marylsommers

marylsommers

Ken Burns Night
From 6.35pm, PBS

Ken Burns has become a byword for prestigious documentary-making, most famously exemplified in his series The American Civil War. He approaches a range of topics on which he is not necessarily expert, but brings the same approach to all: grave narrative tone and spare musical accompaniment; extensive use of still shots; and voiceovers from prestige actors reading from correspondences that reveal movingly human stories beneath the sepia tint of the dead past. Tonight features episodes from his acclaimed series Jazz, the music he regards as America's supreme cultural gift to the 20th century, and Prohibition, in which he examines the disastrous consequences of a legislative experiment in enforced temperance to try to sober up a frighteningly boozy nation. David Stubbs

The National Television Awards 2012 7.30pm, ITV1

As pointless as awards shows can sometimes be, at least this one has the benefit of being chosen by public voting, so there should be nothing tactical or political about the winners. The night, hosted by Dermot O'Leary, should reveal whether the popularity of his main gig, The X Factor, is on the wane, and there's a new Best Reality Show category, too. Phelim O'Neill

Natural World
8pm, BBC2

The slow loris is, in the parlance of the internet ? which has done so much to spread its big-eyed charm after a YouTube video went viral ? OMG cute! Maybe so, but the loris is also the world's only venomous primate, its toxicity provided by mixing its saliva with an oily liquid produced from a gland near the elbow (hence the gremlin sobriquet). But why does it produce poison? Dr Anna Nekaris heads to the jungles of Java to find out more, on a journey that reveals the creatures appear to be in serious decline in the wild. Jonathan Wright

The Crusades
9pm, BBC2

The second instalment of Dr Thomas Asbridge's terrific three-part history of the Crusades pitches straight into the most dramatic moment of an enduringly poisonous period of history. It's July 1192, and Richard the Lionheart is poised for his attempt to seize the ultimate prize of Jerusalem from Saladin, its redoubtable defender. Asbridge peers behind the popular caricatures of the leaders (Richard the ruthless marauder, Saladin the principled, pious tribune of his faith). Inevitably, but nonetheless absorbingly, Asbridge discovers that the two men had rather more in common than the adherents of both might prefer to think. Andrew Mueller

Jonathan Meades On France
9pm, BBC4

Jonathan Meades's engaging and verbose series on his adopted homeland continues with an episode subtitled A Biased Anthology Of Parisian Peripheries. It's a typically vague description, but takes in architectural developments as well as the legacy of French colonialism and its lasting influence over former territories. Rebecca Nicholson

Viking Apocalypse
9pm, National Geographic

When workers building a road near Weymouth in Dorset unearthed the shallow grave of 54 beheaded skeletons, they discovered a 1,000-year-old atrocity. The mass grave was dated to a time when England was being harassed by aggressive Viking raids. Using archaeological evidence and lab analysis, researchers try to piece together what happened; whether it was a massacre of Anglo-Saxons, or perhaps the Vikings themselves who were on the receiving end of mass, cold-blooded murder. Martin Skegg

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/jan/24/the-crusades-jonathan-meades-france

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