This coming week we’ve got lots of new series starting as well as some fascinating documentaries and the return of Most Haunted!

Monday

Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change, 9:00pm, Channel 4

As experts consider a review of UK guidelines for treating transgender children, this film follows a number of children in the US who told their parents they were born in the wrong body.

In America, children under 16 can be prescribed hormone ‘blockers’ to prevent the onset of puberty, with a view to then follow with hormone treatment to become their new gender. This film follows the American experience.

Eight-year-old Josie was born a boy but has been living as a girl for two years since revealing the full extent of his feelings about his identity to his mother.

Kyla is also eight. He was born a boy but loves anything pink and sparkly, has grown his hair, and is preparing to return for school after summer dressed as a girl for the first time. He says: ‘If I had to wear boys’ clothes and be a boy for the rest of my life, I’d probably die.’ They have both been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Sixteen-year-old Chris, who was born a girl, started testosterone treatment at 14. She now has a deep voice and plentiful body hair, and shaves regularly. These children and their parents reveal what it is like to face life-changing questions, giving a frank insight into a subject most people never have to consider.

Murderland, 9:00pm, ITV1 Yorkshire

1/3 – Carrie’s Story

Robbie Coltrane leads the cast as detective Douglas Hain. Written by acclaimed writer David Pirie, Murderland is an emotional and passionate thriller that tells a traumatic murder story through the eyes of three central characters: Carrie the daughter of the murdered woman, Douglas Hain, the detective in charge of the investigation and Sally the murder victim.

Murderland is a knife edge thriller of revenge, redemption and rough justice, where three different perspectives eventually enable us to see the truth.

Tuesday

7 Days on the Breadline, 9:00pm, ITV1 Yorkshire

New series in which our celebrities spend seven days on the breadline. In this series, Mel B, Trinny Woodall, Keith Allen and Austin Healey leave their comfortable lives behind to step into the shoes of families struggling to make ends meet in Britain.

For seven days, they will try to cope on the budget of the different households they join and in the process learn about problems faced by many families across the UK, such as the daily challenges of paying for food and bills on limited means, dealing with inadequate living conditions, having little or no money to entertain the children and trying to motivate tearaway teenagers to stay in school or get a job.

In this first episode, we follow the four celebrities as they travel to Leeds to meet their families for the first time. The celebrities know that the households they will be joining are living on low-incomes, pensions or benefits – and that they will be replacing a key member of the family. But they have very few other facts about who they’ll be joining beyond that it is a single parent household, a family with teenagers or an elderly person living alone.

My Supermodel Baby, 10:35pm, BBC1

Every parent thinks their child is beautiful, but their faces really do have the power to sell. Child modelling is big business; baby models advertise more than £3 bn worth of products each year. But what makes mothers decide to send their children into such a cut-throat industry?

Some, like proud mums Jamie and Kelly, believe that their child has what it takes to be hugely successful. They noticed eight-month-old Frankie’s potential at an early age, but he is still waiting to land his first paid job.

Esther, meanwhile, believes that little Hadley Jack, five-months-old, has the potential to fulfil his mother’s ambitions for him to become a model. But, being a mum to five children, will she be able to drop everything to travel hours across London to auditions and shoots?

Then there’s Matthew and Leanne who believe they have something so special that they are sitting on a goldmine. Their identical triplets are just three of a new wave of “credit crunch babies”, whose parents need the extra money that modelling could bring in.

My Supermodel Baby is an intimate and diverse portrait of the lives of these parents and their children.

Wednesday

The Lost Symbol: Truth or Fiction, 8:00pm, Five

Investigative documentary exploring the story behind Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol.

Featuring unique access to Freemason lodges throughout the world, the film examines the history of the organisation and explores the biggest conspiracy theories surrounding it. After centuries of rumour, suspicion and scandal, do the Freemasons deserve their mysterious reputation?

Defying Gravity, 9:00pm, BBC2

This is the pilot episodes of a new series that’s set in the near future. Defying Gravity revolves around the exploits of eight astronauts from five countries – four men and four women – who embark on a mysterious six-year international space mission through the solar system. But they soon discover that their real assignment is not at all what they thought.

Only hours from leaving Earth’s orbit for Venus, aboard the spaceship Antares, two of the eight novice astronauts mysteriously develop heart problems. For ship’s engineer Ajay Sharma and mission commander Rollie Crane, it means a premature return to Earth, and replacement by Maddux Donner, an experienced astronaut who lives under the shadow of a previous mission during which he was forced to abandon two people on Mars, and Ted Shaw, who will have to leave behind his wife, Eve, at Mission Control.

Donner’s arrival, however, disturbs beautiful young astronaut Zoe Barnes, who is linked to him by a strange dream and a romantic encounter from their early training days. The news delights the sensual Nadia Schilling, though.

