MUSEUM OF THE YEAR, BBC2, Saturday, 9.30pm
MY favourite museum of every single year was always Glasgow’s Transport Museum, until they moved it to its cramped and soulless new location and had to start gluing exhibits to the ceiling.
And it no longer smells of oil, rubber and nostalgia ...
But apparently other museums exist, and they don’t have bikes dangling from the roof like a cheesy Irish pub might, and tonight this programme celebrates some of the best at a glitzy awards ceremony.
The Art Fund is seeking to crown its latest Museum of the Year and this year’s contenders range from the famous Tate Modern to the perhaps less well-known such as the National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, and the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
Not only do we celebrate great museums here, we also ask what makes a museum successful.
The exhibits themselves aren’t sufficient; there needs to be a certain charm and style, and it’s about more than just having a fancy gift shop and serving tea in china cups rather than Styrofoam.
TRNSMT, BBC2, Saturday, 10pm
THIS music festival, staged on Glasgow Green, is supposed to be some kind of replacement for T In The Park given that the latter got a bit too messy and controversial over the years. I wonder how local residents feel about having this musical circus arrive on their doorstep?
Will the chaos simply be transplanted from the countryside to the city? I don’t know, and I wouldn’t dare venture near it to find out.
Thankfully I don’t need to, as BBC2 is broadcasting highlights from the festival across three programmes.
Edith Bowman presents live coverage tonight and the weather forecast says, incredibly, that it will be warm and sunny. Has everyone packed their posh festival wellies for nothing?
Tonight’s main act is Kasabian (fronted by Tom Meighan, pictured) and other acts are Catfish and the Bottlemen, Gorge Ezra, Stormzy and The Kooks.
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THE HANDMAID’S TALE, C4, Sunday, 9pm
I RELUCTANTLY admit this drama can be a bit slow at times, but I’m only admitting it after scraping around desperately trying to find a negative.
Whenever a character hands something to Offred it takes her about 20 seconds to lift her arms and accept it, but if that’s the only criticism I can make (“at times she doesn’t move fast enough!”), then we know this is a fine drama.
The fact Offred’s life is slow and confined perhaps explains why the story is so fond of flashbacks. They throw us into a time when life was full of action and laughter.
Tonight we get a hefty flashback into Luke’s life, and we see how he escaped from Gilead.
There are strong echoes of the Tom Cruise film of The War Of The Worlds as panicked people try to flee across a dark river, their boat being fired upon by the black-clad Guardians of Gilead.
It’s a thrilling episode, and the actor playing Luke (OT Fagbenle) is brilliant as he staggers through the bare trees, clutching his wounds, expressing agony without words.
ROSS KEMP: EXTREME WORLD, SKY1, Sunday, 9pm
YOU know what? I like Ross Kemp (pictured). It would have been easy to dismiss him as an actor trying his hand at a bit of war reporting, trying to play the hero, but actually being shielded and mollycoddled by a crew. However, his Extreme World programmes do wade right into the action, and he deserves to be taken seriously or, at least, to be no longer known as “Grant Mitchell”. The new six-part series starts this weekend and Grant – sorry, Ross – is in the sunbaked city of Austin, Texas, to ask: “Is America on the verge of a race war?”
You might snort, as I did, and say Texas hardly counts as “one of the most dangerous places on Earth”, but you might be feeling rather more sombre after watching the show.
Kemp meets hate groups, white supremacists, and black militias who believe the police will not protect them so they must do it themselves.
All are dead set on their right to bear arms, and anticipate using them against one another if a race war breaks out.
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