TV highlights
'Champions League Live' (RTE 2, Wednesday, 7.30pm) - Eamon Dunphy, John Giles and Liam Brady join Bill O'Herlihy for live Champions League coverage from the first knockout round as Manchester United travel to France to face Marseille. The match kicks off at the Stade Veldrome with commentary by George Hamilton and Trevor Steven. Man U look like having one of their vintage years if the momentum they've built up in the Premier League continues into the Champions League. It will probably need a few more Rooney scissors kicks to accomplish the grand finale, though. The programme will also feature highlights from Inter Milan v Bayern Munich. ____________________________________________________________ 'The Real King's Speech' (CH4, Wednesday, 9pm) - The Oscar-nominated film has brought to the fore the inspiring story of King George VI's struggle to overcome his crippling stammer. With access to letters between his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue and the king, and interviews with former patients of Logue, this programme provides insight into the working relationship between the therapist and his royal patient, and looks at the methods and techniques Logue employed to 'cure' his patients. There are also interviews with leading historians of the king, Edward VIII, and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The programme also underlines the vital role of Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, in helping her husband overcome his disability. The programme contrasts King George VI's speeches with those of his brother, the former King Edward VIII, a natural performer. ____________________________________________________________ 'Methadonia' (RTE 1, Wednesday, 12.10am) - Film about the elusive nature of recovery and the lifelong grip of heroin addition through the lives of seven men and women who stir with memories of themselves and hope they will wake up one morning, have a cup of coffee, and not think about getting high. ____________________________________________________________ 'Hidden Treasures Of Australian Art With Griff Rhys Jones' (BBC 2, Friday, 9pm) - In this new, three-part series, Griff Rhys Jones – an avid art collector and enthusiast – ventures to remote corners of the globe to examine the artistic creativity of three disparate indigenous cultures to ask what we have lost, what is still being preserved, and to challenge preconceived notions surrounding the nature and value of tribal expression. Each programme embarks on sometimes hazardous quests to remote communities that have produced extraordinary work, now seemingly part of a lost world, to discover what remains of ancient cultural art, the impulses that underpin it, and how it has been affected over time by political, social and religious incursions from the West. In tonight's first programme, Jones sets out from Cairns in north-eastern Queensland on a voyage that encompasses the Torres Strait islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea, and recreates the journey of 19th-century anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon, which unearthed hundreds of objects from this still-remote community. ____________________________________________________________ 'Toughest Place To Be A Midwife' (BBC 2, Sunday, 9pm) - Midwife Suzanne Saunders-Blundell abandons the high-tech maternity unit at Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield to work in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia in West Africa, the third poorest country on Earth, where one in 12 women dies in childbirth. Suzanne, a fan of natural childbirth back in Britain, soon learns that there is little time for such luxuries at the Redemption Hospital. The priority is to try to get women to hospital in the first place and then deliver babies as quickly and safely as possible. Living with her Liberian colleagues, Suzanne learns how the country, originally founded as a refuge for slaves repatriated from America, has got into such a terrible condition – where there is little running water and only sporadic electricity supply. The vicious civil war may have ended seven years ago but it left the country with no infrastructure. ____________________________________________________________ Movie Of The Week: 'Out Of Sight' (ITV2, Monday, 11.15pm) - Sexy crime caper based on the novel by Elmore Leonard, with terrific chemistry between stars George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Federal agent Karen Sisco is determined to put notorious bank robber Jack Foley behind bars. Unfortunately, she falls for his roguish charms...