TV preview: Reporting Trump’s First Year, World’s Tiniest Masterpieces, First Night of the Proms and more

From artworks barely visible to the naked eye to the the jumbo jet’s 50th birthday, Sean O’Grady finds enough entertainment away from the you-know-what in Russia...

Art through the eye of a needle: the Mad Hatter’s tea party, by Willard Wigan (Channel 4)

“A fly flew past and blew a sculpture I was making away”. Yes, you read that right. A fly. The micro-sculptor, in case you’ve not come across him before, isn’t some wild fantasist but a chap by the name of Willard Wigan, and he is for real. He has to use a microscope to create his art, though still crafted by his own hand. You can judge the results for yourself, helpfully in enlarged form, in Channel 4’s World’s Tiniest Masterpieces. They live up to the billing as well, with one small enough to fit inside a human cell. I can’t even compute that.

They are so small that you can’t actually see them, and occasionally Wigan loses one if there’s the tiniest vibration or gust of air to carry them away. Plenty of variety too – poodles, chopper bikes, Wills’n’Kate, the Mad Hatter’s tea party – all the result of most amazing skill and dedication. They go for about £40,000 a piece and upwards.

In fact it is said that there are nano-sculptors out there who have to work in laboratory conditions to make art that cannot be seen by the naked eye. All impressive, fascinating, revelatory in its way, but I am left with one inescapable question: why?

Maybe one day Willard Wigan will be commissioned to sculpt some miniaturised tribute to the England squad, and obviously the World Cup will continue to deliver the kind of extraordinary drama that you’d have thought would have been scripted – penalty shootouts, last-kick goals, the new tension of the video assistant. It’s surely the best tournament in many years and not just because England have avoided humiliation. Anyway there is that, until the final on Sunday 15 July, plus yet more Wimbledon and the Tour de France to spoil sports fans, boost beer sales and reduce national productivity.

‘John Curry: The Ice King: John Curry’ (BBC/New Black Films/Christie Jenkins)

It’s hard, on the other hand, to escape the sport, but there are some alternatives, mostly documentaries. Apart from the excellent Channel 4 review of Willard Wigan, Channel 5 have a collated a little history of a big plane, as the jumbo jet (the Boeing 747) celebrates its half-century. Equally dramatic, albeit in a different way, is the rise and fall of Nokia, just one example of how the cycle of capitalistic creation and destruction of value is speeding up. If anyone ever says that big corporations have vast, unchallengeable market power then there is a one word answer – Nokia, which, if they’re young enough, they might not even have heard of.

It’s a bit presumptuous for me to call John Curry’s life “sad”, if only because no life is unrelievedly sad, and it’s a cliche, but it was certainly short and eventful. Curry was a household name back in the 1970s and 1980s, but now a less well remembered forerunner of Torvill and Dean as an international British ice skating sensation. He had everything – athleticism, youth, style, grace, timing, a clutch of world titles and medals, including a 1976 Olympic gold. He was also outed as gay by a German newspaper. Now, in the era of Pride, trans rights and equal marriage it is sometimes difficult to imagine a world where prejudice and hate were so routine that even a rumour about not being conventionally heterosexual could destroy a career and a life. It didn’t, immediately, in Curry’s case, but he died young, at the age of 44 in 1994. It is gratifying to see his name honoured once again in BBC4’s John Curry: The Ice King.

Even a natural curmudgeon, such as your correspondent, can’t begrudge Olivia Colman her go on Who Do You Think You Are? I mean, I’m not sure why I’m bothered about what Olivia’s great-nan used to do for a living or what her 18th-century ancestors died of, but I suppose the point about the show isn’t learning about people who are mostly dead and buried but rather discovering more about the subject of the show. Colman is already approaching national treasure status, and she is still only in her forties. I’d be surprised if any of the characters who turn up in her family tree can approach that achievement, but we shall see.

‘Reporting Trump’s First Year – The Fourth Estate’ features the New York Times newsroom (BBC/Doug Mills/The New York Times/Wazee Digital)

The end of the week sees another of the great traditions of a British summer start – the first night of the Proms, on Friday, kicking off eight weeks of music. Even longer than the World Cup, then.

Last, I can warmly recommend some other outstanding factual shows that are still running strongly. Louis Gates’ enthralling Africa’s Great Civilisations is the best bit of telly history I’ve encountered in some time. Reporting Trump’s First Year follows the work of the New York Times newsroom in dealing with the force of nature that is Donald Trump – and a destructive one for them, at that. Which leaves me just enough time to mention perhaps the long-running Horizon’s barmiest effort ever – How to Build a Time Machine. After all, I thought Doctor Who had done that in 1963. Maybe the Doctor already knows who’s won the 2018 World Cup. But if he told us, then that would mess up all our fun, wouldn’t it?

The World’s Tiniest Masterpieces (Channel 4, Sunday 10.10pm); Fifa 2018 World Cup (BBC1/ITV Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday); Tour de France (ITV4/Eursport, Saturday 9.30am); Jumbo Jet; 50 Years in the Sky (Channel 5, Monday 9pm); The Rise and Fall of Nokia (BBC4, Tuesday 9pm); John Curry: The Ice King (BBC4, Monday 10pm); Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC1, Monday 9pm); First Night of the Proms (BBC2, Friday 8.30pm); Africa’s Great Civilisations (BBC4, Tuesday 10pm); Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate (BBC2, Tuesday 11.15pm); Horizon: How to Build a Time Machine (BBC2, Tuesday 9pm)