UK TV programmes to watch this week : 26/10/2013

Great Continental Railway Journeys (BBC2/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Sunday 27th October 2013)

Armed with his 1913 railway guide, Michael Portillo returns to his native Spain to discover what the intrepid tourists of the Belle Epoque experienced on their travels through the fading Spanish empire. In Madrid, he visits the scene of an assaination attempt at the royal wedding of a British princess and a Spanish king. In Cordoba, Michael dances with an unusual partner and enjoys all the fun of the feria. Heading further into Andalusia, Michael arrives in Seville, the city he has made his Spanish home. In the city’s tobacco factory, he learns about a gypsy girl named Carmen. After sipping sherry in Jerez, he traces Winston Churchill’s tense diplomatic mission to Algeciras on Spain’s Costa del Sol and finishes with tales of British espionage on the Rock of Gibraltar.

999: What’s Your Emergency? (Channel 4/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Monday 28th October 2013)

The series that reveals modern Britain through the eyes of our ambulance staff continues. This episode focuses on call outs to patients fighting for life and the medical, ethical and emotional challenges their care creates, not just for the paramedics, but also for the friends and family who may be left behind. Sixty thousand people go into cardiac arrest every year in the UK. The ambulance service treat 30,000, but only 10% of those survive. The ambulance service is working to increase the survival rate through prompt action and education about CPR. In Nottingham, Selina Conway is dispatched to a 76-year-old man who’s been found collapsed in his front garden by a stranger. CPR is the only solution.

Quitting the English Defence League: When Tommy Met Mo (BBC1/HD | 10:35pm to 11:25pm | Monday 28th October 2013)

When Tommy Robinson, then leader of the EDL, met Mo Ansar, the Muslim who campaigned to ban the EDL, on BBC One’s The Big Questions, it turned out to be the encounter that changed everything. Ansar challenged Robinson’s knowledge of Islam and offered to show him how real British Muslims live and what they actually believe in. Following the pair as each shows the other his view of British Islam, the film reveals that Ansar was present at an EDL street protest in May and was also the first Muslim to address the EDL. It shows Robinson as he visits Walsall Mosque and meets with one of Britain’s leading Muslim scholars, Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra.

The Escape Artist (BBC1/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Tuesday 29th October 2013)

Legal drama series. Talented junior barrister Will Burton specialises in spiriting people out of tight legal corners, hence his nickname – the Escape Artist. But when Will’s talents acquit his latest client of a brutal and high-profile murder, the consequences are chilling.

Autumn’s Supermarket Secrets (BBC1/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Wednesday 30th October 2013)

Gregg Wallace goes behind the scenes with Britain’s biggest food retailers over the course of a year to discover how they source, make and move the food we find on the supermarket shelves. In this programme, Gregg reveals how the supermarkets get us in the mood for autumn. He finds out what it takes to bring us millions of Halloween pumpkins, learns how own-label pies are made and is let into the hidden world of online supermarkets.

Grand Designs (Channel 4/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Wednesday 30th October 2013)

Michael Butcher and Phil Palmer were confirmed Londoners, loft-livers in the heart of Soho, until they fell in love with Christmas Farm, near Newbury, and took the life-changing decision to quit their urban media jobs and move to the country. They faced two big problems however: first there was an agricultural tie on the land, so Phil and Michael would have to become farmers; the second problem was the uninspiring faux-alpine timber chalet serving as a farmhouse. It had to go.

Waterloo Road (BBC1/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 31st October 2013)

School-based drama. Kacey begins to feel the pressure of people’s expectations when it’s revealed the school will be having a fundraising visit from an Olympic boxing champion. The arrival of enigmatic new supply teacher Frankie McGregor divides the already fractured staff room, as well as providing an unlikely companion for an increasingly isolated Lenny.

George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces (Channel 4/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 31st October 2013)

George meets a couple who have remortgaged their house to build a sensational prototype apartment inspired by a beehive. There’s also a barman who has bought a dilapidated Land Rover he plans to convert into a cocktail bar. George finds himself in a real life UFO, suspended in the trees at a tree hotel in a Swedish forest. And in Bordeaux, he meets an architect who has created a unique 41-metre-square one bed apartment behind the facade of a garage.

All TV guide information taken from DigiGuide — www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=15119.

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