mould of Channel 4’s recent The People Next Door.

Thursday

Scotland’s Game

9pm, BBC One

It’s a question that’s been chewed over for decades on the stands and on the buses, around kitchen tables, at bars and in endless radio call-ins: whatever happened to Scottish football? This landmark four-part documentary seeks to piece together the story of “intrigue, social change, greed, risk and self-delusion at the heart of the so-called Beautiful Game,” by examining the changes that have occurred over the past three decades. The opening episode looks back to the mid-1980s, when the industrial heartland communities that once produced Scotland’s biggest teams started to fracture, at the same time as a new commercial doctrine opened the boardroom door to both genuine entrepreneurs and dubious opportunists. The programme considers a range of takeovers and buyouts, including the Souness era at Rangers, Celtic’s last-ditch rescue by Fergus McCann, the controversial attempt to take over Hibs by Hearts chief Wallace Mercer, and the takeover bid which led to acrimony between the Dundee clubs. Contributors include Souness, McCann, Terry Butcher, historian Tom Devine, Alex Salmond, broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove and writer Christopher Brookmyre.

Friday

BBC Proms 2016

7.30pm, BBC Four

Travis With The BBCSSO At The Barrowland 11.05pm, BBC Two They’re going Mozart crazy at the Proms tonight, with three hours devoted to the wee guy. To begin, there’s the spectacle of the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by co-founder Nicholas Collon, tackling the mighty Jupiter symphony – a particularly impressive sight because the energetic group is playing the piece entirely from memory, without sheet music, and makes the most of having a stage that’s not cluttered with stands. Presenter Tom Service also investigates just how they go about committing such a complex piece to memory. Petroc Trelawny takes over presenting at 8.30pm as conductor Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra perform three works written during the last month’s of Mozart’s life: Per Questa Bella Mano; Clarinet Concerto In A; and the awesome/ terrifying Requiem. It’s a hard act to follow strings-wise, but Travis give it a shot anyway on BBC One at 11.05pm, with a recording of their recent Barrowland show in collaboration with the 60-strong BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Saturday

The Truth Commissioner

9pm, BBC Two

Adapted from David Park’s acclaimed 2008 novel, this one-off drama is set in a fictionalised Northern Ireland in which, following the formation of Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive, a South African-style Commission For Truth And Reconciliation has been established to bring “transparency” to the bloody history of The Troubles, and “closure” to resentments festering over the thousands of deaths. Roger Allam plays the world-weary British diplomat flown in to head the hearings, who, while trying to negotiate a path between shadowy MI5 types and former Provos-turned ministers, is drawn to a troubling case involving the killing of a young man in the early 1990s. It soon becomes clear, however, that there are hidden agendas everywhere, and that few in power want the truth of the past examined at all. The film suffers from attempting to condense Park’s book into 90 minutes – a full series would have given ideas and characters room to breathe – but it’s a solid watch, with some powerful moments, anchored by Allam's messed-up, stuffily soulful resignation.