Great Continental Railway Journeys (BBC2, 9pm)
ARMED with his trusty 1913 Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, Michael Portillo travels east through the Balkans along the most exotic section of the route taken by the Orient Express.
His journey begins in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, and includes stops in the ancient city of Plovdiv, the region of Rumelia, and former capital of the Ottoman Empire Edirne. In Plovdiv, Portillo discovers a Roman amphitheatre built in the 2nd century AD and is still in use today. Bulgarian independence is traditionally celebrated with a typically Thracian dance, which is not as simple as they make it look. In the beautiful region of Rumelia, he picks roses with the flower girls to produce precious rose oil in a 100-year-old distillery.
A trip in a works train culminates in a chance to drive the train on the tracks of the Orient Express. Across the border in Turkey, Portillo visits Edirne and gets to grips with the 3,000-year-old tradition of oil wrestling. Arriving in Istanbul, our travel guide takes a trip on the Bosphorus, finds out about Turkish delight and crosses from Europe to Asia on the Marmaray metro line which now joins the two continents.
Portillo may have moved further afield, but he continues to make highly-watchable travelogues. The former Member of Parliament, deputy Conservative Party leader and cabinet minister never complicates his programmes with too much luggage. He sticks to a few details about the Balkan wars of a century ago, points out the odd grand building, but isn't shy about joining in some local activity ensuring his hosts are never out-shone. Not many politicians would be prepared to try traditional Thracian dancing at a Roman amphitheatre in Bulgaria.
TFI Friday (C4, 8pm)
CHRIS Evans follows up his one-off edition aired in June, with the first of a brand new series of the lively entertainment show mixing music and chat with stunts and skits, proving that the "farewell-to-all-that" nature of the previous offering was a little premature. Despite ongoing commitments to BBC Radio 2 and now BBC2's Top Gear, the host has managed to find time to schedule eight new programmes into his diary, and it will be interesting to see whether the unpredictable, wild nature of the former incarnation can be replicated on an ongoing basis.
Piers Morgan's Life Stories (ITV, 9pm)
WARWICK Davis, who stands at 3ft 6, talks to Piers about his life and career, which includes supporting roles in both the Harry Potter and Star Wars films. The actor and presenter opens up about the struggles he and his wife Sam faced when starting a family and offers an entertaining and revealing account of some of the routine realities of life as a little person, including the challenges of supermarket shopping and airline travel. He also reflects on his leading roles alongside Jennifer Aniston, Val Kilmer and Ricky Gervais, and talks about his work to support other people with dwarfism.
Music For Misfits: The Story Of Indie (BBC4, 10pm)
THIS three-part documentary series ends by putting spotlight on the labels in the final part of this excellent series: Heavenly, Rough Trade, Domino (which manages Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand)... and the mighty Creation, which released some of the finest tunes of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Alan McGee's label was home to cult heroes Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Fanclub, but McGee's Midas touch saw Creation sucked into the Britpop vortex after the signing of Oasis.
Episode three begins with the original independent labels struggling in the wake of acid house, allowing the major labels to move in on "indie cool" with Britpop and the subsequent rise of early 1990s heavyweights Blur and Oasis. Bands with an old indie ethos, such as Suede, were still breaking through but switched from independent labels to majors. Presented by
BBC Radio 6 Music’s Mark Radcliffe with interviews involving Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines’ Carl Barat, James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers, Shaun Ryder, Suede’s Bernard Butler, Stuart Murdoch of Belle And Sebastian, Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne, and Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde.
Viv Hardwick
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