Pick of the WeekThe Walsh SistersSunday, RTÉ One, 9.30pm
Fans of Marian Keyes will already know the Walsh sisters – Anna, Rachel, Helen, Claire and Maggie – and will have followed all their family, career and relationship mishaps, missteps and miscalculations over seven bestselling novels and a short-story collection. Now their messy lives are up on the screen in this new series that promises to deftly blend a uniquely Irish humour with darker themes of addiction, marital breakdown and long-buried family secrets. The series is adapted by Stefanie Preissner – creator of Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope – and screenwriter Kefi Chadwick, and stars Preissner as Maggie, with Louisa Harland from Derry Girls as Anna, Máiréad Tyers from Extraordinary as Helen, Caroline Menton as Rachel and Danielle Galligan as Claire. The cast also features Carrie Crowley as Mammy Walsh and US actor Aidan Quinn as Jack “Daddy” Walsh. Episode one brings us to Dublin, where Anna and Rachel are sharing a flat and partying hard – although it soon becomes apparent that Rachel is partying a lot harder than most, and when she is hospitalised after a particularly heavy bender, the girls have to face some hard truths. Will this series fill the Normal People-shaped hole in the TV universe? We’ll be watching.
HighlightsBig Brother Live Launch Sunday, UTV, 10.15pm
Big Brother has been like an unloved child of late, farmed around from network to network in increasingly desperate efforts to restore its original ratings glory. ITV took in the poor wee bairn in 2023, and we’re assured that the programme is settled nicely in its latest home. Now comes its third outing on the channel, and hosts AJ Odudu and Will Best will once again oversee all the shenanigans in the Big Brother house, which has been given a big makeover to make it a bit less gaudy and headache-inducing. The producers are so confident that this series will be a hit they’ve added an extra week of BB house action, and are promising “new twists and turns, elaborate tasks, intense nominations and live evictions”. We’re also promised a celebrity version some time next year, but ITV boss Kevin Lygo has admitted that because it’s getting harder to book A-list names, they’ll be going a bit further down the alphabet to find “interesting and niche” participants.
I Fought the Law: The Ann Ming StorySunday, Virgin Media One, 10.30pm
Sheridan Smith in I Fought the Law: The Ann Ming Story. Photograph: ITV
When Ann Ming’s 22-year-old daughter, Julie Hogg, disappeared from her home in Durham in November 1989, she suspected the worst. But when police finally agreed to send a forensics team to examine Julie’s house, they found no evidence of foul play. Three months later, however, Ann discovered her daughter’s decomposing body hidden behind a panel in the bathroom. She had been strangled by local man Billy Dunlop, but despite the overwhelming evidence against him, the jury couldn’t reach a verdict. A second trial was also inconclusive, and Dunlop was freed. Under Britain’s 800-year-old double jeopardy law, he couldn’t be tried again for the crime, but after Ming heard about Dunlop bragging in pubs that he’d got away with murder, she set out on a 13-year-long quest to get the double jeopardy law changed and bring her daughter’s killer to justice. Sheridan Smith stars in this four-part drama based on Ming’s memoir, For the Love of Julie.
Blue LightsMonday, BBC One, 9pm
Blue Lights: Katherine Devlin
Siân Brooke, Katherine Devlin and Nathan Braniff return as new PSNI recruits Grace, Annie and Tommy in the third series of the hit police procedural set in Belfast. After two years in the pressure-cooker environment of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the trio are not such rookies any more – in fact, they’re settling nicely into their jobs. But there’s no room for complacency as the team find themselves in uncharted territory: dealing with a global organised crime gang now running the city, and the phalanx of “respectable” accountants and lawyers helping the gang members hide their criminal assets and evade justice.
Secrets of the BrainMonday, BBC Two, 9pm
Secrets of the Brain: Jim Al-Khalili
Human minds are grappling with the implications of AI, and dreading the inevitable day when the technology becomes self-aware and decides we’re surplus to requirements. There’s reassurance on offer in this two-part series presented by theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili, in which he charts the evolution of the human brain over 600 million years and unravels its vast complexity. ChatGPT is only three years old, so that gives us – let me check with Google – a 599,999,997-year head start. Apparently, the human brain has about 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion connections, so AI will probably need a data centre the size of Jupiter to come anywhere near our level of brainpower. Mind you, that won’t save us from the inevitable AI takeover, but as we line up to be thrown into the wetware disposal unit, we can at least go to our doom with a knowing grin.
