Sunday

Jekyll & Hyde

7pm, STV

The first episode of Charlie Higson’s fantastic, fun, fast and loose spin on the Jekyll and Hyde story received over 500 complaints last week from viewers deeming it too scary for kids at teatime – which, in my book, is thumping confirmation of a job well done. They’ve bumped the time back to 7pm tonight, but they should have pushed it forward to 5.30pm, so junior can get screaming early. The real fear, however, is that, at 10 episodes, Higson might not be able to maintain the momentum, but it’s another cracker of an instalment tonight, full of old dark houses, secret labs, secret maps, trapdoors in the forest, fights and glimpses of more freakishly unsettling monsters. In London, Jekyll is on the trail of his family’s past, while the spooky government men are hunting for him. Meanwhile, out at sea, the sinister Captain Dance is heading for Britain, bringing his hideous pets with him. Great, great stuff.

Monday

Storyville: Lockerbie - My Brother’s Bomber 9pm, BBC Four Sadly, preview material was unavailable for this documentary, but it could be one of the week’s must-see programmes. Recently shown as a series in the US (this version is edited down from three episodes), it was this investigation by filmmaker Ken Dornstein that led to the announcement last month that new suspects had been identified in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Dornstein, who works for the venerable American documentary strand Frontine, has been particularly haunted by the atrocity: among the 270 victims that night was his older brother, David, and while the film itself was five years in the making, there’s a quarter of a century of personal feeling involved. Following the 2009 release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man ever convicted of the bombing, Dornstein grew determined to track down others who must have been involved. Drawing on information provided by Scottish investigators, he travelled into the chaos of Libya during the 2011 revolution, searching for clues to the identities and whereabouts of suspects. The hunt would consume four years, and take him across the Middle East and Europe as new witnesses emerged, and fresh evidence came to light. Three decades after the crime, has he finally uncovered the truth?

The Great Pottery Throw Down

Tuesday, 9pm, BBC Two

Thanks to Deirdre Barlow – and, to a lesser extent, for a strange minority with curious tastes, the film Ghost – pottery has long had a potent erotic association. It wasn’t until I watched The Great Pottery Throw Down, however, that I realised just how utterly filthy a pastime it is.

But we’ll come back to that. First, it’s worth considering TV’s fondness for stamping out cookie-cutter copies of current hits. Until recently, this new series was actually due to be called The Great British Pottery Throw Down, to further underline its proud status as a shameless attempt at cashing-in on The Great British Bake-Off, in the noble tradition of The Great British Sewing Bee.

In all its summery niceness, Bake-Off has been endlessly analysed as emblematic of a throwback desire in the British psyche, brought about as a reaction to economic and political crisis and the accelerating changes of the online age. As well as being, you know, fun, relaxing and rewarding, the rise in the popularity of baking, sewing, knitting and gardening, not to mention things like colouring books for adults, all seem to speak of a desire to turn back to tangible, analogue remnants of an earlier time we like to imagine was simpler, realer and wore Fair Isle jumpers, while the world around us fragments into pixels and uncertainty. A kind of easier, head-in-the-sand modern equivalent to the more militant back-to-nature eco-movement of the early 1970s, except with Joy Division Lego, and Instagram there so you can show everyone.

As part of this same comfort blanket desire, Bake-Off has also been held up as a manifestation of the fundamental decency that lurks as the real, warm, beating core of all of us on these islands. Whether this is actually the case – or whether highly skilled TV professionals have carefully manufactured Bake-Off to suggest exactly that – is neither here nor there. Enough of us want to believe it for it to be true.

It is precisely these qualities that we cherish in Bake-Off, however, that doom copies like Throw Down (in which Bake-Off’s creators are involved). If we love Bake-Off for feeling authentic, organic and nice, how are we to respond when they turn around and offer us clones that demonstrate how artificial and calculatedly constructed the format is, and are cynically aimed at tickling us in the same soft spot?

I say this with a heavy heart, because, once you peel back the Great British wrapping, I found watching people making stuff in Throw Down more interesting than in Bake-Off. And not just because of how obscenely sexy it gets. But we’ll come back to that.

