Bill Oddie’s Wild Side BBC Two, 8pm

There were no preview DVDs of the first episode of the nation’s favourite fur-ball’s new series, so the content should come as a pleasant surprise. I have seen episode two, however, and can vouch that the style mixes straightforward film of British wildlife with wacky horsing around, comically speeded-up film, light-hearted vox pops and jokey links. Bill Oddie has written the series himself, as well as presenting, and the overall effect is slightly disconcerting, as if a particularly sober nature show had been jumbled up in the editing suite with an episode of The Goodies. Is that a colony of badgers in the distance? No, it’s Bill Oddie, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor racing around on a three-seat bicycle! Or vice versa.

What Britain Earns BBC Two, 9pm

Would you tell Peter Snow what you earn if he ambushed you in the street with a microphone and camera? No? Neither do the people he asks in the intro to this investigation into British incomes. It’s another double act with his son Dan, who does his usual action-man routine, chopping leeks in Nottinghamshire for the minimum wage and wading through sewers, as well as dressing up as a soldier and flying around in a helicopter. Even those who find the Snow team annoying should find plenty of interest here, though, as they chart the nation’s ever-changing job profile and widening wealth gap, locating everyone from call-centre drones to private equity bosses on Peter’s virtual earnings column.

Honest ITV1, 9pm

This is something of a reprise for the At Home with the Braithwaites star Amanda Redman, in that she plays another strong but sexy matriarch determined to impose some kind of order on her chaotic family. Lindsay Carter must contend with sudden poverty, though, rather than a lottery fortune. On the day her career criminal husband is sent to prison, she discovers that one of her sons has burgled a dangerous Triad gangster, her elder daughter is being groomed by a dodgy photographer, her younger daughter is blackmailing her headmistress and her father-in-law burns down his own house so he can come and stay. Lindsay takes a momentous decision. The show is amiable nonsense, fast-paced, good-hearted and thoroughly daft.

Barry Humphries: The Man Inside Dame Edna Channel 4, 10pm

This thoroughly enjoyable profile starts with the premisethat the irrepressible Aussie artiste always gives away as little about himself as possible, and hopes to circumvent his elaborate psychological defences. The memories of his “spoiled, privileged” family life in the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds, “Queenie” Humphries at school and university, the collection of his Dada joke artefacts and the emergence of Dame Edna from his days in a touring theatre company are fascinating, while the clips of Humphries as the Housewife Superstar and Sir Les Patterson bring tears to the eyes.

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette