Television: Today's Pick
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Your support makes all the difference.War Walks (8pm BBC2) 30,000 Londoners died during the Blitz, 162 of them during the night of 29 December 1940, when that famous photo of the miraculously unscathed St Paul's cathedral was taken. However eight Wren churches, along with hundreds of other less exalted London landmarks, disappeared that night, the bombers' arrival at low tide hampering the firefighting (although a thick Channel fog probably prevented a Hamburg- size firestorm really obliterating the Luftwaffe's "Target Area Otto"). Richard Holmes concludes his series with two memorable images: commuters picking their way to offices that no longer existed - and the ruins of the Ruhr cities in 1945. For 29 December was also the night that Bomber Harris made his remark about the Germans "sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind".
Friends/Frasier (9pm/10pm C4) Both come to the end of their respective series tonight, although Frasier is back in January (as is Friends for satellite dish renters). An inspired piece of casting has Teri Garr as Phoebe's long-lost mum, while the Ross/Rachel will they/won't they storyline heads for the cliffhanger. Frasier ends with an enjoyable episode - and a guest slot for Terminator's Linda Hamilton.
The film
The Trial (12.50am BBC2) Orson Welles's rarely screened 1962 version of Kafka's novel, with Anthony Perkins in perhaps his greatest role after Norman Bates - Joseph K, the office clerk who gets arrested without being told why. Without recourse to the novel's interior mono-logue - and despite Welles's oft-stated lack of sympathy with Kafka, and indeed for Joseph K - something greater than just an honourable try emerges from this troubled European co-production. The sets alone are a must-see.
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