TV Tonight: Exploring Jimmy McGovern’s Bafta-Winning Prison Drama “Time”

TV Tonight: Jimmy McGovern’s Bafta-winning prison drama Time

Time

Sunday, 9pm, BBC One

It takes next-level writing chops to make watchable and moving (as opposed to utterly bleak) drama out of three women’s anguished journeys through the UK prison system. Fortunately, Jimmy McGovern is more than up to the task, following his 2021 masterpiece of the same title with this equally brilliant series. Jodie Whittaker, Tamara Lawrance, and Bella Ramsey are all superb as inmates, finding nuance and humanity in the most trying circumstances. As before, Time manages to capture the quiet moments of private despair as well as the violence and chaos of prison. Somehow, it locates tiny moments of kindness and possible redemption, too. Another triumph.

Planet Earth III

6.20pm, BBC One

David Attenborough’s majestic natural history threequel continues with an in-depth look at life in our oceans. The sumptuous vignettes include a frogfish catfishing a lionfish and mobula rays breaching in Batman’s silhouette. But there is also a sobering look at the impact of 12m tonnes of plastic dumped into the drink every year.

Three Little Birds

8pm, ITV1

Poor Aston needs to convince Leah and Hosanna that moving to Dudley wasn’t a terrible mistake, as Lenny Henry’s Windrush drama continues. Elsewhere, Chantrelle’s nannying job isn’t running smoothly either as she experiences a more genteel version of racism than in the West Midlands, but which is no less sickening.

Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover

8.25pm, PBS America

This exhaustive documentary is part biography of Elon Musk, part potted history of Twitter – the social network previously owned by Jack Dorsey, which Musk became convinced was a threat to free speech and possibly democracy itself. As an explainer of how Twitter – and Musk’s dismal transformation of it – came to matter so much to worldwide discourse, it’s essential viewing.

The Devil’s Confession: The Lost Eichmann Tapes

9pm, BBC Two

It was Adolf Eichmann, one of the Holocaust’s chief logisticians, whom philosopher Hannah Arendt had in mind when coining her phrase “banality of evil”. In this concluding episode, aspects of that “desk murderer” are chillingly revealed, whether bloodlessly musing over the particular wording of the “final solution” or straight-facedly issuing blanket denials from the dock.

Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

10.20pm, ITV1

Given the brutal ruthlessness with which the country is ruled, the courage of the dissidents of Iran has almost defied belief. Filmed undercover and presumably at considerable personal risk, this remarkable documentary follows the aftermath of the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022 (who allegedly violated the strict Iranian hijab rule), meeting the women at the heart of the anti-government protests.

Film choice: Infinity Pool

10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere

Alexander Skarsgård subverts his virile screen persona in this warped horror from Brandon Cronenberg, which picks away at the morality of tourism. He plays James, a failed writer on holiday with his rich wife in an unnamed, corrupt country. When he drunkenly runs over and kills a local man, he pays for a clone of himself, which is then executed in his stead. Egged on by a group of thrill-seeking western tourists, including the seductive Gabi (Mia Goth), the weak-willed James falls into a destructive cycle of orgiastic crime and clone death.

Live sport Cricket

World Cup: India v England

8am, Sky Sports Main Event

At Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium.

Premier League Football

Man United v Man City

3pm, Sky Sports Main Event

At the Old Trafford. Preceded by West Ham v Everton at noon.