Published: Wednesday, 28th July, 2010 4:54pm

What's On the Box this week?

by John Daly

'The Great Outdoors' is a new three-part comedy series from BBC4 on Wednesday which follows a misfit rambling club and their misadventures.
Pic by==: 97

'The Great Outdoors' (BBC 4, Wednesday, 9pm) - 'The Great Outdoors' is a new, three-part comedy which follows the hikes, heartaches, friendships and rivalries of a misfit rambling club as they partake of lovely views, stolen kisses, packed lunches and punch-ups.

Each episode follows a single one-day walk, and in this first instalment, Bob begins a titanic battle of wills with the newest member, Christine, for the heart and soul of his treasured walking group. She is freshly arrived from Barnstaple, exiled for a rambling crime she won't speak about.

As the lives of the walkers intertwine, they must face perhaps the greatest horror lurking in the countryside - the previously cosy village pub which has 'gone gastro'.

How will the group be able to afford lunch at £20 for a main meal, and will the tensions blow Bob's precious group apart for ever?

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'Police Camera Action' (ITV, Thursday, 9pm) - Return of this popular series where presenter Gethin Jones tackles head-on a different issue currently affecting road safety, including speeding, distracted driving, young drivers and sleep-deprived lorry drivers.

In each programme, Jones meets drivers who admit to taking risks behind the wheel, and in-car camera footage shows how reckless their driving can be. The series challenges them to confront the reality of the dangers they pose to themselves and others in hard-hitting tests. He also meets families forced to live with the devastating consequences of criminal driving and introduces them to the drivers who, on hearing their tragic stories, are left to reflect on their own habits on the road.

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'The Secret Tourist' (BBC 1, Thursday, 9pm) - Timely for the time of year that's in it, Matt Allwright and his team go undercover in hotels, reveal tourist scams and research potential safety hazards in popular holiday destinations around the world.

In the first episode, Allwright sends a British family to an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic to find out if bad reports from some tourists are really true. Kitted out with secret cameras, the family goes undercover to investigate the hotel's facilities. With help from the series' environmental health expert, Dr Lisa Ackerley, the secret tourists make some shocking revelations about the health, hygiene and safety of the resort.

These include finding salmonella and E coli in the food and the Legionella pathogen in the hot water, posing a risk of Legionnaires disease. Nice.

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'The Queen' (Ch4, Saturday, 8pm) - Five leading British actresses play the Queen at pivotal times in her life, as this ground-breaking series examines Britain's social history through key events in her reign.

Britain came as close to becoming a republic in the early 1970s as it has ever done in modern times. The polls recorded the highest figures ever for those who were opposed to the monarchy. For the first time, the royal family was under pressure to be accountable to the people, in terms of how they lived their lives and spent their money.

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'Rebus' (RTE 1, Saturday, 10.45pm) - This excellent crime series is worth setting the recorder for if you're out. In this episode, 'A Question of Blood', Detective Inspector John Rebus and his sidekick, DS Siobhan Clarke, are called to investigate a shooting at a local college.

At the scene, the spattered blood and bullet holes that litter the room tell a tale of a frantic shooting, and the bodies of two dead schoolboys and a sports supervisor are revealed. One of the victims is the son of Rebus's cousin.

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'Alan Titchmarsh's Walks Of Fame: Twiggy' (ITV, Sunday, 7pm) - The famous TV gardener puts aside his secateurs to join Twiggy on one of her favourite walks while they chat about her life, career and relationships.

The programme combines beautiful scenery, archive footage highlighting Twiggy's career, and an insight into the life of a woman who shot to fame at the age of 16 and is still making headlines more than 40 years later.

They begin their walk in the picture-postcard town of Southwold on the Suffolk coast, near to where Twiggy and her husband, Leigh Lawson, have a weekend house. It also has a special meaning for Twiggy as a chance encounter in a Southwold pub led to her becoming the face of Marks & Spencer.

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Movie Of The Week: 'Death Of A Funeral' (RTE 1, Friday, 10.35pm) - Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes co-star in this family drama/comedy about the chaos that ensues when a man tries to expose a dark secret regarding a recently deceased patriarch of a dysfunctional British family. Hilarious.

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