As July ends and August begins, the weather might be unreliable but we’ve got some great recommendations for what to watch if rain stops play.

From new series, quirky documentaries to films, Primetime picks the best of the best for you in the coming week…

Monday

Britain’s Most Embarrassing Parents, 9:00pm, BBC3

Britain’s Most Embarrassing Parents is a warm hearted and irreverent top ten countdown of the most unorthodox parents in the UK today.

From a skirt wearing dad to a mum who paid thousands to look like her daughter, we hear from both the outgoing parents and their mortified kids. Told through intimate interviews and observational footage, this programme will touch a nerve with anyone who’s ever felt that familiar tinge of parental shame.

There’s also a count down of the Nation’s top ten shameful mums and dads and impassioned pleas from their mortified offspring as to why their parents should be crowned Britain’s most embarrassing. The stories will be threaded together with links from presenter Kirsten O’Brien

Dirty Jobs: Alligator Farmer, 10:00pm, Discovery Shed

This series explores some of the world’s dirtiest – and potentially dangerous – jobs.

Armed with rat meat, Mike goes to work feeding and cleaning out the 70,000 residents of an alligator farm. And later, Mike finds that life in a sugar factory is not as sweet as he had imagined.

I think given the choice, I’d go with the sugar factory though… nobody there is likely to chew your arm off or indeed, swallow you whole.

Tuesday

Tony: I’ve Lost My Family, 9:00pm, BBC3

Most teenagers row with their parents. But what happens if you leave home while you’re still at school? What’s it like living alone while you’re still a child?

At the tender age of sixteen, Tony left home and was forced to fend for himself. He’s managed to survive alone for the last two years… but only just!

Tony’s now 18 and still very much a boy, but he’s had it with being unemployed, useless, skint, lonely and too ashamed of his life to go and face his mum.

This film follows his journey as he becomes a grown-up, and tries to reconcile with his family.

As he begins to sort his life out, Tony makes some extraordinary discoveries that lead him in an entirely new direction. Maybe the family he’s been looking for can be found somewhere else – and maybe there’s a different way to go home?

It’s Time to Go Nationwide, 9:00pm, BBC4

This nostalgic documentary takes a look back at Nationwide, Britain’s first truly regional TV programme.

Nationwide ran on BBC in the early evenings from 1969 to 1983 and this show features contributions from many of those involved, including Sue Lawley, Michael Barratt, Richard Stilgoe, Bob Wellings, Hugh Scully, Frank Bough, Esther Rantzen and John Stapleton.

Wednesday

I Sleep with Strangers, 9:00pm, Bravo

This is billed as a “fun, frisky look at the explosion in casual sex, meeting people who think nothing of sleeping with total strangers.”

This apparently includes contributions from “hot young singletons to couples spicing up their lives.” Should be a good watch, even if only so we can sit back and tut!

Silverville, 10:45pm, BBC1

As the needs of the UK’s increasingly ageing population change, Silverville – a new six-part documentary co-produced by The Open University – takes a candid look inside one of the UK’s new retirement villages.

Popularised in America, and becoming increasingly common in the UK, retirement villages are purpose-built communities which offer independence, security and ultimately aim to be a “home for life”.

Across the series, Silverville follows the lives of a number of residents living in Lovat Fields – a new retirement village in Milton Keynes.

In the first episode, Amelia (aged 83) and Lawrence (87) have just one thing on their mind – finding someone special again. They are residents in a retirement community where companionship is one of the main reasons to join. Widowed for 10 years, Amelia admits her life would be enhanced with a boyfriend, and ladies’ man Lawrence wants to be sociable, wining and dining prospective friends.

Thursday

How the Other Half Live, 9:00pm, Channel 4

Made by the team behind The Secret Millionaire, How the Other Half Live aims to show just what it means to grow up in poverty in 21st-century Britain. Each episode follows the story of two families as a wealthy family decides to assist one that is living below the poverty line.

Each family hopes that their children will gain from the experience by understanding what life is like for others. The series raises important questions about how we respond to the poverty on our own doorsteps.

Tonight, we meet nine-year-old Grace who lives in one of the wealthiest parts of the country with her mum Christine, dad Ken and brother Charlie. They have a big house and several acres of land, with two cleaners and a team of gardeners to help. But Ken comes from a deprived area of Glasgow and he wants his children to know that life isn’t like this for everyone.

Meanwhile, ten-year-old Yolanda lives in a flat on a council estate with her mum and two sisters. She keeps her belongings in cardboard boxes and a suitcase because her mum can’t afford to buy her any drawers.

The Commitments, 11:15pm, Film4

If you can stay up or Sky + this film, it’s a brilliant must-see movie.

Jimmy Rabbitte is just out of school, but he’s a young man with ambition. He wants to put a soul band together but first, he needs musicians and singers.

