TV Preview: Come Home (BBC1 Tuesday, 9pm): A worthy vehicle for Eccleston

Coming up on the box: an acting great finds his voice and terrestrial telly covers the nation’s (arguably hopeless) pursuit of sporting excellence

Christopher Eccleston appears in the promising new BBC drama on Tuesday

Christopher Eccleston, experienced and established as one of our great actors (that’s a couple of rungs down from the knighthood and “national treasure” status) complained recently that his northern accent had held him back in his career. I’ve not doubt it did, but he seems to have overcome whatever drag it put on his work. He is currently enjoying some favourable comment for his Macbeth at Stratford (though the production isn’t) and he appears in a promising new BBC drama Come Home on Tuesday nights for the next three weeks.

It’s a role that fits Eccleston well – a car mechanic, Greg, whose wife walks out on him and three children, after 19 years of marriage. It’s not the usual story (ie of the man leaving the woman and the kids to fend for themselves) and you’re invited to listen to all sides of the story from their different viewpoints. It invites the viewer not to take sides but to sympathise and criticise each of the “players”. A worthy vehicle for Eccleston, and Paula Malcomson, who plays his spouse, Marie. Written and created by Danny Brocklehurst, who also has an outstanding track record (The Driver, Ordinary Lies, Clocking Off, Shameless, Accused, The Stretford Wives, In the Dark and Sorted). It even tackles the extremely sensitive subject of middle-aged internet dating. Not an easy watch, then.

Later-life love also sort of blossoms in the last episode in the series of Mum, starring Lesley Manville as Cathy, a 60-year-old and Peter Mullan as Michael, her will-he-won’t-he? suitor. However, as with most of the previous five instalments the show is stolen once again by Pauline (Cathy’s sister-in-law played by Dorothy Atkinson), a snob of such grotesque proportions as to outdo Hyacinth Bucket. A fine comedy of modern manners by Stefan Golaszewski. Highly recommended. It is better than Hold the Sunset, where John Cleese and Alison Steadman do their very best with a script that lacks even the gentle pace of Mum.

Did you know (code for I didn’t but ought to) that our famous cathedrals receive no state aid and not that much from the Church of England either? Grand, famous and magnificent as they are, and even with the Almighty on side, they really need a bit of PR. Praise be, then, to Channel 5 and Tony Robinson (who never struck me as a God-botherer) for bringing us Britain’s Great Cathedrals with Tony Robinson. Expertly scheduled for Good Friday, Robinson meets the men and women fighting to keep York Minster, the first of the six medieval masterpieces he explores. Let’s hope he has a cunning plan for them.

The McGregor brothers are flying high on BBC1 (Lion Television)

The flyboys are up in the crates on Sunday night – specifically Ewan McGregor (well-known actor) and Colin McGregor (not well-known fighter pilot), who celebrate the centenary of the Royal Air Force. Of course as any schoolboy knows, the RAF was what we would now call a “rebranding merger” of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service, which dated back a little further. Remarkable, is it not, how rapidly we got from the first powered flights at the turn of the century to flying machines as weapons of war (1914). A hundred years on, the anniversary (1 April, of all days) presents another opportunity to thank The Few, and recognise the bravery and skill of the even fewer looking to secure the security of our skies.

Given everything about Russia right now it is hardly surprising that powerful “coincidental” storylines should crop up in a drama such as Homeland, and indeed so things have proved. This week, US national security adviser Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) has to tackle “active measures” by Russian agents on American soil. OK, it’s not Salisbury, but it can only be a matter of time before the FSB echoes fiction by going after some American target. If only Putin were a fictional creation.

Clare Balding of Newnham College, Cambridge, returns as your host for the Boat Races (Clare Balding (Newnham, Cambridge) is your host for The Boat Races)

Though I hesitate to classify the Oxbridge Boat Races as “sport” (in truth it’s main function seems to be to serve as an opportunity for anyone who’s been there to “lightly” drop it into conversation), it is certainly a national event. Usually it ranks with the clocks going forward and the Grand National (14 April this year) as one of the “rites of spring”, ushering in longer, lighter days and warmer weather. Could this be the year when snow interrupts the proceedings? More conventionally, and with much more riding on it, the England team face Italy who, we may as well remind ourselves, actually failed to qualify for the World Cup (for the first time since 1958). So an interesting sort of friendly and you can watch it all for free in the comfort of your own home on ITV on Tuesday night. After that you can watch manager Gareth Southgate being ritually slaughtered on all channels for the rest of the week.

Finally, at the risk of being repetitive, I’d advise anyone to catch This Country and Soft Border Patrol, two fine mockumentaries that deserve all their success and more. I guarantee you never knew rural deprivation and Brexit could be so funny. Plenty of material to be enjoyed on the BBC iPlayer.

Mum (BBC2, Tuesday 10pm); Hold the Sunset (BBC1, Sunday 7.30pm); Britian’s Great Cathedrals with Tony Robinson (Channel 5, Good Friday 9pm); RAF at 100 with Ewan and Colin McGregor (BBC1, Sunday 8.30pm); Homeland (Channel 4, Sunday 9pm); The Boat Races (BBC1, Saturday 3.50pm); International Football (ITV, Tuesday 7.30pm); This Country (BBC1, Tuesday 10.45pm/BBC iPlayer); Soft Border Patrol (BBC iPlayer)