Indian Summers
If history teaches us nothing else, there’s one important lesson we must never forget – that the past was much, much better dressed. At least that’s the conclusion I came to after six weeks of lapping up the gowns and breeches in the BBC’s War & Peace. (The millions of dead in the Napoleonic Wars were, I grant you, a heavy price to pay for the sartorial pleasures.) Now Indian Summers (Sunday, Channel 4, 9pm) returns, and offsets the fearful political turbulence of the Raj with the sleek elegance of between-thewars chic. It’s 1935 – three years on from the first season – and once more we join the colonialists and their subjects amid the cooling air of the hill station at Simla. The Indian struggle against imperial rule is simmering on the verge of a revolt far removed from the avowed non-violence of Gandhi. Still, Cynthia Coffin (Julie Walters) wields her cigarette holder with gleeful indifference to the outside world within the confines of her Royal Simla Club, where she presides over the gaiety of the local branch of high society. Meanwhile, our troubled hero Aafrin is torn between his everyday life as a loyal civil servant, and his other existence as an insurrectionist striving in secret to throw off the shackles of his masters’ rule. And then there’s his former lover Alice, now back in Simla with a new man who has secrets of his own and may be far from the polite English charmer he seems to be…
NOT TO BE MISSED
Houdini & Doyle (Sunday, ITV, 10.15pm) Arthur Conan Doyle and escapologist Harry Houdini (left) join forces to battle crime in a new series that promises a wealth of ripping yarns.
Art Of Scandinavia (Monday, BBC4, 9pm)
We’ve feasted on Scandicrime – now critic Andrew Graham-Dixon is our guide to centuries of art from Europe’s far north.
Mary Berry’s Easter Feast (Tuesday, BBC2, 8pm)
Simnel cake, roast lamb and, of course, hot cross buns are all on the menu in Mary Berry’s two-part guide to the coming blowout (right).