So let's imagine for a second that you're planning to spend the weekend virtually hanging out with us at the Port Eliot Lit Fest, or that you're saving all your energy for the Nottingham Mela, or Saturday night's Rock'n'Roll Hula at Beauberry House, West Dulwich. Or, perhaps, you've just had a really long week, and all you want in the world is the supple softness of your sofa and the calming purr of your cat/dog/significant other.
What should you do in this situation? What advice can we at the Culture Vulture Centre for Alternative Remote Control Use and Occupational Chairapy give you?
Why, the best advice in the world: we think you should watch some telly. And, as our recommended dosage, we bring you the best of the picks from this week's Guide.
Coast
9pm, BBC2
The charmingly geeky Nicholas Crane (Map Man) samples "life on the edge" of Britain as he fronts a promising new series devoted to, as its name suggests, the UK's coastline. Crane and cohorts begin an 11,700-mile journey in the south, taking in "sound-mirrors" (a precursor to radar), Alderney's sinister wartime history, oil production in Dorset and the fossil-rich delights of the so-called Jurassic Coast. Exploring under the waves, zoologist Miranda Krestovnikoff swims with cuttlefish off Selsey Bill.
Jonathan Wright
Still Game
10pm, BBC2
The second series of this Chewin' The Fat offshoot, concerning priapic, cardiewearing Glaswegian duo Jack (Ford Kiernan) and Victor (Greg Hemphill), will delight anyone with a yen for the dryly hilarious, unmistakably Scottish humour of the Chic Murray school. Sure, the premise may be hackneyed - crusty old buggers, in a stereotypically grotty council block - but its mixture of jokes about biscuits and senior citizen-centric smut hits just as hard as the more modish, equally wonderful Peep Show.
Joss Hutton
Jazz Britannia
11.35pm, BBC2
The story of British jazz is the story of a creative underdog, forever in the shadows of its American counterpart, but not without its own provincial resilience. Terence Stamp is the narrator for this stylish series, orginally shown on BBC4, which highlights the seedy glamour of a mid-1960s golden age when musicians like Stan Tracey and Bobby Wellins existed in a twilight world of Soho clubs, near-poverty and heroin, and occasionally made brilliantly evocative records.
Will Hodgekinson
Touching The Void
(Kevin Macdonald, 2003)
10pm, FilmFour
Adapted from Joe Simpson's book of the same title, Macdonald's astonishing docu-drama recreates his and fellow climber Simon Yates's conquest - and horrific aftermath - of the previously unscaled west face of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. It was on the way down that disaster struck. Simpson fell and broke a leg. Yates tried to lower him down the mountain, but was forced to cut the rope when he thought they were both certain to die. Simpson fell deep into a crevasse, but quite incredibly found a way out and back to base camp. Told straight-tocamera by the climbers themselves and re-enacted by actors Brendan Mackey and Nicholas Aaron, this is an utterly riveting real-life adventure that grips as hard as frozen fingers on a rope.
Paul Howlett.
And if all of those seem like a little too much brain-work, there's always a dependable night's viewing on Channel 4. The marvellous Scrubs, the flagging Will and Grace and the inevitable Big Brother, Big Brother, and more Big Brother. Ahhhh, buttered popcorn for the mind, say I.
