Radio Times 12-18th March 2022

AT THE AGE of 27, Tom Daley is very young to be considered a veteran, even in the precocious world of sport. But that is exactly what he is. At the age of 13 he was voted BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, at 14 he was competing at the Beijing Olympics, by 17 he was on the cover of Radio Times, and at 18 was the poster boy for London 2012. The fact that he had to wait until this summer and the delayed Tokyo Games to fulfil his life’s ambition – winning an Olympic gold medal – is hard to believe. He’s been so good for so long. The boy has become a man. Now he is back on TV – and on our cover – as he takes…

Television Your TV guide starts on p43 ▶ 1 Tom Daley’s Hell of a Homecoming Monday 9.00pm BBC1 Follow the Olympian’s epic journey from London to Plymouth. He’s doing it to raise money for Comic Relief though, so of course he does it the hard way — by rowing, swimming, cycling and running every inch of the way. INTERVIEW P12 ▶ 2 Joanna Lumley’s Great Cities of the World Thursday 9pm ITV Arguably TV’s most charming travelling companion shares her love of Paris. But Lumley wants to be a real Parisienne, so don’t expect a trip round the usual tourist traps. INTERVIEW P154 ▶ 3 Holding Monday 9.00pm ITV The discovery of human remains in a sleepy Irish town gives underachieving Garda officer PJ Collins (the excellent Conleth Hill, right) a chance to prove his worth in this classy adaptation of Graham…

BOB HARRIS “I have been entranced by David Attenborough’s series The Green Planet and I love The Repair Shop,” says the radio presenter. “But my favourite escapism is The Wheel. Michael McIntyre has created a game show that is in equal parts exciting, entertaining and touching. I want to be on that show!” How I learnt to love radio — page 117 PAULINE McLYNN “I’m just catching up on Ted Lasso on Apple TV+” says the actor. “The story of an American football coach, played by Jason Sudeikis, who comes to the UK to manage a failing English Premier League football team is just fantastic. It’s enormously charming, but above all it has such great heart.” Meet the cast of Holding — page 8…

NEVER A DAY passes without someone misspeaking: Jimmy Carr, some random MP, your worst uncle. Sometimes the offending words aren’t as nastily crass as Carr’s recent remarks about the Roma but purely dated: the past was another country. But we should still respect it because it was real, and the BBC, especially, has an important duty here. With a 100-year history to choose from, BBC Sounds dips into a cultural resource beyond price. Once I learnt to dodge round vapid fanzine podcasts and mix tapes, it supported me through chemotherapy and lockdowns. The more irritating the daily news, the deeper back I dug. It feels miraculous that a smartphone can disinter The Goons, The Men from the Ministry and, heaven help us, The Clitheroe Kid: nearly 70 years old and (let’s be…

WHAT WE WATCHED Gordon Brittas, the well-meaning but inept leisure centre boss, was back for a new series of The Brittas Empire. And Chris Barrie was comparing his alter ego to monstrous sitcom managers of the past: “He lectures the staff in the same way that Captain Mainwaring talks to the platoon in Dad’s Army. Basil Fawlty is also struggling against the odds in his own little world. He does and says things that a manager should never say or do. And that’s the fun in playing Brittas; he’s the kind of petty-minded character that everyone wants to strangle. Infuriating though Brittas was, he’d return at Christmas, and for one more series. WHAT YOU SAID Sunday evenings on BBC1 were getting the nation talking thanks to the debut of Ballykissangel, a drama being…

Holding Monday 9.00pm ITV “PJ has been lost in mundane small-town police work — then suddenly bones are found…” CONLETH HILL PLAYS SERGEANT PJ COLLINS CONLETH HILL IS best known for playing Lord Varys, the scheming eunuch and royal spymaster who goes by the felicitous title of “the Master of Whisperers”, in HBO/Sky Atlantic’s Game of Thrones. Between 2011 and 2019, this adaptation of George RR Martin’s bestselling novels about the fantasy world of Westeros became the biggest show on the planet. However, Hill would be the first to admit that initially he was reluctant to read for the part. “When they described it as having dragons,” the 57-year-old Northern Irish actor recalls, “I was like, ‘What? No! No one will watch that!’” He had to be persuaded to audition. “I told my agent at…