WHAT does frozen sound like? Not the kind of question most of us face over the course of a shift, but all part of just another day in the office for Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel (BBC2, Sunday 16, 9pm).

This look at the double Oscar-winning maestro, who conjures up the music for everything from blockbuster films to natural history documentaries (including Frozen Planet), is long overdue.

“It’s not a job, it’s a calling,” says Zimmer, which makes him sound like a sober side when he is not. He is serious about music, to the point of being driven, and always has been, even if it took some time to settle into it.

Born in Frankfurt in 1957, Zimmer’s father died a week before his son’s sixth birthday. His mother suggested Hans learn the piano but he couldn’t bear his tutor and after a couple of weeks of lessons he stopped.

By then, though, he was able to play. There were more disputes with tutors, with Hans kicked out of eight schools in total. Finally, the family moved to the UK and he found a teacher who understood him (and who is interviewed here).

Zimmer landed his break when Barry Levinson, director of Rain Man, asked him to write the music for the film. Levinson recalls the pieces were unlike anything he had heard before on an American road movie, but they worked. An Oscar-nomination later and the work came flooding in for Zimmer . It has never stopped.

He now has one of the longest list of credits on imdb, with many of the directors he has worked with, including Christopher Nolan and Steve McQueen, paying tribute here.

An attempt is made to pin down the Zimmer sound and the various techniques has invented down the years, such as using a ticking noise to build tension over long scenes. Fascinating.

I’m a sucker for those Channel 5 films that dissect shopping habits and famous brands, the latest of which is Ikea: How Do They Really Do It? (Channel 5, Sunday, 8pm).

You may recall a BBC2 documentary, Flatpack Empire, covering the same terrain, but Channel 5’s film zooms in on the sales techniques, such as directing shoppers through the IKEA “maze” and giving them a big empty bag as they start their trek. As one talking head observes, the stores are like casinos, with no windows or clocks (other than the ones they are selling). Many of the methods are now commonplace, but it was IKEA that came up with them first.

IKEA now has a problem, one that stems from its success. Now that everyone’s home is full of its stuff or similar, where does the Swedish giant go next?

The documentary also answers the question of how to pronounce the name. It’s ee-key-ya, apparently, not eye-key-ah. A topic to ponder when you are next in the queue, perhaps?

Among the most watched films on the BBC News website you will often find one of Ros Atkins’ excellent explainers. You know the kind of thing: ten minutes on Ukraine and how we got here, ten minutes on Brexit, and so on. He has made the deceptively simple style his own, hence the reward of having his name in the title. Now the BBC has gone one better and given him a series, Ros Atkins on the Week (BBC1, Thursday, 11.40pm).

What will he do with a whole half hour to fill? Well, he has the week to cover for a start, so presumably the films will be the same length but there will be more of them. And yes, 11.40pm is a rotten slot, even if it is just after Question Time, but Atkins’ bitesize films are best consumed on iPlayer at a time to suit yourself.

Here’s a blast from the past. Ben Elton, black sparkly suit, little bit of politics, Loadsamoney, the thrill of someone swearing on live TV, what else could it be but Friday Night Live (Channel 4, Friday, 9pm).

This 90-minute special, live of course, is one of a number of shows marking Channel Four’s 40th birthday. There are some new faces standing up to be counted, but most viewers will come for the nostalgia and the chance to see some of the biggest names in comedy in their early formative years. Fry and Laurie, Julian Clary, Jo Brand – the boys and girls are back in town.

Friday Night Live used to be Saturday Night Live, which in turn owed a tip of the hat to the original American show. Like SNL, I seem to recall the British shows had their share of moments when jokes written at the last minute to be topical fell flat, and chaos generally reigned, but that was all part of its grungy, anarchic charm. Wasn’t it?

Shepherding proceedings along one more time is Ben Elton, who went on to have a not too bad career of his own after FNL ended, not least in stage musicals. Elton is 63 now. I’ll just leave that there.