Things slowly start to come together when he finds three women in his home town who sing like angels – eventually – and lead singer Deco who he finds rocking a wedding. Then, in response to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey “The Lips” Fagan completes the band.

Song by song, gig by gig, the Commitments start their climb to the top and Dublin gets soul. But internal strife also builds; Deco is insufferable, Joey’s a Casanova, and Jimmy may lack the seasoning to hold things together. Will the Commitments slip away?

Here’s the film’s trailer

Friday

Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel, 10:35pm, BBC1

This three part documentary follows the construction of a new boutique hotel in London.

Mark Fuller, nightclub owner, entrepreneur and host to the stars, has a new venture: Sanctum Soho, London’s first rock ‘n’ roll-themed boutique hotel. Its 30 individually designed rooms are aimed at rock stars and celebrities wanting to stay in the capital.

Eight weeks ahead of opening, Sanctum still looks like a building site. Launching in one of the worst recessions in living memory, it’s two years late and the cost of the build has spiralled. Amid delays and disasters, Mark wonders whether Sanctum will open on time and on budget.

Classic Goldie, 9:00pm, BBC2

Drum and bass pioneer, poet and graffiti artist Goldie was the hero of BBC Two’s Maestro in 2008. Classic Goldie follows him on a new challenge as he is invited to create an orchestral work for performance in London’s Royal Albert Hall, as part of the BBC Proms 2009.

The eight-minute composition reflects the theme of the concert – Evolution.
As he has no traditional classical music education, Goldie has to develop his composing skills from writing for electronic instruments to the acoustic instruments of a classical symphony orchestra and chorus; and the mighty Royal Albert Hall organ.

Helping him along this musical journey is his Maestro mentor, Ivor Setterfield, and composer Anna Meredith. Goldie takes his first lessons in music composition, harmony and orchestration under Anna and Ivor’s supervision and trials his ideas in workshops with keyboard, sections of the orchestra and choir.

The programme reaches its climax as Goldie attends the world première of his new work, Sine tempore – Without Time, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conducted by Charles Hazlewood, at the Family Prom on Saturday 1 August.

Saturday

National Lampoon’s European Vacation, 5:40pm, Five

This is an excellent film from the National Lampoon’s camp staring Chevvy Chase. When the Griswolds accidentally win the grand prize on the “Pig in a poke” TV show, they discover it’s a trip to Europe.

In London, they see Big Ben and all the tourist attractions, but only after Clark learned to drive on the left side by not doing so. In Paris, Rusty’s hormones lead to disaster and in Germany, the Griswolds visit the wrong relatives.

It’s one of those films that needs no thinking about – it just entertains you.

Here’s the film’s trailer

There’s Something about Mary, 9:00pm, Film4

If the Lampoon’s slapstick isn’t for you, check out this film… Ted was a geek in high school, who was going to go to the prom with one of the most popular girls in school, Mary.

The prom date never happened, because Ted had a very ‘unusual’ accident. Thirteen years later, he realises he’s still in love with Mary, so he hires a private investigator to track her down. However, the investigator falls in love with Mary, so he gives Ted some false information to keep him away from her.

Here’s the trailer

Sunday

Revelations: Divorce: Jewish Style, 7:00pm, Channel 4

In Jewish law, it is the husband’s right to decide whether he will give his wife a divorce, called a Get.

If he refuses her, the wife may be sentenced to years of living in a dead marriage.
She cannot remarry in the Orthodox Jewish way, and any child she has from a new relationship is considered illegitimate. In Hebrew, she is called an Agunah: a ‘chained woman’.

With rare access to the Orthodox Jewish community, both here in the UK and also in Israel, this film explores the controversial world of Jewish divorce to find out why these apparently outmoded laws still hold sway.

Single-Handed, 9:00pm, ITV1

In the first episode of this new series, Jack Driscoll (Owen McDonnell) is transferred from Dublin back to his birthplace in the remote west of Ireland, as Garda Sergeant, the role recently vacated by his father, Gerry (Ian McElhinney).

Jack’s first major case is an investigation into the death of a young woman, found in an isolated caravan. Jack is frustrated in his attempts to identify the woman as the community closes ranks. And what looked at first like accidental death takes on an increasingly sinister hue. Jack uncovers a tangled web of blackmail and sexual abuse, involving the farmer whose field the caravan occupied, a local hotelier, a builder with a reputation for violence and a property developer – one of his father’s oldest friends.

Jack’s relentless pursuit of the truth dredges up long buried crimes and pits him against his new Inspector and his father Gerry, who looks increasingly to hold the key to the mystery. Throughout all of this there is one glimmer of hope: a romance with a young Dublin nurse, Saoirse (Laura Brady) visiting relatives in the area, but increasingly attracted to the landscape – and Jack.

So that’s it for this week’s Primetime Picks. Have a great week and we’ll see you same time, same place next week.