You'll have to excuse the unpredictability of your television preview service on this blog of late - unfortunately, just me taking a nasty turn for the woe-est.
No, not the worst, the woe-est. As in hiding under desks crying, "Woe! Oh Woe! DOOOOM be upon this house, etc!" thing - but then someone pointed out it wasn't the Ides of March till tomorrow.
So I decided to calm my dooming down for the moment, and bring you some TV previews instead, taken from this week's Guide, so you can find something good to watch. Because otherwise you might end up watching Celebrity Fit Club or something. And the eves of Ides don't get much more doomy than that, I tell you....
No Angels 10pm, C4 Lia's tryst with Jamie is showing cracks following his plans to fly to Australia. Meanwhile, Dr McManus is simply cracking up. Kate discovers the reason behind his outbursts, such as this one to a patient complaining of food poisoning: "What do you want me to do, shove a tube down your throat and blow you up like a bouncy castle? I can't take the pain away, fatty..."
Ali Catterall
Wilson 11pm, ITV1 In political terms, it's been a long time since Labour PM Harold Wilson's shock resignation during recession-blighted 1976 when, the attendant "sleazy scandals" and "spy stories" notwithstanding, it's revealed that he was secretly experiencing the early effects of Alzheimer's. This first instalment of a two-part look at "the man behind the pipe" sees Wilson's widow, Lady Mary, and numerous Westminster veterans, such as David Owen and Lord James Callaghan, recounting the life and career of the "brilliant opportunist" who also managed to legalise abortion and abolish the death penalty.
Joss Hutton
ArtShock: The Human Canvas 11.05pm, C4 Piles of bricks at the Tate no longer trouble the shockometer nowadays, so a new wave of performance artists like Orlan have taken to using their own bodies for artistic purposes, engaging in mutilation, bloodletting and, in the case of Alice Newstead, hanging themselves agonisingly from small hooks. Not so much suffering for art but suffering as art. One could scoff, but eloquent points are made about the "civil libertarian" attitude these artists take towards the human body. This is non-commodified performance, shared among friends or over the internet.
David Stubbs
Battlestar Galactica 9pm, Sky One Although it's done great work to eradicate the memory of its campy source material, whenever this show does update something from the original it's always welcome. This episode is payback for all those who coughed up hard-earned pocket money to see Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack, on which this is based. As before, Galactica encounters another battlestar, the Pegasus - lovingly based on the disco-era version. Where Galactica has been all about defence, the better armed Pegasus has been attacking the Cylons since mankind's attempted destruction. Naturally, both crews don't really get on.
Phelim O'Neill
Storyville: Darwin's Nightmare 10pm, BBC4 Slow-burning Storyville rumination on the brute realities of economics as they apply to Tanzania's Lake Victoria. The fish which live in the lake and the people who live around it have been effectively colonised by money. In the water, native fish are being wiped out by more profitable introduced species. On shore, local people - and a few Russian cargo pilots - make desperate livings from the crumbs of an economy equally overwhelmed by powerful foreigners. The grim picture is painted slowly but elegantly, with camerawork of incongruous beauty and affecting interviews with usually neglected people. Requires and rewards the patience of the viewer.
Andrew Mueller
Ideal 10.30pm, BBC3 Despite the audacity of making an almost sitcom starring Johnny Vegas as a dope dealer, there's something that doesn't quite ring right about Ideal. Perhaps it's the smug clever-cleverness of the script ("I'd offer to help but that'd be sexist," he says to his mousey new neighbour moving in) which is at odds with Vegas's almost hysterically self-deprecating persona. Still, some good bits, including his police client facing the awful prospect of promotion and his sage words to his pregnant ex on the wisdom of being offered a bong: "When the kid makes his big entrance it'll be like Stars In Their Eyes."
David Stubbs
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Incidentally, today's International Pi Day, but we've missed it. It's generally celebrated at 16 minutes past either one or three in the afternoon, apparently. At parties in Mathematics departments worldwide. Woo! Anyway - Johnny Vegas' new series starts tonight. There's some really obvious connecting joke to be made there, between the concept of pi and la Vegas, but I'm going to pretend to be too classy to make it.