Build Your Own HomeWednesday, RTÉ One, 9.30pm
Build Your Own Home: Harrison Gardner
For cash-strapped homeowners, the idea of getting in the builders to do a refurb or put in an extension can be daunting, but what if you could cut out the construction firm and just do the job yourself? In this series, master builder Harrison Gardner takes homeowners under his wing and shows them how to renovate their rundown old gaff – or build themselves an entirely new home – at a fraction of the cost of hiring professionals. The Australian is firmly of the belief that anyone can learn to build – definitely not music to the ears of millionaire developers – and in this second series he shares his considerable expertise with members of the Clare Island community and helps them create a spanking new tourist attraction out of a local facility that has fallen into neglect. In the first episode Gardner helps young couple Aoife and Louis add a huge modern extension to their tiny 200-year-old cottage in Tuam, Co Galway.
BorderlineFriday, UTV, 9pm
Cross-Border co-operation is the theme of this crime drama series set in Northern Ireland and the Republic, and starring Eoin Macken and Amy De Bhrún as a mismatched pair of cops investigating a murder on the Irish Border. Detective inspector Philip Boyd is the reserved, slightly repressed northerner; Aoife Regan is the sweary southerner who shoots from the hip. Both have to put aside their differences if they’re going to solve the case. Imagine, two people from opposite sides of the Border working together – what next, cats and dogs joining forces to fight crime?
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge)Friday, BBC One, 9.30pm
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge): Steve Coogan. Photograph: Ben Blackall/Baby Cow/BBC
The revered broadcaster is back on British telly after a year working in Saudi Arabia, and he’s leaving behind a lucrative career making commercials for Saudi radio to help his fellow Britons sort out their mental health problems. In this new series, he’ll take a personal journey through the world of mental health, adopting a caring, concerned expression and asking “important questions” about the state of Britain’s collective noggin. As you know, Partridge likes to fly by the seat of his chinos, and this series began as a diary of his homecoming to Blighty, but when he realised that neither making lots of moolah in the Middle East nor being back home in his beloved Norwich was making him happy, he decided instead to address the state of the nation’s health and see if he could provide some televisual therapy. But he can’t do this alone, so he’s set up a crowdfunder appeal offering personalised birthday voicemails and even dinner at a restaurant of your choosing (it’s cheaper if he gets to choose the restaurant). Steve Coogan stars as the not-at-all-narcissistic presenter, with Felicity Montague returning as long-suffering PA Lynn, and Tim Key back again as Sidekick Simon.
StreamingChad PowersFrom Tuesday, September 30th, Disney+
Chad Powers: Glen Powell. Photograph: Disney+
Meet Russ Holliday, star college quarterback with good looks, a talent for touchdowns and an ego the size of Texas. Now say goodbye to Russ, as he’s just blown his budding football career with a display of showboating that ends in disaster for his team. He’s become America’s most hated QB, but Russ is determined to get back on the gridiron, so he decides to “do a Mrs Doubtfire” and don a disguise, becoming the dorky but affable Chad Powers, and joining struggling football team the South Georgia Catfish. Needless to say, Chad’s prodigious talents make the Catfish contenders in the big league, but can Russ keep up his oddball alter-ego under the glare of the spotlight? And can he ever escape the shame of his infamous fumble? As he says himself: “Russ was an asshole; Chad doesn’t have to be.” Glen Powell plays Russ and Chad in this new comedy series based on a sketch by Eli Manning for sports channel ESPN.
Monster: The Ed Gein StoryFrom Friday, October 3rd, Netflix
Your grandparents were terrified by Hitchcock’s Psycho; your parents were creeped out by Silence of the Lambs. But both films were inspired by one monster who ruled them all: Ed Gein, America’s most notorious serial killer. A psychotic loner with a twisted Oedipus complex, Gein perpetrated his gruesome deeds in a lonely house in the snowy wastes of Wisconsin in the 1950s, abducting and killing his victims, and using their corpses to make human masks and suits. Gein’s horrific crimes have long fascinated Hollywood, and his influence is visible in an entire genre of slasher movies including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Charlie Hunnam immerses himself in the role of Gein, with Laurie Metcalf as his mother, Augusta, the object of his deadly obsession, and Addison Rae as Evelyn, believed to have been one of his many victims. This is the third instalment in the Monster anthology series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, following The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.