The Grandparent Diaries/Getting On

BBC Four, 9pm/10pm

A season of programmes “dedicated to understanding life’s twilight years” begins with The Grandparent Diaries, a sincere and warmhearted film in which a free-spirited product of the Sixties takes his grandchildren to the seaside and talks about the differences between three generations of grandparents. This is followed by Jo Brand’s superb new comedy, Getting On. Set in the geriatric ward of an NHS hospital, it is centred around four brilliantly observed members of staff — a nurse newly returned to the NHS (Jo Brand), a subtly insane nursing sister (Joanna Scanlan), a male matron (Ricky Grover) and a brittle doctor (Vicki Pepperdine). Directed by Peter Capaldi, it is filmed in the verité style of The Office and The Thick of It using shaky cameras and dialogue that sounds overheard rather than scripted. It was the wonderful surprise of the week.

Celebrity Masterchef

BBC One, 8pm

The former 400m champion Iwan Thomas begins as the rank outsider as he takes on the formidable cooking talents of the television presenter Jayne Middlemiss and the former Coronation Street actress Wendi Peters in the finals. As usual, the challenges they face are fearsome. Feeding 90 members of the cast and crew of Ashes to Ashes is a doddle compared with preparing 60 elaborate canapés in 50 minutes. Tougher still is having to serve up a three-course charity dinner at the top of the BT Tower for diners who are forking out more than £200 each for the pleasure. After four solid hours of prepping fish, poor Jayne Middlemiss finally cracks under the pressure. But on each occasion the food they produce looks sensational — and this isn’t even their day job.

Taking the Flak

BBC Two, 9pm

There must have been a lot of wicked fun in the making of this series, which does for foreign correspondents what Drop the Dead Donkey did for a television newsroom. A senior foreign correspondent (Martin Jarvis) and his crew arrive in Africa to cover the outbreak of war. But the fighting is nowhere near as fierce as the rivalry between this grand old man of journalism, a young local stringer who resents having his thunder stolen, and a battered BBC World Service correspondent. Although much of the comedy is broad, it could have been written only by an insider and much of the jollity comes from sharing an in-joke. One of the writers was Tira Shubart, a producer and journalist who lived with John Simpson for ten years.

The Culture Show/The Richard Dimbleby Lecture

BBC Two, 7pm/BBC One, 10.35pm

The Culture Show reports from The Manchester International Festival, where the artist Jeremy Deller has spent months organising a procession down Deansgate combining art, music and protest politics. There’s an interview with Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk, a profile of the Young at Heart choir and new work from the dance superstar Carlos Acosta. And just as weaker souls are contemplating bed, the Prince of Wales will deliver the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture, which promises to “set out some of the serious challenges which the world faces and explore how they could be tackled”. BBC, dumbing down?

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