The British, SBS One, 7.30pm

As someone who has studied English medieval and renaissance history, I was excited to review this series on the past 2000 years of British history. That excitement died once I started watching.This episode explores the terrifying and revolutionary Tudor era, followed by the bloody Stuart monarchs, whose incompetent rulers led England to civil war.Various British celebrities add their two cents, including Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley, which distracts rather than adds to what’s going on.The 16th and 17th centuries are among the most  drama-filled periods in history – religious reformation, the birth of the printing press, Shakespeare and civil war – and yet this series has  managed  to make them seem boring.  If Queen Mary I was watching, she’d surely have the producers burnt at the stake.

Frisky Business, SBS2, 9.20pm 

Anything with the word ‘‘frisky’’ in the title has my attention and this documentary on one of the world’s largest sex toy businesses certainly doesn’t disappoint.Cameras follow the ins and outs of Lovehoney, the Bath business that receives more than 3000 orders daily from across the world for items that excite, titillate and, er, stretch the imagination.Devoid of smut, this informative series shines a light on humanity’s most basic desire in a  non-judgmental way. Lovehoney’s staff are as amused as viewers as to what they do for a living, with the returns department particularly delightful when they read aloud customers’ reasons for returning (sometimes used) products. The narration is perfectly British, voicing the equivalent of having a poker face. Her tone is that as if she’s talking about a stapler, especially when every fourth word is about phallus-shaped items.

The Project, Ten, 6.30pm

There are two types of people in Australia: those that enjoy The Project’s cheeky take on news and entertainment and those that think it’s putrid drivel. I belong in the first camp and why not? The mixture of news, entertainment and water-cooler topics is a good alternative to the ‘‘straight’’ news. The rotating call of hosts works, with Waleed Aly a standout.Co-host Carrie Bickmore   possesses the rare combination of being professional and having a wicked wit.  In a TV landscape  lacking a variety or late night show, this  offering helps fill the gaps.

Alana Schetzer

PAY TV

Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life, BBC First, 8.30pm

Steve Coogan has been on a  roll in recent years – The Trip, The Trip to Italy, Philomena and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa have all been real delights. In between those triumphs  Coogan found  time to make this sublime special. It takes the form of a low-budget chamber-of-commerce video in which Coogan’s greatest character, the  arrogant and insecure broadcaster Alan Partridge, is  paid to advertise his home county of Norfolk. Ill-conceived and shoddily edited, the video gives Partridge free rein to embarrass himself and the entire county, from his studio at a low-rating digital radio station to the Norwich Town Hall. That latter landmark, Partridge reminds us, was opened in 1938 by King George VI, ‘‘the stammering monarch made famous by hit movie The King’s Speech’’. The writing is as brilliant as Partridge is buffoonish, deftly skewering media conventions and the Little Englander mindset.

Vera, 13th Street, 8.30pm

DCI Vera Stanhope (Brenda Blethyn) comes across as a kindly yet testy grandmother, always calling people ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘pet’’, but only ever a moment away from giving  underlings an earful. Tonight’s murder mystery is a typically good one.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Entrapment (1999), Gem, 8.45pm

Ever since the appearances of A. J. Raffles (1898), Arsene Lupin (1905) and Fantomas (1911), thieves have been tremendously popular heroes of mass culture. Detectives may solve the crimes and generate most of the attention, but there is an undeniably delicious thrill in reading about someone getting away with theloot. For a long time, however, criminals were not allowed to be celebrated in cinema, censors and other moral guardians insisting that they be brought to justice and punished before the end credits.In Entrapment, Sean Connery plays Robert MacDougall, the world’s most charming Scottish crook (as opposed to its most famous secret agent). He lives in an idyllic castle beside an idyllic loch, surrounded by the most precious of objects, but with no romantic companion. This may be the Achilles heel that thief Virginia Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones) can exploit to get close to him.Entrapment is renowned for two sequences. One is where Virginia practises her craft in a black catsuit, which is widely considered to be greatly erotic, but is spoiled for some by an ill-fitting garment that rucks in most unsightly ways. The other is a robbery at the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which can be a tough ask of viewers suffering from vertigo, despite the overuse of CGI.Directed at a brisk pace by Jon Amiel, with charismatic stars who work beautifully together, this is an inconsequential but fun heistmovie.

House of Pleasures (2011), SBS One, 11pm

Paying for sex may soon be illegal in France (the Senate is still deciding), but a fascination with prostitution as drama on television (Maison Close) and the big screen (Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures) continues unabated. The latter is, at first glance, a pretty and nostalgic trip back to an early-20th-century brothel in Paris. But dark themes emerge, and the issue of whether women should be free to ply this most ancient of trades is left unresolved.

Scott Murray