Louis Theroux v Piers Morgan, in a boxing ring, ding-ding, bell rings, seconds out and let’s go. Would you buy a ticket?
The vaguely disturbing prospect of a Theroux-Morgan clash is raised early doors in Louis Theroux Interviews Anthony Joshua (BBC2, Tuesday, 9pm). “I think I could take him,” says the bespectacled one of the TalkTV host.
Morgan was not the only one being challenged to a fight. “Do you think you could take me?” Theroux asks Joshua.
“Yeah,” says the two-time former world heavyweight champion.
“Seriously, what makes you so sure?” jabs Theroux.
Mercifully for Theroux, Joshua can take a joke.
READ MORE: Edinburgh on University Challenge
There’s something about being around boxers that brings out the fighter in otherwise peaceable folk. You can see it in the crowd at the big stadium bouts - women and youngsters roaring themselves hoarse in support of their hero or heroine. Must be all that testosterone in the air.
The sit-down with Joshua is the opener for a second series of Theroux interviews. It is a good “get” as they say in the TV bookings trade. Besides being a global name in sport, Joshua is rich, smart, controversial, funny and articulate. He is also at a crossroads in his career. Having suffered two major defeats, the former Olympic gold medallist is under pressure to get his world title back.
The centrepiece of the hour is a sit down at the London gym where it all started for Joshua. Around this, Theroux packs footage from fights, and some fly-on-the-wall material from his time spent following Joshua around. A boxer’s life, or this boxer’s life anyway, is as much about visiting his auntie in Watford as it is being interviewed by the world’s media.
Theroux the interviewer can bob and weave with the best of them, joking with Joshua one minute, reflective the next. The resulting encounter is fascinating, whether you are a boxing fan or not.
Others receiving the Theroux treatment in this series include Joan Collins and soldier turned whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Also back for a second series is The Secret Genius of Modern Life (BBC2, Wednesday, 8pm). Professor Hannah Fry, of radio and increasingly television fame, takes another delve into the extraordinary technology that goes into everyday objects, starting with the passport.
READ MORE New Frasier - any good?
Her first stop is the factory responsible for making them, where security is so tight the receptionist is hidden behind a screen and Fry has to wear a zipped, forensic-style suit to tour the facility (no pockets, see).
Over the course of an hour we learn most of what makes passports so fiendishly difficult to copy. If you’ve ever sat at an airport, idling going through your passport and wondering what this and that feature does, then wonder no longer. Fry has the answers.
A mathematician by trade, Fry has a gift for taking apart complex ideas and processes and making them seem simple. In one typically engrossing segment she looks at the history of facial recognition technology, and where it might be headed in the future. Will there even be paper passports in future? And will we miss the fun of standing in huge queues to have passports checked?
Next week, with the kind of perfect timing you would expect, sees the departure of one broadcast news drama and the arrival of another. On its way back is The Newsreader (BBC2, Thursday, Friday), while heading for a commercial break is The Morning Show (Apple TV+, series finale drops Wednesday).
While essentially about the same trade, the two dramas are different and of their times. In The Newsreader we are in Australia in the pre-internet 1980s, when no-one had to worry about a robot, or a “citizen journalist”, stealing their job. The Morning Show, in contrast, screams noughties New York, where the competition between “legacy media” and digital is cut-throat and it is every journalist for themselves.
For more TV previews subscribe here
The third series of The Morning Show has seen a partial return to form, with Jon Hamm spicing things up as Paul Marks, a Silicon Valley billionaire who might save the UBA network, or he might tear it apart and sell the bits for scrap. It could go either way.
As the third season closes - a fourth is in the pipeline - there are clashes of the titans happening all over the place. Will Hamm get his way, with new love Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) as his Lady Macbeth? And what’s the deal with Stella (Greta Lee) and Marks? There’s more to that relationship than him pinching her ideas. And what of fan favourite Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup), the network CEO?
What a beguiling character Crudup has constructed - part business genius, part crazy, and always the most interesting presence in a room. The episode where he took Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) home to meet his mother (played brilliantly by Scots actor Lindsay Duncan) was both chilling and hilarious. After meeting mommie dearest Cory did not seem so strange anymore.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here