The TV shows to watch this week: From Chris Tarrant to War of the Worlds

If poverty-stricken Britain is not your idea of TV entertainment, Sean O'Grady finds plenty of escapism in the shape of Martian invasions, Viennese whirls and Transylvanian rail journeys

Mars attacks: Amy (Eleanor Tomlinson) and George (Rafe Spall) in ‘War of the Worlds’ (BBC)

There was a time when British television bosses were extremely sensitive to the dangers of appearing to be partisan, even obliquely, during a general election. In 1979, for example, the BBC cancelled a screening of the Boulting brothers’ classic satire on strikes and industrial relations, I’m All Right Jack. Even though it was made in 1959, it was still sufficiently topical that it was fared the portrayal of greedy trade unionists and venal bosses would skew the campaign in some way, especially as those very issues were central to the political debate. Peter Sellers did some of his best work in it, by the way, as the McCluskey-esque shop steward Fred Kite.

More tangentially the BBC cancelled the sixth series of The Apprentice that was due to be screened during the 2010 contest, because Alan Sugar had links to the government (he was Labour then), and there was a “risk to impartiality”.

I only mention this because Channel 4 are going to broadcast Growing Up Poor – Britain’s Breadline Kids, which is a searing documentary on the state of child poverty in contemporary Britain, told through three families struggling to get by. I suppose you might call that socialist propaganda, if you were minded to, but that does rather beg the question of why the incidence of child poverty is supposed to be something that is negative for the current Conservative government, and positive for the opposition parties. The again, the head of news at Channel 4 did call Boris Johnson a liar, but I’ll not dwell on that.

Courtney, 8 and brother NJ, 5, feature in ‘Growing Up Poor – Britain’s Breadline Kids’ (Channel 4)

I suppose you could see it as an act of televisual penance, that’s on behalf of the whole industry, following the 2014 special seasonal edition of Can’t Pay We’ll Take It Away, which featured, for our entertainment, an eviction on Christmas Eve; and of course the execrable exercise in poverty-shaming, Benefits Street.

In fact you could, if you wanted, portray a number of next week’s shows as potentially a “risk to impartiality”. The BBC news, for example, if you believe what people say on Twitter about Laura Kuenssberg; but of course there you’d be wrong. It seems self-evident to me that being attacked by every political party with the exception of Lord Buckethead and his Gremloids grouping does show that the broadcasters are exercising their right to be biased in favour of fact and truth. So the independent BBC, ITN and Sky News are doing a fine job in the circumstances, cutting through the nonsenses, and worse, on social media and the thinly disguised propaganda that passes for coverage in most of the press. I do wonder, though, how long they’ll be permitted to exercise that journalistic freedom, whoever gets in, as the 2020s drag on.

I should mention that Lord Buckethead’s signature policy is to have a referendum on whether or not to have another Brexit referendum, which seems entirely sensible to me.

Max (Matthew Beard) and Oskar (Jürgen Maurer) team up in ‘Vienna Blood’ (BBC)

Among many things, Vienna Blood is a reminder, funnily enough that entire political structures and even big multiracial empires can come and go... and what horrors may in due course follow. Set in the then capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, circa 1905, this is a superb adaption of the Liebermann novels of Frank Tallis. An Austro-British production, and filmed extensively in unspoilt Vienna, it captures the grandeur, decadence and intellectual and artistic ferment that characterised the centre of Belle Époque Europe – Einstein, Wittgenstein, Mahler, Klimt, Freud… and you get the occasional cameo of them thrown in too.

It’s basically a detective period drama with bits of the Cumberbatch-era Sherlock thrown in, no surprise given the producer is one of the creative talents behind that recent revival – Steve Thompson. Matthew Beard is subtly rendered as the young medical student Max Liebermann, teamed with the less nuanced gruff grumpy cop Oskar Rheinhardt (Jürgen Maurer). They’ve done three long episodes, and we really do need some more.

As we do hedgehogs. Who could argue with that? With Save the Hedgehogs for Help the Animals, Channel 5 spends some of its Monday evening telling us just how rough (pun intended) things are for the little things, what with intensive farming, pesticides and road traffic squashing them towards extinction. Well, not quite, but we can all do our bit to try and make them more at home in our gardens. Boycie from Only Fools and Horses (John Challis) is the hedgehog whisperer for this part of the channel’s Help the Animals campaign.

Chris Tarrant takes us across Romania on ‘Extreme Train Journeys’ (Channel 5)

I’m not quite sure I’ll ever get over the shock to good taste and decency that was Hitler’s Holocaust Railways with Chris Tarrant, broadcast – yes, really – just over a year ago. He’s back on the rails now, so to speak, wandering around Transylvania, a passion he shares, I think, with the Prince of Wales (no euphemism meant, by the way). Anyway Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys is the usual round-up of Romanian clichés, from Dracula to Ceausescu. Still, better than a repeat of last year’s effort, eh?

War of the Worlds is the sort of drama that ought to make no sense at all, but does. HG Wells’s tale has been given many a memorable treatment, including the glorious 1938 Orson Welles radio script that was so realistic that America really did believe it was being invaded by hostile deadly alien forces. (Although that does seem to be a notion they are unusually susceptible to). The BBC version is cinematographic in its ambitions, and is blessed by the talents of Eleanor Tomlinson and Rafe Spall as the lead characters Amy and George.

By contrast, Britannia is the sort of drama that ought to make some sort of sense – being based on historical reality rather than science fiction – but sadly doesn’t. Convoluted storylines, gratuitous violence and unbelievable characters vie to undermine this oddest of dramas. Set in Roman times, it spends an awful lot of its own time roaming around without getting to a point.

Enjoy.

Growing Up Poor – Britain’s Breadline Kids (Channel 4, Monday 10pm); Save the Hedgehogs for Help the Animals (Channel 5, Monday 8pm); Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railway Journeys (Channel 5, Monday 9pm); War of the Worlds (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Britannia (Sky Atlantic, Thursday 9pm)