Weekend View: TV highlights: Friday to Sunday

If you'r e going no further than the sofa, here are some tips on what's worth watching on the box over the weekend. It's a busy one!

Pick of the weekend

Blind Date, 9.00pm, Sunday, TV3

Al Porter looks like the ideal host for this Irish revival of the hugely popular date show that ran on ITV from 1995 to 2003.

Pre-school teacher Dionne O’Brien (34) from Cork is looking for her ideal date. On the other side of that screen are three hopeful lads: Gary O’Farrell (30), a pipe fitter from Kilkenny, Keith Tougher (32) the lead singer in a Prodigy tribute band and personal trainer David Mulligan (34) from Dublin.

Also looking for love is personal trainer Gary O’Grady (27) from Tallaght. His tempting trio are Niamh (22), a make-up artist from Leixlip, Jennifer Greally (24) is from Tara in Meath and has entered a number of beauty pageants, and Ciara Noone (22) from Blanchardstown is feisty and doesn’t mince her words.

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New and returning shows

Modern Family, 8.30pm, Friday, Sky One

It’s the season nine premiere and patriarch Jay forces the family to holiday on a houseboat. The aim is to create wonderful memories that will last long after he’s gone but, as always, it’s never plain sailing for the Pritchett-Dunphy-Tuckers.

For the kids, life on the lake isn’t quite as fun as they had hoped. Mitchell runs into an old flame and Cam can’t go in the sun. Meanwhile, Phil and Claire try to make the most of their surroundings by trying out some rather adventurous excursions.

Porridge, 9.30pm, Friday, BBC One

The legendary BBC comedy is back, with a new series commissioned off the back of last year's sitcom season special, which sees Kevin Bishop return as Nigel 'Fletch' Fletcher.

He plays the grandson of Ronnie Barker’s iconic character Norman Stanley Fletcher, banged up in Wakeley prison for a series of cybercrimes whilst trying to escape the attentions of wily Officer Meekie (Mark Bonnar) and the softer Officer Braithwaite (Dominic Coleman).

Helping Fletch get through his stretch are his cellmate and prison elder statesman, Joe Lotterby (Dave Hill) and fellow inmates Aziz (Harman Singh), Shell (Jason Barnett) and prison tough guy Scudds (Ricky Grover).

Have I Got News for You, 9.00pm, Friday, BBC One

Back for what seems like its 500th season – it's only number 54 – the granddad of satirical panel quiz shows returns for yet another run.

Long-serving team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop are back once more, and the opener sees Alexander Armstrong return to host the show and pop the questions.

Sing: Ultimate A Capella, 9.00pm, Friday, Sky 1

Just what the world needs right now: another talent show.

Cat Deeley hosts as 30 groups take to the stage at London’s Troxy in the UK’s first vocals-only entertainment show.

Using beatboxing, harmonies, choreography and more, they’ll showcase interpretations of songs by artists from Bowie to the Backstreet Boys, all in the hope of winning the chance to record an album at the famous Abbey Road Studios.

Nile Rodgers: How to Make it in the Music Business, 9.00pm, Friday, BBC 4

The multiple Grammy-award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer reveals the secrets of his success, what it takes to make it to the very top of the music industry and how to stay relevant, decade after decade.

In this three-part series, Rodgers guides viewers through his musical legacy and reveals the source of the inspiration for many of his songs - including the time he was turned away from iconic nightclub Studio 54, which led him to write the classic disco hit Le Freak.

Basquiat – Rage to Riches, Saturday, 9.00pm, BBC Two

This film features exclusive interviews with the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s two sisters, Lisane and Jeanine Basquiat, and others who have never before talked about him and his art for a TV documentary.

With striking candour, art world colleagues and his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists draw a portrait of a handsome, charismatic and fragile personality - and spill the beans on the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat encountered.

Chris & Kem: Straight Outta Love Island, 9.00pm, Saturday, 3e

Chris Hughes and Kem Cetinay’s from Love Island go inside The Apprentice house, worth about €15 million and nestled in Simon Cowell's postcode.

