This week's revelation: the quality of infomercials goes up just before dawn (for up, read down. The worse they are, the more we like it). True, there's only so many times you can watch a man with an incredible slicing, dicing and shredding machine spending half an hour flogging his wares. But then, you can always flick channels and watch him flog them in Flemish.
During a week of night shifts, I am watching an unusually high amount of television between three and five in the morning and three and five in the afternoon, and thus feel in a unique position to offer you tips of what best to watch at these times.
I would recommend DVDs, mainly. Any DVDs. Anything would be better. Television for the insomniac community is very poor indeed. Something should be done.
Ideally, of course, you should get home from your sensible job at a sensible time, watch some sensible prime time, and get to bed at a sensible hour, and to help you do that, here are the very sensible picks of tonight's television from the Guide. Or you could wait up till 4.40am and watch the Best of Beadle's About on Challenge TV. Up to you.
Space Race 9pm, BBC2 In 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Mankind's "giant leap" was at least in part the culmination of ideologically driven competition between the US and the USSR. Over four parts, a docu-drama that traces the rivalry. It's a story that begins in 1944 as Nazi Germany unleashes V-2 rockets against London. Head of the V-2 project is Wernher von Braun who, despite controversy over his SS commission, will eventually lead American efforts to reach space. Meanwhile, in the USSR, rocket engineer Sergei Korolev languishes in a gulag. Big budget event television that's every bit as impressive as advertised.
Jonathan Wright
The Golden Hour 9pm, ITV1 You can almost hear the stops being pulled out, as this all-action four-part drama series concerning east London's Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) takes to the skies, dispensing CSI-style thrills. "If we can get things right in the first hour, then we stand a good chance of saving lives," senior HEMS hero Dr Alex Track (North And South's Richard Armitage) helpfully extrapolates, as the team — including Navin Choudry (Teachers) and Zoe Telford (Absolute Power) — prepare to tackle a rather nasty bus crash. Joss Hutton
7/7 — Attack On London 9pm, Five Documentary on 7/7, as we must come to call it. Given the capital's status as a village, and how insular villages are, it's a fair bet, if you live there, that you know someone who was directly affected. Here are harrowing personal testimonies from some of those who survived. The forensic details don't need reiterating here: everyone knows — or ought to know — what bombs do to humans.
Ali Catterall
Britain's Next Top Model 9pm, LivingTV If "Name A Supermodel" came up on Family Fortunes, Lisa Butcher would hardly be on the tip of any tongues. Yet here she is, hosting the British franchise of Tyra Banks' noxious show. The model hopefuls arrive in the big smoke, shrieking at every canape that comes their way. But this is no cakewalk; more catwalk bootcamp. Within minutes of arriving, these girls are given Brazilians and have to parade in front of a bunch of drooling suits wearing nothing but a flesh-coloured bikini. Who'll survive to become Britain's next top malnourished, hairless lady?
Clare Birchall
Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar, 2004) 9.30pm, Sky Cinema 1 It's great the way that all the elements once thought so shocking in Almodóvar's films are now so commonplace and easily accepted that viewers can just let the plot and the acting to do the work while the usual parade of transvestites and people with dark, sexual secrets are more rounded and less of a shock tactic. Almodóvar tempts audiences to believe in the possible semi-autobiographical qualities of this tale when a gay film director is approached by a man who claims they were friends at school and subjected to sexual abuse from the same priest. This is expert film-making, regardless of how controversial you may deem the subject matter.
Phellim O'Neill
Kath & Kim 10.30pm, LivingTV Masterful Antipodean comedy returns for a third series. Two bombshells were dropped last season — baby Epponnee Rae from Kim's toxic womb, and the fact that Kath is still legally married to oleaginous Gary visiting from "Honkers". This episode finds Kath agitated by the unorthodox threesome: "Being married to two men isn't all it's cracked up to be. I am one stressed bigamist." Meanwhile, new dad Brett is volunteering for overtime to avoid "cactus hour", traditionally attributed to the hours before baby sleeps, but the prickles in this marital unit are due to Kim's nagging. Utterly infectious.
Clare Birchall
