Watch this: the best television of the week

From Pop Art icons to blubbing billionaires, here are some of the best shows on TV this week


Does your commute to work leave you stressed out? Then tonight's World's Busiest Railway 2015 (BBC Two, 9pm) may give you some useful perspective. In this new four-part series Dan Snow, Anita Rani, Robert Llewellyn and John Sergeant take a look behind the scenes at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, one of the world's busiest railway stations. The BBC are all over India at the moment and this new series is part of a major strand across TV and Radio celebrating the culture, art, business and politics of the vast nation.

At this time of year, TV programmers face a fierce conundrum: how to keep viewers engaged during dreary August nights. The answer? Themed weeks. The BBC has it down to a fine art – and this week it's juggling joined-up programmes on a variety of topics.  Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed The World (Monday, BBC Four, 9pm) opens the station's Pop Art Season tonight with a splash of colour. From Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell's Soup cans to Roy Lichtenstein's comic-book creations, the programme examines this hugely influential art movement which is often dismissed as a whimsical episode in 20th-century culture.

The pop Art series continues Tuesday with A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol (BBC4, 9pm), and on Wednesday with What Do Artists Do All Day? (BBC Four, 8.30pm), which follows a day in the life of Peter Blake, the artist who created the iconic cover for The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A Brief History of Graffiti (Wednesday, BBC Four, 9pm) follows the evolution of this outlaw art form, from 30,000-year-old cave drawings in France to the spray-painted subways of New York.


On Wednesday, Anne Robinson concludes her two-part investigation (Britain's Spending Secrets, BBC1, 9pm) into Britain's spending habits by investigating whether it is possible to spend your way to happiness. Enter billionaire John Caudwell, who cooks Robinson a prawn pizza and is surprisingly candid about the ups and downs of having such vast wealth. At one point, he even tears-up, the poor fellow.

READ MORE

In 1999, American author Robert Drake was the victim of a savage homophobic assault at his home in Sligo. Not only was he left with permanent disability and the end of a promising career, but his attackers also tried to destroy his good name in court. More than a decade later, Drake revisited the place where his life was changed forever, and his emotional journey is charted in Where I Am (Thursday, RTÉ One, 10.10pm), a moving documentary by Pamela Drynan.  "I felt I had a choice to make. Either I could get better or get bitter. I chose the former, and that has made all the difference," said Drake. This documentary shows just what kind of courage it takes to choose the former.

Lee Mack is back in the hot seat on Friday for a new series of Duck Quacks Don't Echo (Sky 1, 8pm), a sort of QI meets Call My Bluff. Once again, a panel of celebrity guests is hit with a barrage of trivia and urban myths, and they have to work out what's true and what's nonsense. They will get help from experts and by using some unorthodox fact-checking methods.