Higher channels

John Davies gives the broadcasting output a quality audit (all times pm unless stated).

Pick of the week.

John Harvey Jones, whose Troubleshooter series in the late 1980s helped focus popular attention on British management shortcomings, is back. In Troubleshooter - Back in Business (Thursday 9.00 BBC2), he revisits two companies on whom he urged change ten years ago and finds that his advice was not really followed.

SATURDAY March 4.

Correspondent (6.45 BBC2). Investigating the US's 1988 killing of 290 people on an Iranian Airbus.

Bloodties (7.35 BBC2). Genealogy-tracers this week include a hangman's great-great-grandson and a canal boat family.

SUNDAY March 5.

The Real History Show (4.55 C4). Reconstructing a rural Yorkshire wedding of 1840, with Victorian expert Chris Brooks, costume historian Mark Wallis et al.

A Caribbean Blue (5.40 R4). Jamaican-born novelist Pat Cumper recalls her experiences as an archaeology student in Cambridge in the 1970s.

Sunday Feature: Boris Pasternak (5.45 R3). Memories of the Russian poet-novelist, plus readings from his work.

Time Team (6.00 C4). In search of Offa's palace, somewhere in Herefordshire.

Six Experiments that Changed the World (7.00 C4). "Faraday's Doughnut". Ken Campbell reconstructs some of Michael Faraday's experiments, with physicist Bryson Gore.

The Sunday Play: Kangaroo (7.30 R3). D. H. Lawrence's novel adapted by Australian playwright David Britton.

The Wyvern Mystery (9.00 BBC1). Sheridan Le Fanu's 1869 "gothic" novel dramatised in two parts by David Pirie.

The South Bank Show (10.45 ITV). Profile of US portrait artist Chuck Close.

The Sky at Night (1.55am BBC1). Binary stars, with Chris Kitchin of University of Hertfordshire Observatory.

MONDAY March 6.

Sister Carrie (10.45am, repeated 7.45 R4). Adaptation in 15 episodes of Theodore Dreiser's classic of American realism.

Breaking the Seal (7.30 BBC2). Looking at the records of England's church courts.

Night Waves (9.30 R3). The lasting impact of Nanook of the North. Plus the start of a week-long series in which UK-based novelists praise foreign fiction, beginning with Lawrence Norfolk on Robert Musil.

TUESDAY March 7.

Discord - Music and Dissent (1.30 R4). Peter Ainsworth's series on musical creativity and conscience turns to Beethoven.

Ape-man (9.00 BBC2). What kind of hominid remains did Kamoya Kimeu and Richard Leakey find at Kenya's Lake Turkana? Experts include Alan Walker (Penn State) and Anne McLarnon (Surrey University).

WEDNESDAY March 8.

Frontiers (9.00 R4). Frozen submarine methane, the latest global warming threat.

Children of Drugs (9.30 BBC1). Drugs and youth - part of a "Kick the Habit" season.

Night Waves (9.30 R3). The London School of Economics's Richard Sennett on changes in urban life.

THURSDAY March 9.

The Material World (4.30 R4). Ultrasound and blind people, with research from Deborah Withington and Dean Waters of Leeds.

Leading Edge (9.00 R4). Geoff Watts on the Foundation for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experimentation.

Troubleshooter - Back in Business (9.00 BBC2). See pick of the week.

Horizon: Is GM Safe? (9.30 BBC2). The history and science behind the controversy over genetic modification.

More programme info can be found at: www.thesis.co.uk. Email: Davieses@aol.com.