TV preview, Bear's Mission with Warwick Davis: Climb for a laugh

We know, you want to watch the World Cup, as does Sean O’Grady. But he did manage to find some other things worth exploring in the week ahead

Davis (left) gets put through some gruelling physical challenges by Bear Grylls on the hills of the Lake District (Betty TV)

It goes without saying, but that won’t stop me saying it, that the TV highlights of next week are the World Cup matches, and especially those involving the England team, or “three lions” as they seem to be known at the moment.

Just for a change (a 12-year, three-tournament record, in fact) England actually won their first tournament game against Tunisia, and hopes are running high (absurd, I know) for their two remaining group matches – Panama and Belgium. It will either be one of the best England performances or, if drawn with or defeated by these two very different teams, a national (well, English) humiliation. Could football be coming home just when we’ve given up on it?

As stunts go, I suppose teaming Warwick Davis, stout of heart, small of stature, with Bear Grylls, big all-round, was sort of original, in Bear’s Mission with Warwick Davis. As far as I can see, the proceedings consist mostly of poor little Warwick being put through a variety of gruelling physical challenges to scale some of the hillier bits of the lovely Lake District. So we find him struggling with a map as big as he is; being propelled down some zip wires; and gamely clambering up a rock face.

I suppose if there is a serious point here, it is that the differently abled needn’t be dismissed by the able-bodied, nor indeed dismiss themselves from doing exciting things just because of their own different abilities. On the other hand, we seem to be invited to just laugh at the wee fellow.

Anyway you have to admire Davis’s sheer determination. In the brilliant Ricky Gervais-Stephen Merchant comedy he starred in a few years ago, Life’s Too Short, he played an incompetent impresario who ran a theatrical agency for littler people, and described himself, in character, as “Britain’s go-to dwarf”. Who now can be in any doubt that your actual Warwick Davis now qualifies as precisely that?

The Big Narstie Show: the new Graham Norton? We shall see (Channel 4)

I’m in a poor position to recommend The Big Narstie Show, but I will merely suggest that this apparently talented rapper who doesn’t take himself too seriously (a mercy) might be worth catching up with. I am told he is a member of a “grime crew” (musical rather than kitchen or oven cleaning based) and is the brave new comedic face of Channel 4. I wish him well as a worthy challenger to the Friday evening chat hegemony exercised by Graham Norton.

Next to Inside the American Embassy, and are you not astonished that the US State Department let Channel 4 anywhere near the inside of its building in London? Yet, like most things to do to with the Trump administration, wonders never cease.

The man Washington has sent over to represent its interests at the Court of St James is Robert “Woody” Johnson, a Trumpesque businessman himself who tells the cameras that he his raising his two sons “just like Donald Trump – without the hair”. Diplomatically, perhaps, or out of plain ignorance, he also takes the minority view that Brexit is not “a major challenge”, and urges the British to take some inspiration from President Trump. Well, maybe we shall have to. As I say, remarkable access.

A slightly more routine treatment is offered by BBC2, Reporting Trump’s First Year: the Fourth Estate, following the newsroom of The New York Times as it grapples with a president who detests them, and they he, and a White House perfectly happy to bully and attack journalists at every opportunity.

Not that we mind that much. We’re thick-skinned in this trade. Let’s be honest here, Trump both appalled the world’s liberal media and also provided them with an extraordinary commercial windfall in the form of the vast traffic and audiences he commanded across every possible outlet – web, social media, TV, radio, print and pub chat. He’s been good for columnists at a loose end, good for the keyboard warriors, good for the ’bots on social media, good for argument and debate, good because, in a sense, he threatened a world war and then threatened a world peace, then a trade war, then a summit with Kim Jong-un... I’ll admit I’d be tempted to vote for Trump just to thank him for the boost he’s given us.

Bank on this: Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse provide a bit of gentle telly (BBC)

It’s not quite the 70th birthday of the NHS next week (the actual anniversary is 5 July), but the schedules are almost as full of stuff from hospitals, clinics and the back of ambulances as they are stuffed with international football matches from Russia. We all have our tear-jerking stories of gratitude for the NHS (and the odd tale of horror), but even the greatest fan of the National Health Service might find sitting through the three-and-a-half hours of shows lined up on BBC2 for Tuesday night – a mere slice of the blanket coverage – a bit, well, cloying. Frankly, some of us are getting bored to death with the NHS stuff already, no disrespect.

I’d quite like to see someone slag off the NHS, the nearest thing the British have to a religion these days, arguing for privatisation and a return to charitable giving as a basis for health care. Anyone fancy that? You’d still get free treatment on the NHS after you’ve been lynched.

Last, what you might call “slow TV” – Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. If you’d like to listen to two old blokes carping about life, then you have opportunity to land a couple of very big fish on Wednesday evenings. Thank you. I’m here all week.

World Cup Football, England v Panama (BBC1, Sunday 12.10pm); World Cup Football, England v Belgium (ITV, Friday 6.15pm); Bear’s Mission with Warwick Davis (ITV, Tuesday 9pm); The Big Narstie Show (Channel 4, Friday 11.05pm); Inside the American Embassy (Channel 4, Monday 10pm); Reporting Trump’s First Year: the Fourth Estate (BBC2, Sunday 9pm); NHS at 70: Live (BBC2, Tuesday 7.30pm); Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC2, Wednesday 10pm)