Pick of the Day

DAVID POWNALL'S absorbing trilogy Assassins (2.15pm R4) closes with a reconstruction of the events leading up to the murder of Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, 1865. Using a stream-of-consciousness style, Pownall unpacks the mind of failed actor John Wilkes Booth, whose finest hour upon the stage was when he uttered the line "Sic semper tyrannis".

In the first of a new series paying tribute to "Britain's greatest entertainers", At the Beeb (9.30pm R2), June Whitfield (right) looks back on a five-decade-long career, from playing Eth in The Glums to rehabilitation as Mother in Absolutely Fabulous, with much talk of wonderful, generous fellow artistes in between.