BILLY CONNOLLY: PORTRAIT OF A LIFETIME, BBC1, 9pm
THE Big Yin is back in Glasgow, “home for a birthday treat and visiting some places that are very dear to me. Good old Glasgow!”
He’s here to drop in on three artists, Jack Vettriano, Rachel MacLean and John Byrne, who’re creating portraits of him so that Glasgow can give him “the biggest birthday present” of his life.
He meets Byrne in a gallery in Edinburgh, then has a cup of tea in Vettriano’s kitchen where he gets pulled up by the artist for an old routine where he mocked the smell of Kirkcaldy, Vettriano’s home town. Then he meets MacLean – a young artist who seems charmingly nervous around him – in her studio where his beard and eyebrows are painted pink and a hugely elaborate costume awaits him: “tartan regalia” complete with tiny charms hanging from it, such as a miniature bike parked in a bum.
In between footage of the portraits being prepared, we’re treated to classic clips of Billy’s stand-up and some old interviews.
FARGO, C4, 10pm
LAST week I wrote about how distinctive Fargo is. Even though each series has a different cast of characters and a wholly new story, you can still instantly tell that it’s Fargo because of its quirky bleakness, its black humour and its characters all bundled up in furry hats and anoraks as they fight crime across the endless, snowy wastes of Minnesota.
Well, forget all that. Tonight, we’re treated to a flashback to 1975 which abandons the freezing temperatures and takes us to sunny California. This storyline follows Thaddeus as a young man as he meets the rich setting of LA, trying to get his sci-fi novel scooped up by a film producer.
Jumping to the present day, we see Gloria Burgle fly to the west coast to try to work out who killed Thaddeus. It’s a very strange episode, and does feel like it’s meandering off into nothingness, but just relax and go with it.
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