TV Highlights

It’s Moz’s 30th birthday and Nicki has arranged a surprise party at their flat to help him celebrate.

Nicki had forgotten about Moz’s birthday but has managed to buy him a couple of last-minute presents – a tuna sandwich and a packet of Bombay mix from the local shop.To make up for it, she decides to organise a surprise party in the flat. Obsessed with everything being clean,Yasuko starts tidying the flat and finds the secret photographs, but both Moz and Nicki deny that the snaps are theirs.

IDEAL, Sunday 28th October at 11.50pm on PRIME

The critically-acclaimed series THE L WORD, which follows the lives and loves of a group of women and the lesbian community, returns to PRIME for a third season.

Inspired by everyday stories, THE L WORD hosts a cast of notable characters that includes all the beauty, chaos and complexities of real women who inhabit Los Angeles’ lesbian community. Season three finds 10 women at the centre of THE L WORD: Bette Porter (Jennifer Beals), Tina Kennard (Laurel Holloman), Jenny Schecter (Mia Kirshner), Shane McCutcheon (Katherine Moennig), Dana Fairbanks (Erin Daniels), Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey), Kit Porter (Pam Grier), Carmen de la Pica Morales (Sarah Shahi), Helena Peabody (Rachel Shelley) and newcomer Moira Sweeney (Daniela Sea).

Executive producer and creator Ilene Chaiken feels particularly proud to have put this groundbreaking series on the radar of both the gay and straight communities at large. “Our stories haven’t been told and it was time to tell them,” says Chaiken. “We have millions of stories and I think it’s time we should come front and centre and join the rest of the culture in being represented – have our presence known and celebrated,” continues Chaiken.

The third season opens with Alice struggling to cope with Dana’s renewed relationship with Lara, Bette hopes that sex therapy will help her and Tina find some common ground on which to renew a relationship that’s been strained by the birth of their daughter, Angelica. But if that wasn’t stressful enough, they also must prepare to face a social worker who needs to approve Bette’s adopting Angelica. And as a psychic sees a new romance in Helena’s future, and Shane is tentative about meeting Carmen’s family, back at home in Illinois where she is completing her new book, Jenny faces her mother’s refusal to accept that she’s a lesbian.

THE L WORD, Sunday 28th October at 9.40pm on PRIME

On 12 July 1979 Mafia boss Carmine Galante was gunned down in a Brooklyn restaurant. At first, it seemed like just another gangland killing but when the police and the FBI began to investigate, they realised that they had stumbled upon something far bigger.

The Sicilian Mafia were smuggling vast amounts of heroin into New York, much of it hidden inside Italian foodstuffs, distributed via Sicilian-owned restaurants in Brooklyn. Small wonder the press dubbed it the ‘Pizza Connection’. Galante had earned a reputation as a gangster of unusual recklessness, greed and ferocity – a “real knuckle-dragger”, as one commentator dubbed him.

Galante had been released from prison in 1974 and quickly installed himself as boss of the Bonanno family. He had a secret weapon – an army of Sicilian killers, recruited via the strong links he maintained with his ancestral home; assassins that operated under the radar of law enforcement. They also operated without the say-so of the Mafia’s ruling body, The Commission.

In fact, Galante openly sneered at the other mob bosses and refused to share enough of his heroin-dealing proceeds with them. The Commission decided: Galante had to go. They persuaded his Sicilian comrades, also annoyed that he was keeping all the money, to help. At the same time the Bonanno family was under threat from another direction by probably the most famous FBI agent of all time.

Joe Pistone had infiltrated the family under the pseudonym of Donnie Brasco, a small-time jewel thief. He was so successful that he was within days of becoming a made man – a full member of the Mafia – when the Bureau pulled him out. Pistone’s information plus the investigation into Galante’s murder revealed the extent to which the Sicilian mafia was operating in the US. No longer did they just control illegal gambling, prostitution and the like. Now, with heroin, the Mafia had gone global.

THE MAFIA, Sunday 28th October at 8.30pm on PRIME

In an old, abandoned house, the Weeping Angels wait.

When people start disappearing, a young woman called Sally finds cryptic messages bleeding through from 1969 – messages from a mysterious stranger called the Doctor. Can she decipher them before the Angels claim their prize?