Baking can be hard work, but the ten amateur potters here put in serious graft: in their first day making a set of bowls, they work a 13-hour shift. The arcane technicalities of the pottery processes are fascinating; the heartbreaks are more profound when pieces begin to crack; and the ingenuity and artistry revealed is surprising and inspiring.

All the while, though, the series just keeps reminding you it’s not Bake-Off, precisely because it’s working so very hard to try and be Bake-Off, in a way many Bake-Off fanatics will, perversely, find a turn-off.

The only thing that might save it is that, in places, it gets quite mind-bogglingly, throbbingly, turn-on dirty. Sadly, however, I don’t have enough room left to explain why. But, honestly: I didn’t know where to put myself. Deirdre would have had no problem, though.

Wednesday

Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You

9pm, BBC Two

Following his series on The 1970s and Science Fiction, Professor Dominic Sandbrook is back with another four-part socio-cultural essay. The idea underpinning this one is pretty simple: while, since the end of the Second World War, Britain has seen its industrial might and global political influence wither and die, Sandbrook argues there is one area in which we remain a superpower – the creation of culture. From The Beatles and Bond to Damien Hirst, from JK Rowling to Grand Theft Auto, our culture is both our biggest export, and the prism through which the world views us. In exploring how and why, Sandbrook identifies a strand of particularly British characteristics in the work (citing, for example, the way The Beatles transformed from leather-clad Gene Vincent lookalikes playing Chuck Berry covers into sharp suited idiosyncratic pop modernists). Considering figures like Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, he also argues that the concerns, ambitions and zeal fuelling our modern culture can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era.

Thursday

Detectorists

10pm, BBC Four

And so once more to the quiet fields of Danebury, where Lance (Toby Jones) and Andy (Mackenzie Crook) continue their eternal search through the meadows, even if they don’t know what they’re looking for. Trouble is brewing. Peter, the young German stranger who claims to be looking for the crash site of his grandfather’s plane, is acting increasingly suspiciously, but the smitten Sophie refuses to see it. Meanwhile, when he spies Lance having lunch with a mysterious young woman, Andy is driven to distraction wondering who she is – but he seems oblivious to the crisis looming in his own relationship, as Becky grows increasingly frustrated with their lot. It’s hard to say, but this might just be the most gorgeous-looking episode yet of Crook’s jewel-like sitcom. There’s an unexpected cameo from David Essex’s Silver Dream Machine, and what’s this coming across the field? Is that the scent of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme…?

Friday

Covers Night

9pm, BBC Four

At some point or another, most music nerds get around to playing the “name a cover that’s better than the original” game, and tonight’s line up might give you some ammo. Kicking off an evening devoted to the subtle art of copying is Sings Dylan II, compiling Bobby D covers from Joan Baez to Siouxsie Sioux. The main event, though, is Better Than The Original: The Joy Of The Cover Version (10pm) a documentary on the good, the bad and the Puff Daddy of taking other people’s songs. Among the (dimly-lit) contributors Marc Almond, John Cale, Rick Rubin and singer-songwriter Nerina Pallot all have great insight on what it takes to make someone else’s tune your own – Cale and Pallot are particularly good on how Cale rediscovered and reshaped Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, transforming a barely-known cult song into a modern hymn, and paving the way for Jeff Buckley and Alexandra Burke’s radically different interpretations. It’s followed by a new compilation, Ultimate Covers At The BBC (11pm), and a repeat of Sings Barcharach And David (midnight).

Saturday

Doctor Who

8pm, BBC One

Like a body-snatched victim fighting to escape from the pod in which she has been cocooned, there’s a good story struggling to break out of this two-part adventure, which started last week. But there’s a lot of damp, rubbery and awfully overinflated padding in its way. The best bits come early, as The Doctor and Osgood try to find a safe way through an eerie Britain in which no one can be trusted, while Clara attempts to get free from the Evil Clara Zygon who is currently wearing a natty copy of her body around town. It all gets a wee bit too this-is-the-biggest-gravest-most-important-thing-that-has-ever-happened-(again)-and-we’re-all-going-die-and-cry-about-it toward the end, though. Still, next week’s, with co-star Reece Shearsmith, looks odd, and oddly promising.