Television
MUSIC
from 8.30pm/10.15pm BBC2 Catch up via iPlayer
Anyone who hasn’t fist-pumped the air to the key change on Livin’ on a Prayer has missed out on one of rock’s premier pleasures. Tonight, the pump-architect himself, Jon Bon Jovi, pops into Dermot O’Leary’s boutique cinema, as Reel Stories makes awelcome return (9.30pm). The table lamps provide acosy atmosphere and it’s nice to see Jon’s face light up watching footage of his early career and influences in New Jersey in the 1970s. The band’s story follows afamiliar trajectory of drive, success, burnout, break-up and renaissance, but it seems he’s emerged as adown-to-earth, sensitive guy. Bon Jovi at the BBC (8.30pm, 11pm Wales) is the evening’s support act, while Bon Jovi in Concert (11pm, not Wales) provides the encore.
Sandwiched between, at 10.15pm, Jools Holland’s guests include Beth Gibbons, whose new album of moody tunes echoes her work in Portishead. In the mid-90s, the Bristol band’s very British take on the breakbeat style helped invent the trip-hop genre. Downbeat yet oddly psychedelic, their LP Dummy achieved rare crossover status.
DRAMA
9.00am Talking Pictures TV/ 12.30am BBC1 Catch up via TPTV Encore/iPlayer Modern Hollywood may be obsessed with him being avigilante figure, but for many, the Caped Crusader will for ever be sliding down the Batpole or walking up horizontal walls, with Robin exclaiming in his wake.
The appeal of the 1966 Batman crosses generations here in the UK thanks to TV-am repeating his and Robin’s exploits in the 80s as filler content. Maybe some kids in 2024 will also be charmed by the Zap! Pow! campery of Adam West and Burt Ward? There’s more tomorrow on the same Bat-channel, but superhero fans interested in the evolution of the genre may also want to catch the more earnest Superman and Lois, late tonight on BBC1.
SCI-FI
6.50pm BBC1 Available on iPlayer from 12 midnight on Friday 31 May
For an example of the flexibility of Doctor Who’s format, consider last week’s episode and the one on offer tonight. Seven days ago, we had an MR James-style chiller set on Earth that featured very little in the way of actual special effects. Now, we get atale that writer Russell T Davies felt would have been impossible to realise when he conceived it 15 years ago because of the limitations of technology.
Thankfully, the digital effects industry has caught up with his imagination, so he’s now able to whisk the Doctor and Ruby off to the peaceful world of Finetime. As ever, though, utopias have ahabit of turning out to be anything but —enter the terror stalking its citizens.
DOCUMENTARY
8.00pm C4 Catch up: C4 streaming This audio archive charts the months, days, hours and minutes leading up to 6June 1944, and is the fir