Although nearly every facet of life on the Antares is broadcast to avid viewers on Earth by documentarian Paula Morales, there is also a hidden force that appears to be controlling events from within the spacecraft.

Thursday

The Bigamist Bride: My Five Husbands, 9:00pm, Channel 4

Emily Horne is a tabloid wet dream: a giddy mixture of sex, deceit and betrayal.

At the age of 30 she’s been married five times but she never bothered to get divorced. In her wake she’s left a string of confused husbands and lovers.

She’s worked in the porn industry and as an ‘escort’, she’s served one jail sentence for bigamy and was recently on trial again for the same offence.

But behind the lurid headlines is a darker tale of mental illness, addiction and neglect.
Emily says she wants to be in a film in order to present the truth about herself. But does she? Can we trust the testimony of a woman who has been lying all of her adult life? Her version of the truth is wildly at odds with that of the husbands, lovers and family members who appear in the film.
Shocking, dramatic and sometimes funny, this Cutting Edge film is a very modern tale of a singular young woman.

Russell Howard’s Good News, 10:30pm, BBC3

In this new show, comedian Russell Howard offers his unique perspective on the big stories dominating the media across TV, online and in print, as well as picking up on those sometimes overlooked things that make him smile.

Recorded in front of a studio audience, it also gives viewers the chance to shape the news agenda by allowing them to submit stories online at www.bbc.co.uk/russellhoward or via Twitter.

Friday

Discovering Ardi, 8:00pm, Discovery Science

This fascinating series follows the scientific investigation which began in the Ethiopian desert 17 years ago, and now opens a new chapter on human evolution, revealing the first evolutionary steps our ancestors took after we diverged from a common ancestor we once shared with living chimpanzees.

“Ardi’s” centerpiece skeleton, the other hominids she lived with, and the rocks, soils, plants and animals that made up her world were analyzed in laboratories around the world, and the scientists have now published their findings in the prestigious journal Science.

“Ardi” is now the oldest skeleton from our (hominid) branch of the primate family tree. These Ethiopian discoveries reveal an early grade of human evolution in Africa that predated the famous Australopithecus nicknamed “Lucy.”

Ardipithecus was a woodland creature with a small brain, long arms, and short legs. The pelvis and feet show a primitive form of two-legged walking on the ground, but Ardipithecus was also a capable tree climber, with long fingers and big toes that allowed their feet to grasp like an ape’s. The discoveries answer old questions about how hominids became bipedal.

Miami Vice, 9:00pm, ITV2

Film based on the hugely successful TV series. After a tragic security breach in the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force (JIATF), the FBI ask for help from the Miami authorities, who are not part of the compromised group. This assignment goes to Detectives James ‘Sonny’ Crockett and Ricardo ‘Rico’ Tubbs.

Going undercover as offshore boat racers and outlaw smugglers, Sonny Burnett and Rico Cooper, they take on the narcotrafficking network of the mysterious Archangel de Jesus Montoya-Londono and his Cuban Chinese banker Isabella. The intensity of the case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one – especially when Crockett falls for Isabella, and when there is an assault on Tubbs’s loved ones.

Here’s the film’s trailer…

Saturday

The Truman Show, 8:00pm, Channel 4

He’s the star of the show–but he doesn’t know. Truman Burbank is a man whose life is a nonstop TV show. Truman doesn’t realize that his quaint hometown is a giant studio set run by a visionary producer/director/creator, that folks living and working there are Hollywood actors, that even his incessantly bubbly wife is a contract player. Gradually, Truman gets wise. And what he does about his discovery will have you laughing, crying and cheering.

Here’s the film’s trailer…

Most Haunted Live: Halloween 2009, 8:00pm, Living

The Most Haunted team return for an eight-night marathon of terror and intrigue.

Join Yvette Fielding and medium Chris Conway as they set out to unmask the eight faces of evil!

Sunday

Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn’t Fight, 7:00pm, Channel 4

Ian Hislop meets the descendants of some of the ‘Conchies’ – conscientious objectors – and hears how they have dealt with the social stigma of their relatives’ refusal to fight.

He also explores the experiences of volunteers who, on witnessing the horrors of the battlefield, became committed COs, and uncovers stories of imprisonment, physical abuse, tragedy and extreme bravery.

My Shocking Story, 9:00pm, Discovery Channel

This new series kicks off with, “Human Spider Sisters”

My Shocking Story: Human Spider Sisters follows the lives of 40-year-old conjoined twin sisters Ganga and Jamuna. Eager to know how their busy life is affecting their many shared organs, and exactly how they are joined together, the sisters are visited by world specialist, Dr James Stein to assess if they could still have the chance to be separated.

That’s it for this week’s Primetime Picks. Join us again next Sunday and in the meantime, have a great week!