Great British Railway Journeys
7.30pm, SBS
In his seemingly endless exploration of Britain's railway networks (tonight's episodes are only the halfway point of season six!), Michael Portillo and his trusty 1913 guidebook travel from Derby in the Midlands, where the industrial revolution began, to the island of Lindisfarne – over two episodes, no less, examining the effects the railways had on Britain's industrial, social and architectural history. Along the way he visits the first site of Boots, the now mega-chemist chain (which was already the Chemist Warehouse of its day by 1914), stops at Newstead Abbey, former home of Lord Byron (Byron's touching monument to his dog is something else) and on to Grantham, birthplace of two of the most British icons ever – Bramley apples and Margaret Thatcher. KN
pay Death in Paradise
Friday, BBC First, 8.30pm
It's surprising that this daggy little police procedural can pull upwards of 9 million viewers in Britain – even when you take into account the appeal of the sunny Caribbean setting and the fact that the self-recapping scripts are tailored to viewers distracted by smartphones and whatnot. Anyway, down on the fictional island of Saint Marie, British detective inspector Humphrey Goodman – a kind of tranquilised Hugh Grant figure in a rumpled linen jacket – finds himself investigating the curious murder of a charter-boat skipper. When suspicion falls on a bunch of London bankers who are already back in Blighty, Goodman (Kris Marshall) and his local colleagues jump on the next plane. Their Scotland Yard liaison (guest star Ardal O'Hanlon) is an unnecessarily eccentric Irishman, but this two-part episode does have an intriguing sub-plot involving Dwayne (Danny John-Jules) looking for relatives who left the Caribbean for London back in the '60s. BN
![Ellar Coltrane in the coming-of-age story <i>Boyhood</i>.](/web/20170125053201im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/1/2/n/v/l/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gty5j4.png/1485315672043.jpg)
movie Boyhood (2014)
SBS, 8.40pm
A coming-of-age story that unfolds like extended time-lapse photography, Richard Linklater's episodic film was shot regularly over a 12-year period starting in 2002, allowing the cast to age with their roles. The focus is Mason Evans jnr (Ellar Coltrane), who goes from the age of six to 18 over the course of the narrative, and as his view of the world changes so does the focus of the film and the mechanics of Linklater's filmmaking. Having compressed time with the Before trilogy, which spends a concentrated day with its central couple many years apart, the writer-director expands it here; as Mason matures so does his father, Mason snr (Ethan Hawke), while his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), bears the weight of raising two children and a pair of eventually bad long-term relationships. Turning points quietly accrue, and you see one life taking shape as another narrows. CM
movie Unfaithful (2002)
Romance Movies (pay TV), 10.25pm
Fifteen years on from Fatal Attraction, English filmmaker Adrian Lyne returned to marital infidelity with a thankfully more nuanced viewpoint. Here it is the wife, Connie Sumner (Diane Lane), who strays, although the opening scenes do not offer an easy explanation as to why. She is happily married to Edward (Richard Gere), a successful businessman, and they live with their eight-year-old son in the suburbs of New York. On a trip into Manhattan she collides, literally, with Paul (Olivier Martinez), a French expatriate and book dealer. She initially rebuffs his flirtations, but the memory lingers and Connie returns, beginning an affair. Lyne asks a great deal of Lane and Gere. He wants to tell the story through their faces, the way they look at each other – or look away – the stiffening of their body language, the pauses in their answers, the acknowledged deceptions. They both meet the challenge. CM