The week’s best TV: Toughest Place to Be, Girls, Crash and Burn and more

Irish nurse Berna Breen heads to Honduras, Lena Dunham says goodbye to the Girls, F1 driver Tommy Byrne gets in gear

Toughest Place to Be . . . an A&E Nurse
Monday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm

It can't be easy working as a nurse in Ireland's overcrowded emergency departments, but imagine having to work in an emergency department in one of the most violent cities in the world? That's the task facing Berna Breen this new two-part series in which ordinary Irish workers are taken out of their comfort zones and thrust into a hostile and unhealthy work environment for a week.

Breen, who works in the emergency department of Waterford University Hospital, travels to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, a city ravaged by poverty, drugs and relentless gang warfare, to work in the country’s busiest emergency department. Escuela Hospital deals with a daily influx of poor people and victims of the city’s drug wars.

The 59th Annual Grammy Awards
Monday, RTÉ Two, 9.30pm

Some of pop's biggest star are set to perform at , including Adele, Bruno Mars, Metallica, Alicia Keys, Chance the Rapper, Daft Punk and The Weeknd. Carpool Karaoke king James Corden presents, and it looks like Beyoncé will be going ahead with her scheduled performance after recently announcing she was pregnant with twins. But will Kanye West show up despite labelling the Grammys "irrelevant"? Ah, go on, Yeezy, you don't wanna miss a thing.

Girls
Monday, Sky Atlantic, 10pm

We've laughed with them, we've cried with them, we've barfed with them, but now it's time to say goodbye to telly's favourite female foursome as we begin the sixth and final series of Girls . The dramedy following the fortunes of four twentysomething women in New York has become a huge cult hit, and has grabbed the zeitgeist by the short and curlies on numerous occasions, but now that the show's creator and star Lena Dunham has hit 30, perhaps it's a good time to start winding up the characters' story arcs. This series may not be the end, though – Dunham recently announced that they were making the Girls movie. Let's hope it's better than the horrendous celluloid outings for Sex and the City.

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Monday, Sky Atlantic, 10.45pm

You need superhuman levels of satire to make sense of this post-truth world, so we're welcoming the return of John Oliver. The British presenter in America will have plenty of targets to take a swipe at, but he'll be aiming squarely at one bright orange bullseye in the White House.

The Kettering Incident
Wednesday, Sky Atlantic, 10pm

Looking for a location to make your next crime series? Scandi-noir's been done to death, so why not try some Tasmanian gothic instead? The island off Western Australia is the setting for this new eight-part thriller starring Elizabeth Debicki as a woman returning to her home town 15 years after the mysterious disappearance of her best friend. Was she murdered? Abducted by aliens? Or was some other kind of Tasmanian devilry involved?

Crash and Burn
Thursday, RTÉ One, 10.15pm

Formula One racing is not for the faint-hearted, but in the early 1980s, one Irishman had the steely nerve to take on the big names in the sport and come tantalisingly close to becoming the greatest racing driver of his generation. This feature-length documentary tells the story of Tommy Byrne, a fearless, self-confident and talented young man from Co Louth who for a brief period seemed unstoppable. Director Seán Ó Cualáin goes back to those heady days when Byrne was an up-and-coming Formula One driver and a serious rival to Ayrton Senna. Why did Byrne never fulfil his promise? This tale of high times and high speed might shed some light.

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney

Kevin Courtney is an Irish Times journalist