This World: Miss Gulag

BBC Two, 7pm

If awards were handed out for access, Miss Gulag would go head to head with Friday's Unreported World about the Janjaweed militia in Darfur. Incredibly, here the cameras were allowed to film inside a bleak women's prison in Siberia, where every year the inmates put on a spring pageant to lift their spirits and give them a chance of early parole. You would hardly describe it as a joyous occasion, but the prison does appear to be one of the more humane circles of hell. One prisoner, already released, returns to the gulag where she spent so many years of her life in order to watch the pageant. “A person tends to cherish all the good and forget the bad,” she says.

Hotel Babylon

BBC One, 9pm

There are two guest appearances in tonight's episode. The first is a riotous turn by Paul Kaye, who usually specialises in playing dodgy geezers with broken teeth and a crooked grin. But on this occasion, with the hotel hosting auditions for the biggest production since the latest Harry Potter blockbuster, he flounces around as the show's artistic director. It is a performance of tremendous pantomime exuberance, entirely unburdened by understatement or restraint. The other guest appearance is from Jon Culshaw playing an American millionaire who is impossible to please. It's a grey, thankless role compared with the theatrical high jinx going on elsewhere, bearing out the old adage: Never act with children, animals or Paul Kaye in full flight.

The Poles Are Coming!

BBC Two, 9pm

Nobody knows for sure, but there are estimated to be half a million Poles living in the UK - many of whom seem to have ended up in Peterborough. Tim Samuels's good- natured film looks at the impact of this influx, not just on Peterborough but also back in Poland, where you can't get a plumber for love nor money. In Peterborough, services are stretched and many locals feel like strangers in their own country. But the local economy is booming and British employers are generous in their praise. “They're never late and they're always enthusiastic,” one boss says. Asked to do the same work in the fields for £7 an hour, a gaggle of surly British youths swig on their tins of lager and snort with incredulity. “I'd prefer to sign on than do that.”

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Five, 9pm

Dog fighting is not a pleasant pastime. “There are two things juries can't stand,” says Grissom. “People who abuse kids. And people who abuse animals.” It turns out that the victim in tonight's gruesome episode - a wealthy socialite honoured as the Humanitarian of the Year for her charity work - was leading a double life. When she wasn't raising money for good causes, she was training dogs to tear each other to pieces. Her half-eaten body is discovered on a rubbish dump surrounded by dozens of canine corpses. Someone, it seems, had taken the law into their own hands and thrown her, literally, to the dogs.

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