This World: American Nightmare, BBC Two, 7pm

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. When the collapse of the US “sub-prime” mortgage market battered the financial world over the summer, it seemed inconceivable in retrospect that no one saw it coming. Mortgage brokers sold the American dream of home ownership to people who failed to read the small print. The regional banks passed on the loans to Wall Street, who bundled them into sexy packages with exciting names and handed them on to foreign banks and investment funds. But when US interest rates went up, the house ofcards came tumbling down. This World disinters this mess of hope, greed and ignorance and shows how thousands of people – many of whom were poor and uneducated – lost everything.

Dispatches: How to Get Ahead in Africa, Channel 4, 8pm

Getting ahead in Africa, says the award-winning journalist Sorious Samura, is not difficult – you merely bribe your way to the top. But worse than that, people with next to nothing are forced to offer bribes merely to survive. In this angry film, he claims that Africa is being destroyed by corruption. In one of the largest slums in Africa, Kibera in Kenya, the poor have to pay bribes for hospital appointments, to build shacks, to get work and to stay out of jail. In Sierra Leone mothers have to offer bribes to get their children into school. And schools all over Africa are places where pupils learn corruption and the use of power and status to achieve their goals. This is not an optimistic film.

When Hell Freezes, Channel 4, 9pm

The Antarctic expedition undertaken by the Australian geologist Douglas Mawson in 1912 has become a legend. Not only is it regarded as one of the greatest scientific expeditions ever in terms of the amount of data gathered, but it turned into an astounding feat of human endurance. Mawson set off across the ice with two companions in early November; one of them fell down a crevasse with a sled and a team of dogs, leaving the remaining two 300 miles from their base with only ten days of rations. Mawson alone survived the return journey. In this documentary, Tim Jarvis – who made his own solo trek to the South Pole – retraces Mawson’s epic feat of endurance, which is interspersed with footage from the expedition and dramatised reconstructions.

Britain’s Deadliest Addictions, Channel 4, 10.35pm

Every night over the next four nights, the cameras will follow three addicts (an alcoholic, a Class-A drug addict and someone addicted to prescription drugs) as they undergo treatment at a leading detox clinic. Dr John Marsden, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy from Channel 4 News will present the series, introducing excerpts of that day’s treatment with commentary from clinicians on the nature of addiction and the progress of the treatment. This is not intended as voyeuristic entertainment – the clinical director can stop the filming any time he feels the interests of the patient are being compromised.

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