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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Hollie Richardson, Jack Seale and Simon Wardell

TV tonight: confronting the anti-vaxxers in Africa

Huge hesitancy … Unreported World: The Anti-Vaxx Preachers.
Huge hesitancy … Unreported World: The Anti-Vaxx Preachers. Photograph: Channel 4

Unreported World: The Anti-Vaxx Preachers

7.30pm, Channel 4

About 132m Covid vaccinations were administered across the UK in 2021 alone, but this documentary reports that just 200,000 people are now fully vaccinated in South Sudan. In fact, most people in Africa haven’t even had one jab. Investigative journalist Seyi Rhodes asks why. Money is an obvious answer, but there is also huge hesitancy about the vaccine, with some people thinking it is deadly – including the influential local preacher using anti-vaxx propaganda that Rhodes confronts as part of his investigation. Hollie Richardson

Inside Culture With Mary Beard

7.30pm, BBC Two

The last in the current series sees Beard ending things on a high, with the Booker prize-nominated novelist Elif Shafak as her guest. Unpicking themes of belonging, identity, equality and freedom of speech, Shafak tells all about her life. HR

Grayson’s Art Club

8pm, Channel 4

It is a good week on screen for the Perrys, as Philippa returns with her husband Grayson to celebrate the heroes and heroines theme with his national art club. Jo Brand mucks in and gets creative, while comic book artist Frank Quitely shares what makes a hero in art. HR

Grantchester

9pm, ITV

Lending an ear … Tessa Peake-Jones as Mrs C and Al Weaver as Leonard.
Lending an ear … Tessa Peake-Jones as Mrs C and Al Weaver as Leonard. Photograph: Zoe Midford/ITV

University challenged: after a string of homeless people are murdered, gruff detective Geordie suspects a Cambridge student who had befriended them. The only problem? The student in question has just disappeared. Meanwhile, Leonard lends an ear to Mrs C, whose cancer diagnosis has her questioning God and berating children in church pews. HR

Drugsland: Going Country

9.05pm, BBC Three

This two-part, multi-perspective film shows the reality of county lines drug dealing, which is leading to extreme gang violence in rural towns and on country lanes. The first episode focuses on Devon police, who are called to a stabbing on a remote A-road, only for the investigation to lead to a drug-dealing network with links to Liverpool. It also speaks with the users and addicts involved. HR

Not Going Out

9.30pm, BBC One

Lee Mack’s dependable comedy starts season 12 with that old sitcom staple: someone (Wendy, played by Deborah Grant) has done a terrible painting, but nobody can face telling her. Light farce ensues, elevated by Geoffrey Whitehead as Lee’s terrifically-dry father-in-law. Jack Seale

Film choices

A woman on the verge … Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer.
A woman on the verge … Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer. Photograph: Pablo Larraín/AP

Spencer (Pablo Larraín, 2021), Amazon Prime Video
Pablo Larraín revisits similar terrain to his 2016 film about Jackie Kennedy with this intimate drama focusing on Diana, Princess of Wales, another iconic figure beset by tragedy. Gamely and unnervingly impersonated by Kristen Stewart, Diana is a woman on the verge. Duty-bound to attend a royal family Christmas at Sandringham in 1991, she rebels against her sterile marriage and suffocating public role. Despair soon leads to physical and mental disintegration. In a way, Diana was badly cast as a princess and Larraín makes us empathise with her stage fright – she can’t remember her lines, the costumes don’t fit and her audience is brutally unforgiving. Simon Wardell

County Lines (Henry Blake, 2019), 10pm, BBC Three
A tough British drama that delves deeper into the headline-grabbing stories of city kids being sent to rural areas to deal drugs. Conrad Khan is excellent as the withdrawn, inarticulate 14-year-old Tyler, lured into criminality when his single mum Toni (the equally convincing Ashley Madekwe) loses her job. His descent into a life even more troubling than the one he is fleeing is given the social realist treatment by director Henry Blake, emphasising how easily young people like Tyler – who have few options and a lack of support – can be groomed. SW

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