John Davies scans the schedules (all times pm unless stated).
Pick of the week
Two economics series go head-to-head at 8.00 on Sunday. In Bubble Trouble, BBC2 offers the first of two programmes about the collapse of Japan's economy ten years ago, with valuable insights from bank insiders and others. Meanwhile, C4's British Empires homes in on five businesses that have been crucial to the UK economy. Part 1 looks through the archives of NatWest and ponders the role of banks today.
FRIDAY January 7 The Human Journey (8.00 Discovery). Series on human origins and evolution, starting (inevitably) in Africa.
SATURDAY January 8 Set in Stone (3.00 Discovery Home & Leisure). Stonemason Tom Maude explores how some of Britain's churches and cathedrals were built. More about cathedrals later in the day with Cathedral Calls (7.35 BBC2), a straightforwardly informative new series presented by ex-architecture student Janet Street-Porter.
1900 USA (7.00 C4). First half of a two-parter on the economic strength of the US 100 years ago.
Timewatch: The Germans We Kept (8.05 BBC2). More than 400,000 prisoners of war were held in Britain during the second world war: this is about those that stayed on afterwards.
SUnDAY January 9 Time Team (5.30 C4). Roman remains in Cirencester. (More Romans in Thursday's Meet the Ancestors.) Sunday Feature: Rhapsody of Rags (5.45 R3). Robert Burton (1577-1640), author of Anatomy of Melancholy - assessed by Kevin Jackson, Martin Dodsworth, Adam Phillips and others.
Mary Stuart (6.00 History Channel). Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots.
Monday January 10 University Challenge (8.00 BBC2). Durham versus North London.
Why Buildings Collapse (8.00 C4). Civil engineering series: part one includes the 1968 Ronan Point disaster and buildings ruined by recent Turkish earthquakes.
Twenty Minutes: John Ruskin (8.35 R3, also 8.10 Wednesday). Selections from Ruskin's writing introduced by Clive Wilmer.
Secrets of the Stone Age (9.00 C4). Looks as though anthropologist Richard Rudgley is going to take a reverse-chronology approach to the subject of Stone Age achievements in this new series. For part one, he goes backwards from the Egyptian pyramids to the earliest stone buildings in Malta, then to