Though my special CSI double-episode crisps may have gone a bit soggy, and my season-finale dips a little warm and smelly in the week since the postponement of the Tarantino written-and-directed extravagaza, I'll still be tucking into them with relish at 9pm this evening. Glued slavishly to Channel Five, I'll be hoping desperately that they're actually showing it this time (the delay was due to the recent attacks on London).
Still, if you've seen it already by some extraordinary or nefarious means, or if the experience was ruined for you by the unfortunate glut of reviews the following morning explaining exactly what we'd all missed - or, in fact, if you weirdly have no interest in watching it at all (?!) - then fear not, there are plenty of other ways to fill an evening in front of the box, and we've got the pick of them all, taken from this week's Guide and today's Guardian TV pages.
This World 9pm, BBC2 Fascinating if troubling film lifting the lid on the Moscow property-developing market. Here, crooked MPs work in tandem with corrupt tax authorities, bent cops rub shoulders with mafiosi, and innocent dupes face financial ruin and acid attacks; many such crimes protected by Russian law. As despairing restaurant owner Rozalia Korodzievskaya comments, "It's lawless here — a complete mess. Laws are only written when those in power want to change something for themselves."
Ali Catterall
The Nightmares Next Door 9pm,Channel 4 From the makers of Wife Swap comes this new reality series in which five households of "nightmare neighbours" are deposited next door to each other in an isolated, purpose-built village in Dorset. According to the programme-makers, the aim is to determine whether psychological techniques can be used to turn bad neighbours into good ones, although as we all know, the real aim here is to generate major confrontations that will have us all gawping in horror at the hideousness of it all. Subjects include a Lincolnshire woman with a pack of dogs and a family from Salford with unruly children. "I can see I'll have problems with you," says the Lincolnshire woman to the mother of the Salford family. "I'm a nice person," replies the Salford woman. "No she's not," says her son.
Neil Crosssley
Live Football
8pm, ITV2
Liverpool complete the formality of knocking Wales' Total Network Solutions out of the Champions League at the first qualifying stage. The first leg, which the reigning champions won 3–0 courtesy of a Steven Gerrard hat-trick, proved more meaningful than expected, at least to the players involved. Tonight's return in Wrexham could be compelling, if not competitive.
Simon Burnton
My Life As A Child 9.50pm, BBC2 The reality show which offers a jam-stained finger to the vision of Britain's youth as an Asbo-sporting mass of hoodie-wearing Neanderthals continues, with a knee-high look at moving house. The camera-wielding kids featured pragmatically deal with arguing or separated parents, and punch-happy siblings, exhibiting a level of compassion and understanding that would tax most adults. But the main opinion on moving house is still a plain "I don't want to", and who can blame them?
Joss Hutton
The Office: An American Workplace 9.30pm, BBC3 There, that wasn't too bad, was it? Last episode time but more are on the way. Let's not be too xenophobic about this: it's not the fact that the humour is "too British" to translate that makes this series not-as-good-as-ours. Larry Sanders and the work of Larry David explored similar themes in a similar style, it's just that people with a real flair for this are few and far between — Gervais and Merchant are hardly typical of British sitcom writers. Here the makers get far more right than they do wrong and it has some funny moments, quite something when you consider how rigidly wretched 99.9% of US comedy is.
Phelim O'Neill
The Yes Men (Dan Ollman, Sarah Price 2003) 10.05pm, FilmFour Well-intentioned documentary following anti-corporate pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno as they use their spoof World Trade Organisation website www.gatt.org to impersonate the real WTO in a series of global stunts. Unfortunately, where Michael Moore has combined similar tactics with a real sense of what makes an interesting film, the Yes Men's adventures — even when delivering a presentation to Finnish textile delegates in a huge gold lamé phallus costume — make for unfocused viewing.
Richard Vine
Which is all well and good, but for me there's nothing on tonight but the two sweet hours of postponed CSI goodness that I've been doggedly waiting for since five to nine last Tuesday. Channel Five, 9-11pm. Perhaps after that, stubborn as I am, I may agree to leave the sofa.
