Now that the nights are drawing in and it’s just too dang cold to go anywhere, why not cosy up with your telly and a duvet, because there are some great shows on this week.

And as it’s soon Halloween, we’ve got lots of scary recommendations that should make sure you need to sleep with the light on for a week or so!

Monday

Dispatches: Do You Know What’s In Your Breakfast? 8:00pm, Channel 4

It is the most important meal of the day, but all too often, breakfast in the UK is far from healthy.

In this edition of Dispatches, reporter Jane Moore reveals how nutritious the nation’s breakfasts really are and the marketing techniques employed by this lucrative industry. Manufacturers are using health claims to sell their breakfast cereals, drinks and bars.

Dispatches investigates the evidence provided to support these claims and asks if some of the healthy-sounding cereals and pro-biotic yoghurts are all they are cracked up to be.
Moore uncovers what is actually in your breakfast food. Do you really know just how much sugar and salt are in children’s cereals, particularly those marketed as ‘healthy’?

Moore finds that the unwillingness of retailers and manufacturers to adopt the traffic light systems recommended by food standards authorities is confusing things further. Even if you want to eat the right thing, it is not always easy to tell what that is.

She also tests the regulators’ rules on ‘healthy’ branding by baking a cake that could still make many of the health claims made by cereals.

Moore examines the recent shifts in cereal marketing which enable manufacturers to stay ahead of the regulators. With advertising of sugary children’s foods banned during kids TV programming, Moore discovers that their marketing has moved to prime-time TV and the internet.

Restaurant In Your Home, 8:30pm, BBC2

New series. Award-winning home restaurateurs Mike and Tina Pemberton advise others on opening up their houses at meal times to paying guests, starting with the owners of a cramped flat in the London borough of Hackney. Together, they plan how to seat 20 diners in their tiny living room, and get round initially unimpressive plans for cucumber sandwiches as starters.

Tuesday

Horizon, 9:00pm, BBC2

Horizon follows the emotional journey of three young people with currently untreatable conditions to see if within their lifetime, they can be cured.

Sophie is desperate to discover if there’s a medical breakthrough which will get her walking again – a car crash after celebrating her A level results left her paralysed from the waist down.

Anthony’s leg was amputated after a rugby accident on the eve of his eighteenth birthday. Will he ever be able to regrow his leg?

Father of four Dean is desperate for a cure for his damaged heart to avoid an early death. They’ve all read the headlines about the astonishing potential of stem cells to heal the body.

Now they’ve been given access to the pioneering scientists who could transform their lives. With so much at stake, each meeting is highly emotional as our three young people find out if science can fix them.

Bleach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth, 10:00pm, Channel 4

This fascinating documentary examines the emerging trend for ‘deracialisation’ surgery through the stories of six people who want to go to extreme lengths to Westernise their bodies and faces.

The series asks if it’s right to want to erase your inherited ethnic features to fit into a predominantly Caucasian society.

Wednesday

Britain’s Best Brain, 8:00pm, Five

Jamie Theakston and Zoe Ball are reunited for the first time in ten years for a brand new eight-part series. Each episode sees contestants tackle five tasks, designed to test the specific functions of different parts of the brain. In this instalment, contestants including a doctor and a housewife vie for the chance to go through to the final.

Did Heston Change Little Chef? 9:00pm, Channel 4

Six months after attempting to turn around the fortunes of troubled restaurant chain Little Chef, Heston Blumenthal revisits the trial branch in Popham to see how things panned out and whether profits are up.

Thursday

Katie: My Beautiful Face, 9:00pm, Channel 4

Katie was young and beautiful. A model and budding TV presenter, the 24-year-old had a glowing future ahead of her. But in 2008 a vicious acid attack destroyed her face, and with it her career and her life as she knew it.

More than a year on, and having undergone countless operations and rounds of physiotherapy, she has now chosen to give up her anonymity and tell her own story for the first time.

Including CCTV footage of the attack, this remarkable Cutting Edge film follows Katie as she undergoes pioneering treatment and attempts to re-build her life, while two men stand trial for the horrific assault.

In the film Katie bravely tells her story with compelling frankness, surprising humour and an extraordinary lack of self-pity as she tries to come to terms with losing her beauty and starting a new life with a new face.

Amityville Horror: The True Story, 9:00pm, Five USA

This documentary casts a sceptical eye on the story of the Amityville Horror.

In November 1974, six relatives were murdered at their home in sleepy Amityville in Suffolk County, New York. Did the global media’s fascination with tales of hauntings, demonic possession and poltergeist activity obscure and obstruct a serious murder investigation?

Friday

Celebrity Place in the Sun, 9:00pm, Discovery Travel & Living

Tara Palmer-Tomkinson

Amanda Lamb goes to the aid of ‘It’ girl and socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as she searches for something fabulous and spacious in the south of France.

An outdoor pool and a stunning view are a must, so the Cote d’Azur is ideal, but Tara’s happy to look inland at Provence too, offering Amanda the chance to find five potentially stunning properties from which to choose.

Ghosts in the Machine, 10:35pm, BBC4

Documentary charting the history of the supernatural on British television, and how ghosts have been portrayed on the small screen. From Hamlet to Most Haunted, the apparitions have abandoned their traditional haunts of drama and comedy and crossed over into factual and reality TV.

Ghosts in the Machine celebrates classic ghost stories like The Stone Tape, and Whistle and I’ll Come to You. It revisits controversial shows like Derren Brown’s Seance and 1992’s Ghostwatch, which convinced thousands of viewers that Michael Parkinson was possessed by a poltergeist.

The film examines the recent explosion of interest in the paranormal. How did ghosts get their own genre, and how did television become the medium of the medium?

Contributors include Derren Brown (Seance), Jane Asher (The Stone Tape), Kenneth Cope (Randall and Hopkirk Deceased), Yvette Fielding (Most Haunted), Mark Gatiss (Crooked House), Sarah Greene (Ghostwatch), Jonathan Miller (Whistle and I’ll Come to You) and Bill Paterson (Sea of Souls).

Saturday

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

More spooky goings on as 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.

The Watcher, 11:00pm, Film4

David Allen Griffin is a cool killer; time and time again he chooses a female victim, studies her for weeks until he knows her routine in the smallest detail and makes meticulous preparations using his forensic knowledge to gain entry to her home when she’s alone. He then subdues her and administers a long, torturous death.

Joel Campbell got so frustrated by his failure to capture Griffin in LA that he quit the FBI, moved to Chicago and remains in psychiatric therapy, unable to function normally. Then he realises, when opening his mail, that a new murder victim is Griffin’s, and the killer send him pictures of her. Campbell reports this to the police, but is unwilling to join them in the search, suggesting Griffin is too slick and clever; yet he won’t get out of it that easily…

Starring James Spader, Keanu Reeves, Marisa Tomei and Ernie Hudson.

Here’s the film’s trailer…

Sunday

Underworld, 9:00pm, Film4

A war has been raging between the Vampires and Lycan for centuries, and Selene is a death dealer, assigned to hunt down and eradicate the last of the Lycan.

When she comes across Michael, who holds the key to end the war, she must decide where her allegiances will lie.

Stars Kate Beckinsale, Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy.

Here’s the film’s trailer…

Crimes That Shook the World, 10:00pm, Discovery Channel

Chessboard Killer

This is a creepy but morbidly fascinating profile of calculating Russian killer Alexander Pichushkin, who was convicted of killing 48 people over more than a decade.

He had bizarrely charted his crimes on a chessboard, attaching a number and a coin to a square each time he struck.

That’s it for this week’s Primetime Picks but we’ll be back next week with more. See you then!