IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, BBC2, 10pm

Prepare for something good and new on BBC2!

Dara O’Briain hosts this new show which mocks TV. It seems he’s now mocking the telly as well as mocking the week, but who’s complaining? He’s good enough to get away with it.

When I read this was to be a TV review show I expected something like Points of View, with O’Briain looking back over the best and worst of the week’s programmes, showing us little clips and reading out boring tweets from the viewers. I’m happy to tell you this is not the case, because the programmes featured here are warped, skewed and surreal versions of the shows we know.

We get a clip from Strictly Come Dancing or, at least, it looks like Strictly but something is wrong with it: there is no music, and so we watch the dancers twirl across the floor in an awkward, forced silence. And we have a clip from The Jeremy Kyle show, but the usual mob of horrors demanding DNA tests have been replaced with children who’re arguing about cheating on the X-Box and whether pocket money was pinched from the piggy bank.

It’s good to know TV can laugh at itself.

RUGBY AND THE BRAIN: TACKLING THE TRUTH, BBC1, 8.30pm

The Rugby World Cup is under way, and those who don’t follow the sport can still draw enjoyment from the dramas and flare-ups that  accompany these vast sporting events. So far I’ve been tickled by news reports that the French team have been horrified by the dismal architecture and drunken behaviour of Croydon, where they’re stationed. Quelle horreur! Then there’s been the total shock of Japan beating South Africa. Even a rugby ignoramus like me knows that can’t be right.

So, amongst the drama of the games and tatty tabloid stories, here’s a rather more serious issue concerning the sport.

John Beattie, the former Scottish Rugby international, presents this show (labelled as Panorama elsewhere in the UK, but here as “BBC Scotland Investigates”) which studies the link between the sport and brain injuries. He visits the US to look at evidence which suggests a rugby career can inflict long-term damage on the brain and he asks what the sport is doing to solve the problem. In the meantime, are the players being put at risk in pursuit of games and glory? 

COUNTDOWN TO LIFE, BBC2, 9pm

This series really does provoke wonder. Following the development of a foetus in the womb, it describes the tiny yet hugely important changes that occur over the days and weeks of its development, showing how we come to be who we are.

This episode, the second of three, focuses on the middle stages of development, when changes occur that make the foetus an individual. It’s in this period that our facial features form, the brain is moulded by hormones, skin takes on its colour and the sex becomes identifiable.

But this series will not burden you with science and statistics. It uses personal stories to illuminate the fantastic biology and chemistry at work, so it will appeal to everyone, not just boffins.

It begins with the story of a woman who is officially “invisible” as she was born without fingerprints. With these little grooves on our fingertips being seen as a marker of our individuality, we’re prompted to consider what makes each of us unique. If it’s not something like fingerprints then what is it?

The most obvious thing which defines us is our sex, and we also meet people who claim to have been born into the wrong gender.