Week 12 highlights

7 March 2012

Death Row.

Here are the best programmes on Channel 4 for week 12, Saturday 17th - Friday 23rd March. If your birthday falls in week 12, you are a strangely unpopular character with hairy toes and waxy ears. However, you are able to charm people with your ability to play the national anthem of any European state under your armpit.

Destiny sees Zooey Deschanel coming round to your house to borrow an egg-timer.

 

 

Saturday 17/03/2012
9:30pm
The Celebrity Bank Job
George Lamb hosts the last of the special shows in which celebrities aim to pull off the ultimate heist, in the name of their favourite charities. Four famous faces take on the vault packed with hundreds of thousands of pounds of real money. Once inside they go head-to-head to answer questions on the buzzer and against the clock. But only one of them can leave with the cash, so who will crack under the pressure and who will get rich and get out?

 

Sunday, 18/03/2012
8pm
The Falklands' Most Daring Raid
This gripping film tells the humorous yet heroic story of how a crumbling, Cold War-era Vulcan flew the then-longest-range bombing mission in history and how a Second World War vintage bomb changed the outcome of the Falklands War. Astonishingly this story of one of the RAF's greatest modern feats has been downplayed into near obscurity by history. On 30 April 1982, the RAF launched a secret mission: to bomb Port Stanley's runway and put it out of action for Argentine fighter jets.

 

Sunday, 11/03/2012
9pm
Homeland 5/12: Blind Spot
Part five of the compelling US thriller starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis. Afzal Hamid, the lone surviving terrorist from the compound in Afghanistan from where Brody was rescued, has been captured. Estes wants Saul and Carrie to find out everything he knows about Abu Nazir's plans to attack the US. But there's a catch: Estes wants Brody to help with the interrogation...

 

Monday, 19/03/2012
8pm
China: Triumph and Turmoil 2/3
In the second programme, Niall Ferguson asks how the most populous nation on the planet manages to live under a Communist system of government but with a thriving capitalist economy. The succession of revolutions orchestrated by Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. And yet this hard-line communist and murderer of businessmen is revered in China today as the founder of a modern day capitalist superpower. Niall Ferguson questions why.

 

Monday, 19/03/2012
9pm
Embarrassing Bodies 3/10
Dr Christian hits the party island of Ibiza, tackling the issues of too much sun, sea and sex, pitching up a clinic on the beach for clubbers in need, and offering on the spot STI tests for Chlamydia and Gonorrhoea. Back in the UK Dr Dawn meets a man whose buried penis is causing peeing problems, and Dr Pixie advises a young girl with an extreme case bad breath.

 

Tuesday 20/03/2012
9pm
Big Fat Gypsy Weddings 6/7
The final episode finds a community at a cross roads as the battle to preserve the gypsy and traveller way of life intensifies. Seventeen-year-old Irish traveller Freda has grown up happily alongside non-travellers, but now, about to be married, she feels strongly about returning to her roots. Billy is given a police-escort to his granddaughter's first Holy Communion. And at Dale farm, after 10 years of court battles, eviction approaches for 80 families.

 

Tuesday 20/03/2012
10pm
Hit the Road Jack: Wales
In this new series Jack Whitehall takes his show on the road visiting a different UK city each week, beginning with the Welsh capital of Cardiff. The set for Jack's stand-up performance is built in a working men's club where he is joined by guests Welsh comic actress and writer Ruth Jones and music guest Lethal Bizzle. But before putting on the show Jack shares his experience of Wales, staying with a local Welsh family, and also goes undercover as both an aide to the Queen and a rugby guru.

 

Wednesday 21/03/2012
8pm
Four Rooms 1/8
Four Rooms returns for a second series of curious collectables and nerve-gripping deals as members of the public try to sell vintage treasures for life-changing sums of money. This first episode in the new series features the chair on which JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, the original music score for Psycho, artwork by Marlon Brando, Francis Bacon's paint brushes, and an antique dildo. Four Rooms is presented by Anita Rani, and feisty new buyer Celia Sawyer joins original dealers Jeffrey Salmon, Andrew Lamberty and Gordon Watson for the second series.

 

Wednesday 21/03/2012
9pm
One Born Every Minute 12/14
The stress and anxiety surrounding childbirth takes centre stage when two couples who experienced unexpected difficulties during pregnancy arrive at the hospital. Seventeen-year-old Billie has pre-eclampsia, and is having an emergency caesarean. And 20-week scan shows that Carolyn and John's baby will be born with a cleft lip. Although they know the condition can be corrected with surgery, they're anxious.

 

Thursday, 22/03/2012
8pm
Get Your House in Order
This brand-new series features out-of-control consumers whose quality of life is being buried under mounds of excessive, but potentially valuable possessions. On hand to help are two experts: antiques and artefacts dealer Nick Allen, and interior designer Abigail Ahern. The first episode features 25-year-old shopaholic Amie Ormand whose compulsive consuming is taking over her home and threatening her relationship with her fiancé Ali.

 

Thursday, 22/03/2012
10pm
Death Row 1/3
Death Row is a documentary series written and directed by legendary feature filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams), telling the fascinating and controversial story of crime and the death penalty. Over the period of a year, Herzog interviewed inmates in America as they awaited their death and uncovered brutal stories of rape and murder. The first portrait is of Hank Skinner, who was sentenced to death 18 years ago for the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend and her two mentally impaired sons.

 

Friday, 23/03/2012
8pm
Come Dine with Me
Going head to head for the £1000 prize in Wolverhampton are traditionalist Deborah Green, tattoo-lover Kat Whyton, community worker Nick Bassett, and Italian Francesco Ceccarelli. The week of competitive dining features an ambitious around-the-world menu, some raw chicken and cold jerk lamb, a few rude remarks, some hidden agendas and rule bending, and a dramatic final twist to proceedings.

 

For highlights of programmes on More4, E4, Film4 and 4Music, please visit the Listings section of the site (available to registered users only).