What's on TV 10-Dec-2022

Strike NEW Sunday & Monday, 9pm, BBC1 Drama (box set, BBC iPlayer) Holliday Grainger and Tom Burke are back as detectives Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike. In this week’s double bill, Cormoran is visiting family in Cornwall, where he’s approached by a woman wanting to discover what happened to her mother, Margot, who vanished in 1974. There are guest stars galore during this four-parter including Abigail Lawrie as missing Margot and Kierston Wareing as Cormoran’s mum, Leda. P9 Casualty SPECIAL EPISODE Saturday, 8.10pm, BBC1 Drama The tireless work of Holby’s paramedics is put under the spotlight in a fully improvised special episode following four days in the lives of Iain Dean (Michael Stevenson), Jan Jenning (Di Botcher), Teddy Gowan (Milo Clarke) and Sah Brockner (Arin Smethurst) as they feel the strain of an NHS at breaking point. Dealing…

SPECIAL EPISODE CASUALTY Saturday, 8.10pm, BBC1 Drama Q This is a really special episode of Casualty. What can you tell us about it? A It’s format-breaking in that it’s shot in documentary-style. Casualty usually focuses on big stunts but, here, you see the whole spectrum of what paramedics Teddy, Jan [Di Botcher], Iain [Michael Stevenson] and Sah [Arin Smethurst] have to deal with over four days. It was the closest I’ve ever felt to being a real paramedic, and the fact it was all improvised kept us on our toes. Q What scenes were challenging to film? A Teddy has to face a guy, Scott Baker, who’s having a psychotic breakdown and he’s got a knife. Our director didn’t want me to meet the actor beforehand so that we didn’t know how each of us would…

What a winner! The first home-nation games of the World Cup on 21 November drew in large audiences, with 6m watching the England v Iran lunchtime game on BBC1 and the Wales v USA evening match attracting 7.7m to ITV1. It gave ITV1 its most-watched Monday in six years. Goggle wobble Gogglebox on 18 November dropped over half a million viewers, with just 1.8m tuning in to watch the C4 show. It was beaten by BBC1 telethon Children in Need, which pulled in 3.8m, and ITV1’s I’m a Celebrity, which attracted 7.5m.…

Best known for… Tom was born on 8 April 1942 and starred in the long-running series Last of the Summer Wine for 10 years from 2000 to 2010, portraying Tom Simmonite, the long-lost son of Compo, who had been played by Tom’s real-life father, Bill, who passed away in 1999. Other achievements… He also appeared in shows such as The Bill, Upstairs, Downstairs, Minder, The Onedin Line and Freewheelers and starred in the films The Bromley Boys and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. Family life…. Tom died on 8 November, aged 73. He’s survived by his ex-wife, Mary, and two children, James and William.…

LAST IN SERIES! THE ENGLISH Thursday, 9pm, BBC2 Drama Cornelia’s mysterious illness is finally revealed as Wild West saga The English comes to an end this week. A travelling doctor helps Cornelia (Emily Blunt) prepare for the final leg of her journey to avenge her son’s death and offers to care for the Cheyenne boy (Corey Bird) she saved last week. Meanwhile, Sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rea) and Martha Myers (Valerie Pachner) are waiting as Cornelia and Eli (Chaske Spencer) reach their ultimate destination, Powder River, with revelations flowing thick and fast as the group piece together an unexpected and devastating shared past with David Melmont (Rafe Spall). ‘Those final scenes are so emotional,’ says Emily. ‘They’re epic, violent, romantic – Chaske is riveting to watch and Rafe is like a dangerous Ferrari. Filming the ending had…

TWO DOORS DOWN Tuesday, 10pm, BBC2 Comedy The sun is shining in the series finale of Two Doors Down, so Beth seizes the opportunity to try out a new recipe for cocktails. Beth (Arabella Weir) and Eric (Alex Norton) invite Colin (Jonathan Watson) and his girlfriend Anne-Marie (Siobhan Redmond) into the garden for a few drinks but they soon find themselves facing a barrage of criticism. Despite Beth’s insistence that ‘it’s not actually a party’, they are soon joined by nosy Christine (Elaine C Smith), plus Michelle and her deaf pal Louise, who’s collecting sponsorship for a charity skydive she’s doing. Soon, Alan joins the gathering, too, closely followed by Ian and Gordon, who reveal they are considering getting married on the banks of Loch Lomond. But Christine has a few objections to the plan,…