Midsomer Murders - Season 24
From Friday 16 February 8.30pm
Ancient families like the Shirewells thrive on tradition, but when the eldest son throws a bomb into five centuries of history, long-buried resentments resurface.
Back in the fictional picturesque English county of Midsomer, DCI Barnaby and his trusty sidekick, DS Winter, endeavour to solve perplexing crimes while also exploring the quirks of this delightful yet deadly county.
The beautiful Stourwick Estate is set in the quintessential English countryside, its centrepiece being the magnificent Stourwick Hall – an Elizabethan stately home owned and occupied by the Shirewell family since 1588.
But Stourwick Hall is divided – much like the family itself. The old Stable has been transformed by the bohemian heir to the estate – Lucian Shirewell (Peter Serafinowicz) - into a ceramics studio. His traditionalist younger brother Francis (Alex Macqueen) is in the Dower House with his insufferable wife Davina (Agni Scott), while their elder sister Ursula (Sarah Woodward) is in the main house caring for their dying father.
Following the death of their father, Lucian gathers his siblings for a meeting, where he announces that his tenure at Stourwick will be the Shirewell’s last.
Lucian’s radical plans include the removal of his siblings from the estate with immediate effect. He intends to transform Stourwick into a residential artist’s community. The historic family chapel is to become a gallery for his lurid controversial pieces, while the surrounding farmland will be transformed into a vast solar park. His plans are viewed as wilful desecration by family and estate workers alike.
So when an incriminating letter is found among their father’s belongings, foul play is suspected. Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and Winter (Nick Hendrix) are called to the estate and Lucian is the prime suspect. But is someone desperate to frame Lucian in order to regain control of the estate?
Production credit: Bentley Productions & All3Media International
Earth - Episode 4
Tuesday 13 February 9.00pm
Narrated by Chris Packham and brought to life by mesmerising visual effects, the five-part BBC nature series takes us back to a time when the sky and the seas were sepia-tinted, and giant fungi dominated the landscape.
ATMOSPHERE
The almost implausible story of how our life-sustaining atmosphere came to exist.
This episode tells the almost implausible story of how our world went from a barren rock with a sky of endless black, to the planet we know today, cloaked in the thin blue line of our life-sustaining atmosphere.
When Earth first formed from clouds of dust and gas 4.6 billion years ago, it was - like so many other lifeless worlds in the universe - devoid of an atmosphere, an inhospitable rock floating in the black void of space. But as the young planet was pummelled by asteroids a period of extraordinary upheaval began.
Over a 2-billion-year period, the planet faced violent eruptions and a toxic orange haze, vast oceans of water in the sky and seas turning rusty red. Until eventually, with the emergence of life and photosynthesis recalibrating the gases in our atmosphere, the stage was set for Earth to become the vibrant azure-skied planet we call home today.
Martin Clunes: Islands of America - Episode 4
Thursday 15 February 9.00pm
Next stop on Martin’s island journey is the colourful Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, America’s third largest island, and the only one where Spanish is the main language.
In 2017 Hurricane Maria ripped through the island of Puerto Rico causing the worst disaster in the island’s history, flattening forests and houses and ultimately claiming thousands of lives. Martin sees how the Puerto Ricans have begun to recover from the disaster.
Leaving Puerto Rico, Martin travels north to the Sea Islands along the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas. They’re home to the unique Gullah Geechee people, descendants of African slaves who once worked the plantations on these islands. Thanks to their island remoteness, they were able to hold on to much of their African heritage in ways that mainland slaves could not.
Next, Martin travels north to the 200-mile string of barrier islands of the Outer Banks, which run parallel to the North Carolina coast, and protect the mainland from the full force of storms and hurricanes.