What to watch on TV this week: Britannia, Inside No. 9 and Britain’s Favourite Dogs

Britain’s Favourite Dogs: Top 100

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Two and a half hours of pure dog - The ‘There Will Be Blood’ of cuddly animal docs - presented by Ben Fogle, whose tale twitches every time a stick is thrown as this counts down the most popular breeds in the country. There is no mention of what will happen to all the breeds who fall outside this definitive ranking.

Tuesday, ITV, 7.30pm

Inside No. 9

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have twirled a danse macabre in a ballroom of the damned for years, spinning and flourishing atop a dance floor polished with wretched spirits, and their bewitching moves have been noted. Mephistopheles himself must have joined them for a boogie in the fourth series of the anthology series, because its insanely high standards have risen to such a height you need a Brian Cox to point it out.

First the dazzling quasi-Shakespearean farce in Zanzibar, then the eloquent tribute to friendship and stagecraft in Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room, and now Once Removed, the story of a house move told backwards where packing for the movers is the least stressful event of the day. This series is now competing against its own achievements, its cunning and misdirection producing unique tales unlike anything else. And tonight’s episode is very moving. As in, it’s about moving.

Tuesday, BBC2, 10pm

Britannia

The other week a Brexit hamper of English wine and cheese was sent to the EU’s chief negotiator to display the sheer, raw power of British might. Had the ancient tribes of Britain employed the same tactic and sent the Emperor Claudius miniature henges, he might not have ordered the invasion in 43AD.

It’s our good fortune they didn’t, otherwise we would be cheated of straight-ish roads, Latin mottos on football club crests, and Jez Butterworth’s epic Britannia. In his award-winning play Jerusalem, Butterworth presented his vision of this green and pleasant land; in Britannia it’s a country of mysticism and tribal feuds, where the vivid colours of spirituality and nature clash with the dirty metal of the invading war machine.

The cast revel in this unshackled history with its contemporary rhythms (you can hear fingers already being flexed to complain the script isn’t declamatory Tudor English) and Mackenzie Crook is near unrecognisable as druid Veran, his piety carved across his bones.

Thursday, Sky Atlantic, 9pm

Paradise Found

The next time you’re in a museum dedicated to great stockbrokers, which displays all the dashing and stunning stocks they’ve brokered, close your eyes and picture how Paul Gauguin’s beautiful stocks would have adorned those walls. Note his use of brokerage in his stockbrokering; swoon at the colours of ink used in memos.

Finance’s wounding loss was art’s gain, as Gauguin might have become the greatest stockbroker who ever lived. How he might have changed and brightened lives. Instead, he painted and hung about Tahiti for inspiration. How Gauguin became a revered artist and the toll that exerted is told in Paradise Found, which stars Keifer Sutherland as Gauguin.

This was released when Sutherland was in the early stages of Jack Bauer’s TV career and Bauer would benefit from some of this film’s comparatively gentle pace, the turmoil of Gauguin’s life still damaging but at least not played out at breakneck speed.

Saturday, London Live, 10pm