Telly Today: anniversaries, psychopaths and babies

Today’s telly top picks with ATV Today Editor Doug Lambert.

Tuesday and following the bank holiday its business as usual. Up in Scotland STV are marking a broadcasting milestone,Channel 4 get baking while the beeb look into psychopaths.

STV tonight at 7.30pm celebrate six decades of Scottish Television. It was August 31st 1957 when the Independent Television broadcaster for Scotland first went to air.

The launch programme This Is Scotland – a variety special – was broadcast live from The Theatre Royal in Glasgow and since that early start STV has continued to entertain and inform, growing from a small TV company to Scotland’s leading digital business brand. Iconic shows produced by Scottish Television include crime drama Taggart, soap opera High Road, game show Wheel of Fortune and children’s series Fun House.

Angus Simpson at 7.30pm presents a special episode of The People’s History Show: celebrating 60 years of STV with interviews and archive clips spanning 60 years of broadcasting in Scotland. Guests include Carol Smillie.

ITV bring another programme marking the 20th anniversary since the passing of Princess Diana in The Day Britain Cried.

“In its intensity, in its emotion, in everything that it meant, in everything that it symbolized, in the way it captured the nation – I’m not sure anything else would ever surpass that.” – Sir Trevor McDonald
This one off documentary at 8pm focuses on a defining moment in the British consciousness – the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales – and tells the story of the day through the memories of those who played a part in it, many of whom are speaking for the first time. Marking 20 years since the funeral on September 6th, 1997, the documentary provides a minute-by-minute account of what went into a day when a million people lined the streets of London, while more than 30 million watched on British television and 2.5 billion around the world.
 
Narrated  by  Kate  Winslet,  this  film  tells  the  story  of  that  day from   the   chime   of   the   tenor   bell   marking   Diana’s   departure   from Kensington Palace on a lonely gun carriage to the remarkable journey of the  hearse along a deserted motorway to her final resting place at her family home of Althorp.  
 
Those  interviewed include Sir Malcolm Ross, the  senior Buckingham Palace courtier who was responsible for the planning  and execution of the funeral in just five days; Captain Richard Williams, the chief pallbearer; Martin Neary, the musical director of Westminster Abbey; Graham Craker, Prince William and Prince Harry’s former Royal Protection Officer; Lisa  Webb, who arranged the  floral tributes from the two young princes for their mother’s coffin; as well as reporters, police and some of the people who joined the crowds. Their  extraordinary  testimonies  are  illustrated  with  archive  footage  from  the  time, some of which has never been seen before.

Channel 4 tonight airs the first in their version of The Great British Bake Off, 8pm. Over the next 10 weeks, 12 of the best amateur bakers in Britain will whisk, knead, ice, beat and bake their way through classic British cakes, perfect patisserie, Italian delights, sticky caramel constructions and elaborate layered puddings. All 12 will be hoping to impress with their skill, creativity, knowledge and passion to clinch the Bake Off Crown.

Each of the 30 new challenges have been carefully designed by judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith to reveal just who is a star baker. But it’s not just a new experience for the bakers. Also joining the tent for the first time are Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding, who will be with the bakers every step of the way, ready with a pertinent pep talk, a helpful hand or just a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. The Bake Off begins with Cake Week, and sees the bakers take on a fruity signature challenge. Next, Prue sets her first technical – a children’s tea party favourite – and everyone is out to impress the new judge.

And for their final challenge comes the trickiest showstopper ever set in the first week of Bake Off: an illusion cake. Creating these mind-blowing illusion cakes will test their baking and design skills to the limit. Paul and Prue want to see what the bakers – and their cakes – are made of. One tent, 12 new bakers and 30 new challenges.

BBC Two asks What Makes A Psychopath? in this Horizon special at 9pm. Psychopaths have long captured the public imagination. Painted as charismatic, violent predators lacking in all empathy, they provide intrigue and horror in equal measure. But what precisely is a psychopath? What is it that drives them to cause harm, even kill? And can they ever be cured?

Presented by psychologist Professor Uta Frith, this is an in-depth exploration of the psychopathic mind – including one of the most notorious of all, the moors murderer Ian Brady.

Through an on-going correspondence between the Horizon team and Brady, the film features some of the very last letters he wrote. The film also features a series of candid interviews with prison inmates who not only describe their crimes but why they think they committed them.

Horizon explores not only how each individual’s crimes were shaped by their own life experiences, but also giving an insight in to how these people think and behave.

Working with the world’s experts in the field, the film sheds light on the biological, psychological and environmental influences that shape a psychopath. The programme also looks to the future, taking in groundbreaking research that suggests a life time of incarceration is not the only option to manage violent and dangerous psychopaths.

Channel 5 if you’re up late and have any interest in the Royal Family, brings viewers Royal Babies at midnight. This one-off documentary looks at how society and the media will affect the upbringing of Prince George in the years to come.

The film explores how royal babies have been brought up in the past, and how the royals’ approach to parenthood has changed with the times.

STV is celebrating six decades on air tonight at 7.30pm