TV week preview: Men and football, women and arts

If it’s not quite from Russia with love for refugees from the beautiful game, there are plenty of cultural delights to dip into instead. Oh, and squirrels... don’t forget the squirrels

There is something irresistibly charming about our lovely red squirrels – and unfathomably so, because we all know they’re basically just rats with dyed hair and bushy tails (BBC)

So, next week’s television, then. There’s an awful lot of football, you know. This bonanza of quality viewing you can watch at home for free on BBC1 and ITV, as you may have noticed, unlike the Premier League games, which have been snaffled by some well-known private concerns.

The irony, of course, is that World Cup games, and particularly England fixtures, are best consumed in the faux crowd atmosphere of a suitably pumped-up pub, where you won’t feel quite as self-conscious at jumping around and weeping when England put in a disappointing show. Not that they will of course when they meet little Tunisia on Monday night. I’m looking for a 2-0 win there, with goals from Vardy and Kane, one in each half. Foolish to make such a prediction? Yes, but I’m not idiot enough to put a bet on that.

And apart from the footie? Well, there’s quite a lot of popular arts stuff next week, more your Classic FM end of the market scene than Radio 3 I suppose, but there’s no fault in that. ITV entertain us with the Classic Brit Awards on Sunday night. The host is Alexander Armstrong, a working definition of “middle brow” in anyone’s dictionary corner, and he’ll be in the Albert Hall dishing out the gongs for best movie score, classical compositions, performances and “crossover” music. Michael Ball, Alfie Boe and Andrea Bocelli make it worthwhile.

Maybe a bit more recherché, but very much on trend this season, is Unsung Heroines, a BBC4 documentary devoted to the lives and works of five women composers. It’s part of the channel’s week of female-led programming – Hear Her – and it focuses on Hildegard of Bingen, Francesca Caccini, Clara Schumann, Florence Price and Elizabeth Maconchy. Obscure, except perhaps for Schumann (because of her celebrated husband Robert), because of the times they lived in, they all deserve an overdue reappraisal and for their work to be heard once more. Opera star Danielle de Niese guides us through each opus, stretching from the middle ages to the late 20th century. Women can be musical geniuses too, you see.

Gilbert and George (or is it George and Gilbert?) at the RA (BBC)

Otherwise, arts-wise, there’s the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, a documentary filmed over some considerable time and obviously with much care. The Royal Academy of Arts, to give it its full title, is part club, part art school (the first in Britain), part intellectual powerhouse, part pillar of a civilised society, part coffee shop, part palace and part gallery. Great, but it also means it’s tricky to get a handle on it, and the programme suffers a little from trying to find a focal point too.

You may be surprised to see, as I was, so many anti-establishment types – Gilbert and George, Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry – become quite so enamoured of such an old institution, but, given that the academy is no more and no less than the body of its members, I suppose they might say they’re turning the RA into an anti-establishment force. Anyway, it’s 250 years old, it’s been doing some work on the old buildings, and there is an astonishing collection of gorgeous sculpture and paintings available to show to the public more easily in future. Nice to see it moving on. Heaven knows what Constable would have made of Perry’s vases and Gilbert and George’s paintings featuring bodily fluids. Maybe everything is “establishment” these days.

Shakespeare’s sisters: Roman tragedy gets a contemporary reworking (BBC/Donmar Warehouse)

The all-women BBC4 production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar on Sunday looks promising, staged at the Donmar Warehouse with the excellent Harriet Walter as Brutus, Jackie Clune as Caesar and Jade Anouka as Mark Anthony. They’d be hard-pressed to match the stunning production at The Bridge theatre in London this year, but you never know. Quite a treat, really.

If all that’s a bit too much for you and you’re put off by mud and chemical loos, then Sky Arts are running the Isle of Wight Festival 2018 into our living rooms from Friday evening. Highlights include Kasabian, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Depeche Mode, The Killers, Van Morrison and The Manic Street Preachers. Classics, of a kind, already.

‘Don’t worry, Demelza... I know just how to get this sand out of my breeches’ (BBC)

Does Poldark count as female-led programming? I doubt it frankly, but no doubt you can make your own mind up about this latest (fourth) series in the current dramatisation of Graham Winston’s novels, part-soap, part-cheese and part male cheesecake (Aidan Turner). This Sunday Poldark pursues his political ambitions and, more importantly, gets massaged by Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) in their regency-era bath. They should get Baftas just for keeping a straight face as they fumble with the soap.

Super Squirrels is quite the most delightful little wildlife show you’ll see in a long time. It’s a bit YouTubey, in that it doesn’t stay in one place for very long, flitting from the story of Billy, an orphan “baby squirrel” being reared by rescuers in Scotland, to the prairie dogs of the Mid West, to the colourful, fat and rather unathletic Malabar giant squirrels of southern India. We meet a “squirrel fanatic” who has determined that these common creatures we take so much for granted are very clever, indeed. There is, agreed, something irresistibly charming about our lovely red squirrels – and unfathomably so, because we all know they’re basically just rats with dyed hair and bushy tails.

Last, there’s a couple of decent murders to be reviewed. ITV has another look at the Rhys Jones case, in The Murder of Rhys Jones: Police Tapes, where Susannah Reid (not the most obvious choice) runs through the strange homicide of the 11-year-old gunned down as he walked home from football practice. BBC2’s Conviction: Murder in Suburbia is a two-parter on Tuesday and Wednesday where Louise Shorter, a journalist with a long record in examining possible miscarriages of justice, re-examines the case of Linda Razzell. Her husband was convicted of her murder in 2002, but has maintained his innocence ever since. No body was recovered and the main evidence against him was some blood found in his car and the circumstances of their divorce. New evidence is offered up.

World Cup (BBC1 and ITV, all week); Classic Brit Awards (ITV, Sunday 10.30pm); Unsung Heroines (BBC4, Friday 8pm); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (BBC2, Saturday 9pm); Julius Caesar (BBC4, Sunday 9.50pm); Isle of Wight Festival 2018 (Sky Arts, Friday from 7pm); Poldark (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Super Squirrels (BBC2, Tuesday 8pm); The Murder of Rhys Jones: Police Tapes (ITV, Thursday 9pm); Conviction: Murder in Suburbia (BBC2, Tuesday 9pm)