Pick of the day: DNA Journey
9pm, ITV1
Pairing up famous ancestor hunters makes for livelier television than Who Do You Think You Are?, allowing for some amusing (and often revealing) banter as this week Line Of Duty co-stars Neil Morrissey and Adrian Dunbar are packed off to Ireland. Morrissey was placed in care at the age of 10 and knows very little about his family history, while the Northern Irish Dunbar’s journey actually begins in England – and a Norfolk forebear suspected of running an illegal gambling racket. Morrissey is delighted to find hellraisers in his family tree and to learn from a DNA test that he is actually more Irish than his travelling companion.
Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr
8pm, BBC One
The contestants go solo this week as they are sent to a luxury golf and spa resort in Scotland. Four of them get to redecorate rooms for spa visitors, while golfers are to be treated to a “maximalist Scottish experience”. Michelle Ogundehin explains that she’s not looking for antlers and tartan – more “a full-bodied red wine as opposed to a rosé”. Matthew Williamson helps with the judging.
Skinner and Mina’s Literary Road Trip: Pope and Swift
8pm, Sky Arts
Frank Skinner and Scottish crime writer Denise Mina are one of TV’s better (and more unexpected) double acts. They continue their latest literary travelogue, this one in the footsteps of 18th-century satirists Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, discovering how Pope became one of the leading poets of his age and finding out how Swift’s political satire turned him into an Irish hero.
Anton and Giovanni’s Adventures in Sicily
9pm, BBC One
There’s a factory somewhere mass producing these TV travelogues in which celebrities are paired off and sent to sunny climes. This time it’s the turn of Strictly judge and dancer Anton du Beke and Giovanni Pernice who get to explore Sicily – the island having quite the moment after The White Lotus and Amanda and Alan’s Italian Job. Their tourism sector must be thrilled, although this series feels rather laboured as Anton practises his rubbish Italian and the pair race between historic ruins on tuk-tuk-like vehicles known as “Ape taxis”.
The Holy Land and Us: Our Untold Stories
9pm, BBC Two
If there is barely suppressed anger in the Palestinian contributors to this enlightening series then that might be expected given the events of 1948 – known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe. This week’s very moving episode has the Irish-Palestinian comedian Joanna Carolan making her first trip to what were once her family’s orange groves in Jaffa near Tel Aviv – linking up with two elderly uncles who recall fleeing to Jordan in 1948. Rob Rinder meanwhile meets a Jewish woman born in Egypt who wants to learn more about her beloved aunts’ move to the fledgling state of Israel.
Jerk
10pm, BBC Three
Comedian Tim Renkow continues to ride roughshod over contemporary pieties as Tim is invited to join a parliamentary select committee on disability. Meanwhile, his mate Idris (Rob Madin) begins to regret sinking his life savings into the African-Caribbean bookshop – especially after his mother suggests stocking Jeremy Clarkson’s books. You have been warned.
