Strange Landscape: The Jewelled City. Saturday, BBC2, 8pm. Historian and critic Christopher Frayling offers an insight into the little-known world of the Middle Ages in the first of this major five-part series. A mix of documentary and costume-drama styles brings its subject to life for its 20th century audience.
* The Century of Cinema: A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies. Sunday, Channel 4, 8.30pm. This week in “The Director as Illusionist”, film director Martin Scorsese illustrates the pioneering use of sound and colour, and looks at how digital technology allowed the new illusionists like Coppola to shoot big scenes which would otherwise be uneconomical.
* Midnight Underground White Homeland Commando. Tuesday, Channel 4, 11. 45pm. The reverberations of the Oklahoma City bombing will be amplified by this timely screening of Elizabeth LeCompte’s exploration of white supremacist groups in the US.
* Troubleshooter Returns. Wednesday, BBC2, 9.30pm. “You don’t want to do it like that.” What a great job, going to people’s workplaces and telling them how to, and how not to, do their jobs, as Sir John Harvey-Jones did in the BBC’s “Troubleshooter” series. Now he returns to look at the wider issues with a four-part autobiographical series. This week he revisits India, but next week he moves on to education and gleefully helps to demolish his own much-hated prep school (Tormore School in Deal) before looking at today’s comprehensive and public schools. Have the aspirations of youngsters changed? Is the failure of the education system due to a failure of expectations? Sir John believes that “for far too long our education system has concentrated on the few and failed the vast majority. The result is that two-thirds of our pupils leave school underqualified, compared with our international competitors”.
* I Camcorder: Sports Day. Wednesday, Channel 4, 8.30pm. The school sports day comes into focus as Robert Llewellyn shows how to edit also-rans into champions. An hour later, on the same channel, 19-year-old Manchester film-makers Aneel Ahmed and Faisal Qureshi take you on a night of celebration in the Wilmslow Road in Lloyds Bank Film Challenge: Movin’ As A Massive.
* True Stories: The Lapirovs Go West. Thursday Channel 4, 9.30pm. The East-West divide is the subject of this happy-ending documentary on the Lapirov family’s 10-year triumph over culture shock to make a success of their new lives in America. Now they can afford to return to Moscow for a holiday and tantalise their friends.
