TV guide: 12 of the best shows to watch this week, beginning tonight

Sunday

Marty’s Big Picture Show

RTÉ One, 7.30pm

Marty Morrissey and historian Liz Gillis have joined forces to produce a show looking at the life stories of the subjects of old photographs around Ireland. The pair identified people in a series of photographs dating from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, on a mission to find where they are today and how their lives have panned out. Morrisey has said previously it will be a “voyage of discovery, with the odd twist here and there”. One for the nostalgic folks in the family.

Hidden Assets

RTÉ One, 9.30pm

The second series of RTÉ's international thriller returns. In the first season, a routine raid by a detective at the Criminal Assets Bureau (played by Angeline Ball) revealed a small-time drug dealer had been receiving diamonds from a seemingly untraceable source. The second season, which takes place a year later, is set between Limerick and Antwerp. Nora-Jane Noone plays the lead detective at CAB, who is faced with a co-ordinated cyberattack. It’s a race against time.

Is She the Wolf?

Netflix

It seems in today’s streaming landscape, it’s a race to the bottom for the most outlandish dating show. Netflix’s latest reality romp Is She the Wolf? is a reboot of a Japanese show with one sole question: is your love interest lying to you? Five men and five women navigate dating, looking for true love, and at least one woman is a “wolf” and is lying about her feelings. But which one? It’s a recipe for doubt, strife and a whole lot of drama audiences will no doubt welcome with open arms. Plus, the theme song, Lights, is by Korean pop group BTS. It’s hard not to look away.

Monday

Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero

Channel 4, 10pm

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 resulted in some of the most horrific massacres perpetrated during the second World War – not least in Ukraine. These atrocities in Ukraine were among the Nazis’ first acts of mass murder, which led to little-known war crimes trials in the Soviet Union, including in the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Kyiv, all captured on extraordinary Soviet archive film. With contributions from Holocaust survivors, along with historians including Wendy Lower, Omer Bartov, Dieter Pöhl and Alex J Kay, this is the story of the beginnings of the Holocaust on one of Europe’s bloodiest battlegrounds.

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Jailed: Inside Maghaberry Prison

BBC One NI, 10:40pm

Stephen Nolan leads this new six-part series with unprecedented access to Maghaberry Prison, near Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Nolan visits one of the UK’s most high-security jails and interviews prisoners who have committed crimes from theft to murder and investigates the pressures facing staff and the prison system. He talks to prisoners about their backgrounds and the effect that family circumstance and mental health issues have played in their life choices. Prison governor David Savage also has his say on the importance of rehabilitation and giving prisoners the skills to turn their lives around.

Tuesday

Bake Off: The Professionals

Channel 4, 8pm

The 10th and final episode of this season of Bake Off: The Professionals, promises a cake-filled epic showdown only the British could pull off. On the search for Britain’s best patisserie team, Liam Charles and Ellie Taylor are no doubt ready to swipe some leftovers when these guys bake. Whether it’s a flamboyant soufflé, a fairylike cheesecake or the most delicate of meringues, these bakers know how to impress.

Storyville: Blue Box

BBC Four, 10pm

When Israeli film-maker Michal Weits was a little girl, her father would stop the car and proudly show off the forests, telling her they were there because of the work of her great-grandfather Josef, an almost mythical figure in the family. Described by his offspring as the ultimate Zionist, he was instrumental in the purchase of land around Palestine for the fledgling Jewish state, in part due to a successful “blue box” campaign to raise support. But his diaries reveal a darker side to the man, and the cost to Arabs who were forced to leave and never return.

Wednesday

Predators

Netflix

Interested in nature documentaries but feel David Attenborough’s narration is lacking a certain oomph? Enter Tom Hardy. The English actor’s voice is front and centre in Netflix’s latest nature series, and this time our protagonists are the baddies. Like many of Hardy’s roles on screen, this show will focus on formidable predators. In each episode viewers catch a glimpse of life through the eyes of cheetahs, polar bears, wild dogs and more of the planet’s most powerful hunters as they fight to maintain their dominance in a world ravaged by climate change.

Scéalta Grá na hÉireann

TG4, 8.30pm

The show chronicling the nation’s most iconic love stories is back for another series, starting with a heartbreaking tale many grow up learning about. Its first outing delved into Maud Gonne and WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan. The new season kicks off with the story of Irish artist and republican Grace Gifford, who married her fiance Joseph Plunkett in the chapel at Kilmainham Gaol just seven hours before his execution for his part in the 1916 rising. It’s a love story for the ages.

Thursday

The Lovers

Sky Atlantic, Now

Róisín Gallagher (The Fall, The Dry) and Johnny Flynn (Beast, Emma) star in this new romcom series set in Belfast. Janet (Gallagher), a bad-tempered, Belfast supermarket worker who couldn’t care about anything much at all meets Seamus (Flynn), a self-centred political broadcaster with a perfect London life and a celebrity girlfriend. Despite their differences, the two are inextricably drawn to each other. The Lovers promises to be a sexy, funny, fighty love story about two people who appear to be utterly wrong for each other – yet may just be utterly right. Conleth Hill and Alice Eve also star in this six-part series available to watch on-demand, in its entirety, on Thursday.

Hector – Ó na Philippines go dtí na Solomons

TG4, 9.30pm

Intrepid travelling Gaeilgeoir Hector Ó hEochagáin is back again for his 15th series of wild antics. His latest trip will see Hector travel deep into southeast Asia. Starting in the Philippines, he will head on to Malaysia, Singapore, across to the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali, before venturing out to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Expect Hector up to his usual mischief and enjoying some banter with the locals.

Friday

Mrs Brown’s Boys

BBC One NI, 9.30pm

Love her or hate her, Agnes Brown will soon be back on your TV screen. Brendan O’Carroll’s sitcom is returning on Friday for its first miniseries for 10 years. In the interim period, fans had to wait until Christmas time for a new instalment of the show. Having been thwarted twice by various pandemic-related difficulties, Mrs Brown’s Boys is finally back. It will be the 44th episode of O’Carroll’s show.

Our Lives: Our Sea Forest

BBC One, 7.30pm

Going through free-diving withdrawals since watching The Deepest Breath on Netflix? A new episode of Our Lives: Our Sea Forest looks at the treasure trove of marine life off Britain’s south coast. Free diver Eric Smith has been exploring the area since his childhood in the 1950s. Since then he has witnessed the reduction of kelp forests into a barren desert and fought to ban trawling in the area. His efforts paid off when in 2021, a new bylaw banned the practice and protected some 300 sq km off the Sussex coast. Through the eyes of Smith, viewers can watch diverse marine life start to reappear, and nature thrive once again.