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The TV shows to watch this week: From Strictly Come Dancing to the Rugby World Cup

BBC
BBC

Ah yes, it’s that time of year. Nights drawing in, a chill in the air. I’m no poet, as you can tell, but I thought it a good moment to recall Keats’s famous romantic ode:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

And Strictly is back! Yes, you really know autumn is upon you when Strictly Come Dancing hoofs its way back onto the screens, and it is, obviously, the popular television highlight of this or any other week.

I am delighted to say that, scanning the photograph of the 15 fresh celebrities recruited to brighten our ever-darkening Saturday evenings, I was only able to positively identify one, a personal best for me. Anneka Rice, a talented presenter and journalist whose fame, it is fair to say, peaked some years ago, was the sole point of recognition. A couple of the names were familiar – James Cracknell, David James and Mike Bushell – but the rest I drew a blank on. Some, such as “Michelle Visage”, and “Viscountess Emma Weymouth” sound like the sort of theatrical “personalities” that used to crop up in Toast of London, but no, they really are real, or as real as it gets these days.

There’s been some controversy about political correctness of Strictly, but for those of us who don’t really care about the genital endowments of whoever’s dancing with whomever, that will not put us off from avoiding the sequinned farce it at all costs. There’s a documentary about chocolate over on Channel 5, and there’s bound to be some nice music on Radio 3 or Classic FM you can turn to instead, or, if you insist, a bit of cha-cha-cha on Radio 2.

Peak viewing: Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby (BBC)
Peak viewing: Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby (BBC)

The fifth series of Peaky Blinders draws not very peacefully to its close this week, and a multi-faceted achievement it has been. It has rehabilitated the flat cap, or bunnet as they call it charmingly in Scotland; made Birmingham sexy, or sexier; and reminded us all that there is more to Britain in the first third of the 20th century than Downton Abbey, and that thuggery and bladed weapons have been around or longer than is sometimes assumed. Anyway, Tommy (Cillian Murphy) and the Shelbys are off for now, and will no doubt return next year, having disposed of Sir Oswald Mosley in a way the real world failed to do.

Medicine man: Martin Clunes returns for a ninth series as Dr Martin Ellingham (ITV)
Medicine man: Martin Clunes returns for a ninth series as Dr Martin Ellingham (ITV)

Apparently, Martin Clunes has been mobbed on holiday in South Korea or Malawi or somewhere, such is the global success of Doc Martin. Well, you can see why. Clunes himself is the second nicest man in Britain, only slightly less lovely than Michael Palin, and the show is beautifully photographed – Cornwall, of course – and has a photogenic dog at the heart of the action, such as it is. The grumpiness of the Doc in question is, we all know, only skin deep, because there’s that nice Martin behind it all, and anyway, being grumpy is not the same as being nasty (or so I tell myself; qv John Humphrys).

The only thing wrong with it is that it will encourage even more grockles to go and buy property in the duchy, pushing the locals out and turning the place into even more of a weekend dorm for the Notting Hill set.

Brief encounter: Katherine Parkinson and Will Sharpe (BBC)
Brief encounter: Katherine Parkinson and Will Sharpe (BBC)

The brilliant Motherland will be back soon, I can assure you, and as finely timed a comedy as you could wish for. Meantime, for the laughs we all so desperately need, there is the excellent Defending the Guilty. They shouldn’t have lumbered it with such a portentous sounding title, as it makes it sound like a TV version of Law in Action or some new Scandi noir series, whereas it is just very funny. It’s about incompetent barristers, which just proves that you can mine humour from even the most unpromising of seams, but of course, like so many other sitcoms, it is really focused on human failure, aspiration and thwarted ambition. Written by Kieron Quirke, it stars Katherine Parkinson, Will Sharpe and Gwyneth Keyworth, and they make an effective team. Expect to hear much more about this one.

Last, in case you’d not noticed, the Rugby World Cup will be dominating ITV’s schedules for a while, and the tournament, while nowhere near as cosmopolitan as its association football counterpart, has a convincing international flavour, and less chance of the spectators being glassed and the players racially abused. New Zealand v South Africa is the heavyweight clash on Saturday, while it’s an early start on Sunday for Italy v Namibia, followed by Ireland v Scotland and England v Tonga.

Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1, Sunday 7pm); Peaky Blinders (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Doc Martin (ITV, Wednesday 9pm); Defending the Guilty (BBC2, Tuesday 10pm); Rugby World Cup (ITV, Saturday and Sunday from 5.45am)