On the cards for your televisual delectation tonight: Helena Bonham Carter pretending not to be horrendously posh, British policepeople who may or may not be ghosts, a man who's mean to monkeys, some people who think they're in space but actually aren't ("with hilarious consequences") and a profile of a man who managed to run himself over while driving his own car. Twice.
Now don't let me hear you say the British entertainment industry doesn't spoil you. You can find out all about these - and much, much more! - by checking out our picks of tonight's TV, taken from this week's Guide...
Magnificent 7 9pm, BBC2 The stately Helena Bonham Carter is miscast in this earnest but dull tale of a working-class single mum bringing up seven children, four of whom have some form of autism. The drama is based on the true story of Jacqui Jackson, who was featured in the documentary, My Family And Autism. It's a fine example of something that Hollywood has realised recently: documentary can sometimes be more affecting than fiction. Intended to be heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting, the slow pace and one-dimensional characters fail to provoke any emotion apart from boredom.
Clare Birchall
The Ghost Squad 10pm, C4 The cop drama again portrays life undercover as an addictive adrenaline high followed by a vicious hangover. Tonight's plot turns on threats against a witness to a brutal murder. "He wanted him to be scared," says the traumatised unfortunate, Brendan, of the slaying. But this is also an episode about the pressures on DS Jimmy Franks, played with a wired, paranoid intensity by Jason Flemyng. A series that's getting progressively better week by week.
Jonathan Wright
One Life: Being Brian Harvey 10.45pm, BBC1 Brian Harvey is what Kate Moss would become if some factions of the press had its way. Harvey, like Moss, fell from favour through proximity to drugs. But whereas the modelling world seems to be finding room for the mini-supermodel again, the boy band East 17, and the rest of the music industry, hypocritically turned its back on Harvey. Even Danniella Westbrook eventually dumped him. We meet up with Harvey after bankruptcy, two suicide attempts and a near-mortal encounter with his own car.
Clare Birchall
Monkey Love 9pm, More4 The behavioural psychologist Harry Harlow has been called the poster boy of the US animal rights movement. He forced female monkeys to breed against their will, hung infant monkeys upside down in darkness for two years, and introduced newborn monkeys to surrogate mothers that then proceeded to tear them to pieces. All of this was, incredibly, done in the name of love. Harlow's supporters claim that his experiments were hugely important in the understanding of the proper care mothers need to give their children, although how any mother would need the torture of monkeys to help know how to love their babies is anyone's guess.
Will Hodgkinson
The 4400 9pm, Sky One Like most fantasy-themed television series, this seems to have been written without a clear end in sight. Following the plight of the 4400 alien abductees, the viewer feels only a few paces behind the writers as the plot spins off at tangents. The enjoyable story may have an arc, but its trajectory seems to be being adjusted as it progresses. This episode sees yet another major conspiracy being unveiled as the source of the 4400's plague is discovered as originating from rather closer to home than thought. It's a solid, satisfying race against time ending with a great example of a season finale cliffhanger.
Phelim O'Neill
Holidays In Euroland 9.05pm, BBC4 Over two documentaries, journalist Tim Samuels puts Europe to a series of tests. Is there such a thing as European identity? Does the European Union make us safer? At first, as Samuels mugs it up for the cameras in a European-themed miniature town, it looks as if we might be in familiar they're-funny-across-the-channel territory. Soon, though, Samuels gets serious and teases out what it means to be part of the European club, along the way meeting everyone from Paddy Ashdown in Bosnia to an anti-Islamic Dutch death-metal band (rehearsal space located above a mosque...). Concludes tomorrow.
Jonathan Wright
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And to make up for the upsetting mental meanness to monkeys imagery you may have obtained from reading the above, I was going to draw you a picture of a happy monkey. Maybe even a happy monkey sitting in a bucket.
But then I ran out of time. Sorry. So please, feel free to imagine your own happy monkey, maybe in a bucket. There, doesn't that feel better?
