The very best of the week ahead

Sunday Simon Schama’s History of Now BBC Two, 9.15pm; Wales, 9.40pm

In this fascinating three-part series, historian Simon Schama expounds his thesis that artists and writers are at the forefront of the fight for truth and democracy. “In times of crisis,” he says, “it’s not always politicians but artists, musicians and writers who rouse us from indifference and become the true agents of change.” In the first episode, he looks at Picasso’s political masterpiece Guernica, as well as how George Orwell’s experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War led to him writing 1984; a campaign of misinformation waged by Joseph Stalin on the Spanish Left led to the deaths of many of Orwell’s comrades, and his sense of betrayal never left him. It was an early example of “fake news” and presaged, says Schama, the Chinese Communist Party’s methods, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump. Veronica Lee

I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Final

ITV, 9pm

What a series this has been, with ITV pulling off a controversial coup by signing former health secretary Matt Hancock, who outlasted even Boy George. Others might have made more of an impact over the last three weeks without Hancock’s distracting presence, but there have been many memorable moments on the way to tonight’s coronation. VL

Monday We Are Not Alone Dave, 9pm

Imagine if we got an answer from all of those probes that we send into space, welcoming alien life to Earth. And then imagine if they suddenly turned up, invaded us and decided to run the whole of Great Britain from the small town of Clitheroe, Lancashire. That is the premise of We Are Not

Alone, a promising feature-length comedy pilot from Ghosts’ Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond. It stars Declan Baxter as Stewart, a mildmannered local planning officer who finds himself hired as the human liaison of the British Gu’un government. At the top is Vicki Pepperdine’s Traitor (a name she unwisely adopts when she can’t decide

between the names Tracy and Peter), a genial alien who just wants humans to like her. Her deputy, however, is GorDAN (Mike Wozniak), who would rather throw humanity out of an airlock. And then there’s Greggs (The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas), who just wants Stewart to be his mate. Most of the biggest laughs come from the aliens’ outside perspective, such as their bafflement at cars and the male species’ “third finger”. Stephen Kelly

Secrets of Playboy Channel 4, 10pm Playboy

For many years, mogul Hugh Hefner presented himself as a force for sexual liberation. This 12-part documentary, however, posits that Hefner used the prestigious magazine to manipulate women. SK

Tuesday The Traitors

BBC One, 9.30pm The “ultimate game of deception, skill and trust”? Or pompous, overblown tosh? Either way, The

Traitors is an exceptionally entertaining and remarkably silly reality/game show, presided over by Claudia Winkleman in unconvincingly ruthless mode and featuring 22 strangers competing for a prize pot of £120,000. Effectively the parlour game of Mafia by way of The Apprentice, it lands the hopefuls in a sprawling country pile in the Scottish Highlands, where Winkleman secretly selects the “traitors” whose task it is to kill off all the “faithfuls” (the rest) before they are outed. Whoever is left standing at the end of 12 episodes – having forged key bonds and sewn a malicious note of discord through the rest of the group – takes the prize. Gabriel Tate

Freddie & Jason: Two Men in a Tent ITV1, 9pm; Wales, 11.50pm

Given the grim history of their namesakes Krueger and Voorhees, this one-off travelogue isn’t quite the gory horror show it might have been, but a little of Freddie Flintoff and Jason Manford at their larkiest goes a long way as they trek from the Welsh coast to Yr Wyddfa – wild swimming, sheep herding and foraging for fresh vegetables as they go. The landscape (and humour) is unbeatable. GT

Wednesday A Royal Grand Design ITV1, 9pm

This documentary has been more than 10 years in the making. Richard E Grant narrates how, in 2007, the Prince of Wales (Duke of Rothesay in Scotland), as he then was, bought

Dumfries House, a Palladian mansion in Ayrshire, along with all its original 18th-century furniture. It cost £45million and was purchased through a consortium led by his charity, the Prince’s Foundation, whose vision is to “provide holistic solutions to challenges facing the world today”. In 2010, a film crew started following the project, and we see restorers and conservators at work on the Chippendale furniture, but it’s the King’s ambitious – and, to some, controversial – plans beyond the house that are most interesting. He took this “appalling risk”, he says, “to try and make a difference to the local area… because it has been so deprived since the loss of the mining industry”. The “heritage-led regeneration” project was to make the house financially self-sustaining, and build a horticultural and education centre, an outdoor adventure centre, an artists’ studio and a teaching farm on the estate – creating local jobs in a green economy. Veronica Lee

The Patient Disney+

Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson are excellent in this psychological thriller made by the team behind The Americans. Carell is the recently widowed Alan, a therapist who is taken prisoner by a patient, Sam (Gleeson), who reveals himself to be a serial killer. VL

Thursday The Flatshare Paramount+

The premise of this six-part romcom, adapted from Beth O’Leary’s bestselling novel, is deliciously daft: two cash-strapped millennials – one who works days, the other nights – agree to time-share a one-bed flat on the condition that they never meet. There’s Jessica Brown Findlay’s Tiffany, a heartbroken twentysomething who writes for an online magazine; and Anthony Welsh’s Leon, a hospice nurse who is working nights to fund the legal fees to free his brother, who has been wrongfully imprisoned. Yet as much as they try to live separate lives, they find themselves striking up a connection through Post-it notes. Tiffany is a mess in the classic Bridget Jones mould; she drinks too much, turns up to work unprepared, and has no idea how to be single – one fun scene sees her treat a string of dates like job applicants. Leon, meanwhile, is where most of the show’s drama flows from. His girlfriend, Kay (Klariza Clayton), is obsessively jealous and seems intent on sabotaging Tiffany and Leon’s nascent friendship. Understandable, perhaps, but that won’t stop you rooting for them to move beyond Post-its. Stephen Kelly

Granite Harbour

BBC Scotland/iPlayer

This new three-part police drama follows Davis Lindo (Romario Simpson), a young Jamaican Lance Corporal who has left the Royal Military Police in order to train as a detective in Aberdeen. For non-Scots, it will air on BBC One at 7pm on Friday. SK

Friday Slow Horses Apple TV+

The critically acclaimed but underwatched British espionage thriller returns for a second season, and thankfully it’s just as gripping (and amusingly sardonic) as the first. Gary Oldman is Jackson Lamb, the drunken, miserable head of Slough House – an administrative bore of an overhang from MI5 where they shove unwanted operatives to keep them out of the field and trudge through paperwork. Except Lamb is still regarded as one of Britain’s most gifted intelligence officers; the opener of series two sees

him embracing his down-and-out appearance to trick a bus driver into believing he’s the grieving friend of a man who dropped dead on the vehicle – instead, he digs around the seats in pursuit of evidence and, of course, he finds it. In episode two, he meets with a mysterious Russian man about a disapparance he believes is linked to some Muscovite crime bosses. Slow Horses shines because of Oldman, who portrays Lamb as a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders and a past filled with secrets and skeletons; Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays MI5 boss Diana Taverner, is another standout. The first two episodes are available now, followed by one new episode weekly. Poppie Platt

Three Pines

Amazon Prime Video

This sleek adaptation of Louise Penny’s novels is set in a Quebec village, where Chief Inspector Gamache (Alfred Molina) gets tied up in a number of cases involving missing Indigenous women. What unravels is a much wider tale of police corruption. Episodes one and two land today, with the remaining six released weekly in pairs. PP