Monday, 30/1/2017

Great American Railroad Journeys (BBC2, 6.30pm)

Michael Portillo continues his epic journey across America aboard the Southwest Chief following the Santa Fe trail. His first stop is Old West frontier town Dodge City, Kansas, where he is caught up in a gun fight at the notorious Long Branch Saloon and breaks bread with a descendant of a railroad land agent, who sold thousands of acres to 19th century European settlers. Near Lamar, Colorado, Michael visits the scene of a massacre of Native Americans who found themselves in the way of white settlement of the Great Plains.

George III - The Genius of the Mad King (BBC2, 9pm)

George III has gone down in history - or at least our popular imagination - as the 'mad' monarch. But after 200 years a collection of letters, diaries and family documents are emerging from the royal vaults to offer a new perspective on Britain's longest-reigning king. Roger Hardman sifts through the documents to finds out what they tell us about a man driven by both his royal duties and his family. Simon Callow and Sian Thomas provide the voices of King George and Queen Charlotte as the letters show how the monarch was a political micro-manager, a patron of science and the arts, and someone who travelled the world vicariously through emissaries like Captain Cook without ever leaving southern England.

Silent Witness (BBC1, 9pm)

Part one of two. Nikki travels to Mexico to attend the funeral of Luisa, a former intern at the Lyell Centre who was murdered in a carjacking in her native country. She soon stumbles across the post-mortem report and realises that the body is not that of her ex-colleagues. Assisted by Dr Eva Vasquez and fired up with the idea that Luisa might still be alive, Nikki and Jack trace her last-known movements and are led to a farm where a cartel massacre was carried out. Crime drama, starring Emilia Fox.