TV Preview, Doctor Foster (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm): the emotionally searing drama concludes

I’m not allowed to say much about the finale of Doctor Foster, which grinds its grisly way onto your screen on Tuesday night. By now, though, you ought to know what to expect. There’s the usual accomplished performances by leads Suranne Jones (Doctor Gemma Foster) and Bertie Carvel (who I suppose we should call Mr Foster) and supports Tom Taylor (as Tom Foster, son) and James (Prasanna Puwanarajah), who give excellent life to Mike Bartlett’s script.

Well, obviously say “life” advisedly, as the demise of one or other or both of the principal protagonists is never far from contention. If you’ve made it this far through the emotional wringer, one which might be likened to the traumas of a real-life divorce, then congratulations and I hope you thought it was worth it. Despite all her own strangeness and deep flaws, I could never stop myself form hoping that Gemma would “win”.

But what, you wonder, does winning mean in such circumstances? Just make sure you have a nice strong cup of tea with lots of sugar while you decompress during the BBC News at Ten, which follows. A rare example, this, of the trials of the real world providing a palliative and an avenue to some necessary escapism for some emotionally searing fiction.

Like a really good mockumentary, the charm of The Apprentice isn’t what it tells us about the world of business – not that much, if truth be told – but the embarrassing idiocy and painful self-parody displayed by the contestants. I suppose there is no genetic, economic or practical reason why the supply of British tools in their twenties should have dried up by now, and it is one human resource that the United Kingdom obviously has in plentiful supply.

These, you need to remember are some of the business leaders and entrepreneurs of tomorrow who will be going out to make the nation a living in the post-Brexit era of “global Britain”. Global plonkers, most of them, and I am continually struck by how the biggest single talent most of them have played since appearing on The Apprentice in its long history is to appear on other TV shows, as panellists, on “reality” programmes eating marsupial testes or making cakes, or otherwise engaged in the world of modern minor celebrity. Few, if any, have built businesses of much note. Anyway this week Lord (Alan) Sugar has them off flogging burgers, and let’s just say McDonalds and Burger King have little to fear.

Well, I’ll go the foot of our stairs! I confess I have only now discovered that ITV have just done something I thought they would have started doing a very long time ago – rerunning Coronation Street. Given that it has been on the air since 1960, and this has a vast archive, and also that, like so many things, it was better in the old days, I’m surprised that ITV hadn’t taken the opportunity to fill up one of its many digi channels with repeats of Corrie.

Anyway, they have now and ITV3 gives you the opportunity to discover or rediscover some of the wonderful creations who have inhabited Weatherfield these many decades. So if you’ve nowt better to do of an afternoon, you can catch classic episodes being retransmitted between Mondays to Fridays at 2:45 pm until 3:45 pm from Monday. Hilda Ogden, Ena Sharples, Annie Walker, Derek and Mavis and, a personal favourite of mine, Albert Tatlock (Ken Barlow’s late “Uncle Albert”)... well, I hope to see them all again. This week features Alan Bradley, no one’s idea of an ideal husband. After the sad news of the deaths of Liz Dawn and Tony Booth, it is a good moment to celebrate, once again, this enduring achievement of national popular culture.

One of Britain’s many forgotten late-colonial little wars was the struggle to contain insurgencies in the port of Aden and across Yemen in the 1960s. It was the dusk of the British Empire, and the Labour government of the time (circa 1965) had committed itself to ending any British involvement in military action in the Middle East (how times change). The Last Post is a sort of gritty version of Heartbeat with added sex and terror, with as strong element of White Mischief thrown in. It’s probably a bit too glam and glossy to really capture the ethos of the fag-end of Britain’s last go at being a global power, but there we are. Stephen Campbell Moore and Jessica Raine sweat their way through things.

Last, I’ll leave you with David Starkey and his latest histo-doc, Reformation: Europe’s.Holy War. It’s a slightly fanciful attempt – I mean, even more than my own – to put a Brexit spin on historical events, but the story of Europe’s great religious schism has a power and a momentousness to it that echoes down the centuries. Who better to have it thumping its way into your lounge than the vigorous Dr Starkey?