HOLLYWOOD SCIENCE
BBC Two, 7.30pm

Here is an ingenious idea from the Open University, which sets out to discover if various Hollywood stunts would be possible in the real world. Could Roger Moore, for example, have survived under water by breathing the air from the tyre of a Rolls-Royce? Or could any human consume a 96oz steak in the way that John Candy did in the film The Great Outdoors? Dr Jonathan Hare (of Rough Science fame) devises experiments that put these stunts to the test, while another presenter — who describes his role as that of “an enthusiastic communicator” — behaves like a desperate magician at a children’s party.

THE WOMAN WHO DIVES THE DEEPEST: EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE
Five, 8.30pm

Tania Streeter is the glamorous star of freediving, an extreme sport that involves plunging to unconscionable depths on a single breath and resurfacing alive. The average person can hold their breath for about 40 seconds. Tania can do it for more than six minutes. In this programme she goes for a world-record depth of 160 metres (525ft). She risks blackouts, perforated eardrums and nitrogen narcosis — an ecstatic state that encourages a person to head off with the dolphins. “I’m not scared of dying at all. When you die, you die,” she says. “I hope I don’t painfully.”

AT HOME WITH THE BRAITHWAITES
ITV1, 9pm

The penultimate episode kicks off like an unhinged version of Cluedo. Megan (Julie Graham) is dead in the cottage . . . with a television set. The finger of suspicion points at Alison Braithwaite (Amanda Redman). But nothing in the Braithwaite household is ever what it seems, and the programme accelerates rapidly into a tangle of interwoven plots, knockabout farce and enjoyable silliness.

ELLEN MACARTHUR: IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
BBC One, 10.35pm

This is an altogether different species of reality television. There were seven fixed cameras and a cameraman on board Kingfisher2 to capture every moment of the attempt by Ellen MacArthur to set the record for a 26,000 mile, round-the-world voyage. She was talking to a camera when the catamaran’s mast crashed down, knocking her out of her seat. Part of the fascination is seeing how MacArthur was able to skipper 13 experienced male crew, all of whom were more than four years her senior. It also contains awe-inspiring footage of Kingfisher2 battling through nine- metre waves in the Bay of Biscay. DC

CV: Jan Ravens

Dead Ringers
BBC Two, 10pm

Age 42
University days While studying drama at Cambridge, she worked with the Footlights revue directing Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson
Started out As a radio comedy producer
Heard but not seen Provided the seductive voice of the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny
Tough job She finds Judi Dench and Ruby Wax the hardest to impersonate

Satellite and digital choice

FAKING IT CHANGED MY LIFE
E4, 10pm and 1.15am

Ever wondered what happened to Sian, the dowdy cellist who faked it as a superstar DJ? Well, Hollywood is apparently making a film about her.

Or Alex, the shy, foppish first subject who came out as gay while training as a bouncer in the East End? Partying at Sydney’s Mardi Gras. It may be a repeat, but this catch-up with the subjects from the first three series is pure feel-good fun.

MURDER IN MIND
UK Gold, 11pm

Keeley Hawes stars in this harrowing modern murder mystery as a sleepwalker who wakes the morning after a blazing row with her boyfriend to find a bloody claw hammer entangled in the sheets.

BETTE MIDLER: DIVA LAS VEGAS
Performance, 11pm

Outageous comedy and song from the Divine Miss M and her Harlettes. GS

Radio choice

THIS GREEN UNPLEASANT LAND
Radio 4, 11am

It is one of our present-day ironies that those who flee the ugly, overcrowded, dangerous cities for the countryside often find themselves in attractive, sparsely policed, dangerous towns and villages. Gerry Northam reports.

REITH LECTURES 2003: THE EMERGING MIND
Radio 4, 8pm

Professor V. S. Ramachandran discusses how his neuroscientific work may be helping to answer philosophical questions about what it means to be human.CC

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• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
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