(All time pm unless stated)
Conquistadors (9.00 BBC2; 9.30 in Wales). “The Fall of the Aztecs.” Michael Wood starts a four-part travelogue-history series on the 16th-century Spaniards who overran central and south America. The stories of Hernan Cortes and the collapse of the Aztec empire are told first. Because Wood has travelled the route that Cortes took, from Yucatan to what is now Mexico City – and seems to have endured some of the same awful weather – the present day sometimes gets more of a look-in than the history, but the programme does a reasonable job of giving the basic facts.
Night Waves (9.45 R3). On Woody Allen et al .
Meetings with Remarkable Trees (9.50 BBC2; 10.20 in Wales). You don’t have to be a dendrophile to enjoy this series. Featured today is the Duke of Wellington’s American-derived Wellingtonia redwood, a testament to the era of the "great white plant hunters going around the world" (in the words of forester Tony Russell). » trees on the web