DOCTOR WHO, Sunday 28th October at 7.30pm on PRIME

Harry Dresden is the only wizard who advertises in the Chicago yellow pages.

And he’s the real deal.

Dresden is a haunted man (in more ways than one) who has sinned and been sinned against. But in the darkness of his past, he finds an inner strength and a driving desire to set things right.

Based on the best-selling novels by Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files has been described as being a lot like Harry Potter.

A behind-the-scenes look at the history of STARGATE SG-1 and how it was instrumental in launching the next phase of the ongoing saga: STARGATE ATLANTIS.

The one-hour special features interviews with crew and cast including Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Michael Shanks, as well as classic clips from SG-1 and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of both shows in production — including a never-before-seen look at the amazing STARGATE ATLANTIS sets.

FROM STARGATE TO ATLANTIS, Sunday 28th October at 6pm on PRIME

When a member of the local camera club is brutally strangled, all leads point to one suspect.

The members of the Luxton Deeping Photographic Society are in the middle of a great schism between traditional photography and digital cameras. But who would have expected it would lead to murder? Soon, one member of each faction is found strangled. Is it all about art or is it more personal? And where do the glamour photographs of the blonde fit in? Things become personal for DCI Barnaby when somebody begins manufacturing evidence against him to make it seem he is involved in the killings.

MIDSOMER MURDERS, Saturday 27th October at 8.30pm on PRIME

Sir David Attenborough turns his attention to a group of creatures he has yet to tackle in depth – insects and their allies, in this stunning 5-part BBC series

Open your eyes to the bizarre, ferocious and surprisingly beautiful world of the invertebrates. Join David Attenborough on his groundbreaking exploration into a spectacular miniature universe never normally seen, but teeming all around us. Not just bugs and beetles, but exotic cicadas, neon glow worms, intricate silk-weaving spiders and iridescent dragonflies – not to mention a whole host of other incredible life forms and intimate, startling behaviour.

Thanks to technical innovations in lighting, optics and computerised motion control, this turbulent, super-organised world is finally revealed from the perspective of its extraordinary inhabitants. These beasts may be miniscule, but they live life on a truly grand scale. Tonight’s episode traces how invertebrates left the seas to move onto land just over 400 million years ago. The invertebrates have become the most successful group of animals, conquering every corner of our planet. From the common leopard slug to the nightmarish amblypygid, for every one of us, there are 200 million of them.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH, Saturday 27th October at 7.30pm on PRIME

Business is down and the bottom line needs a shake-up. Chop decides to cut his sales force for the off-season by dissolving one team.

The tough task of letting the low performers go and moving the weaker players — giving other teams “fresh meat” — falls to his right-hand man and former top salesman, Will Tooros “Chilly Willy”. As the shake-up ripples through the dealership, the changes show immediate results.

KING OF CARS, Saturday 27th October at 7.00pm

Presenter Toby Amies is in Berlin and hooks up with puppeteer Christian Bahrmann, explores his ‘hood and helps put on a puppet show for Berlin kids.

Christian introduces Toby to Natural Born Golfer Thorsten Schilling, who’s taken the distinctly unsexy game of golf and reinvented as an extreme urban sport. Thorsten and Toby play the ultimate game of golf through Berlin’s urban landscape. While practicing his swing, Toby meets surreal performance artist Maren Strack, a one-woman compendium of avant garde Berlin art. Maren initiates Toby into black art of whipcracking, and reveals how she tests the limits of dance by dangling from trees and dancing with hydraulic legs.

Through Maren, Toby meets architect and photographer Benjamin Koehrich, who takes Toby for a bike ride along the route of the former Berlin Wall. He also introduces Toby to the characters living in the no-man’s land left behind. Toby gets a crash course in chess-boxing – a sport that’s the ultimate challenge for the body and the mind – from chess-boxing world champ Lepe the Joker.

Toby gets a taste of the high life when Maren invites him to an elite garden party hosted by suave art patron Jorg Starke. After a spin on his pleasure boat, Jorg proves he’s a true populist by taking Toby cockroach racing with Russian painter Nikolai Makarov in Nikolai’s local Russian bar.

LONELY PLANET: SIX DEGREES, Saturday 27th October at 6.00pm