The Stormzy-loving pair will join forces to examine the world of rap, grime and hip-hop in this two-part series, as they build up towards their first ever live performance.

I bet you can't wait.

Performance Live: Missing Episode, 10.30pm, Saturday, BBC Two

Info on this one-off is rather sketchy, but it certainly looks interesting and may be particularly attractive to fans of EastEnders.

It's not actually a 'missing' episode, and more one getting messed around with, as experimental poet Ross Sutherland remixes a vintage episode of the BBC One soap opera.

Louis Theroux: Dark States - Heroin Town, 9.00pm, Sunday, BBC Two

In Huntington, West Virginia, Louis Theroux embeds himself in an Appalachian community devastated by heroin and stretched to its limits by widespread hard drug abuse.

With one in ten babies in the city born dependent on opiates and a fatal overdose rate 13 times the national average, this is the epicentre of the most deadly drug epidemic in US history.

He spends time with the user community caught in the vice-like grip of drug misuse and follows the emergency services struggling to cope with multiple overdoses each day.

The Gifted, 9.00pm, Sunday, Fox

This new Marvel drama stars Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker and is connected to the X-Men film series, set in an alternate timeline where the X-Men have disappeared.

Moyer and Acker play ordinary parents who take their family on the run after they discover their children's mutant abilities.

Comic book fans should lap this up - if the trailer is anything to go by . . .

Snowfall, 11.35pm, Sunday, BBC Two

Following an ensemble cast of characters, Snowfall explores the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and the major impact it had on American society and culture.

In episode one, meet Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) a young, South Central street entrepreneur as he takes a leap into the cocaine game.

Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), a disgruntled CIA operative, allies with a Contra soldier to begin an off-book operation to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.

Gustavo 'El Oso' Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) a Luchador Mexican wrestler makes inroads with Lucia Villanueva (Emily Rios), the daughter of a Mexican cartel family with ambitions of her own.

Looks pretty good too:

Ending this weekend

Escape to the Chateau, 7.00pm, Sunday, Channel 4

It's a very quiet weekend for final shows, but here the delightfully-named Dick and Angel Strawbridge prepare for eight weddings, transforming their Citroen into a stunning mobile bar, and clearing 150 years of rubbish from their stone barn.

New to Download

Suburra, Netflix, from Friday

Season one of this Italian-French neo-noir mafia thriller is now available on Netflix, who co-shared the show's production costs with Italian public service TV station RAI.

Filippo Malgradi is an Italian MP currently involved in a bill to change the classification of certain administrative areas; he wants approval for a real estate project so that Ostia, on the coast near Rome, could be turned into a Las Vegas-like city.

He has close relations with a local crime boss, a former right-wing terrorist turned criminal who also has very deep interests in the real estate project. Samurai has privileged ties to the Vatican Bank, who will finance the project and profit immensely from it.

Gomorrah comes to Rome!

Don't Miss

The Graham Norton Show, 10.35pm, Friday, BBC One/9.45pm, Saturday, TV3

This week's guest are Kate Winslet and Idris Elba, who are into plug their new film, The Mountain Between Us, US comedian Chris Rock, and former Oasis front man Liam Gallagher.

Here's Reese Witherspoon from last week:

Weekend movies

T2 Trainspotting, Sky Cinema on demand and Sky Cinema Premiere, from Friday

Two decades on from director Danny Boyle’s seminal black comedy, the gang return to Edinburgh to once again give the mundanity of modern life a good kicking.

This time Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge take aim at middle-age, friendship and nostalgia.

As Mark ‘Rent Boy’ Renton (Ewan McGregor) arrives back in Scotland for the first time since the gang’s big trip to London hoping to make amends, he finds not much has changed.

Ewen Bremner’s Spud is still gripped by heroin addiction, while Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy is running a prostitution and extortion racket.

Robert Carlyle’s Begbie, meanwhile, has been behind bars for the last two decades, allowing his anger with Renton to gently simmer into a furious desperation for revenge.

Also:

Planet of the Apes, 2.05pm, Sunday, Sky Cinema Greats

Now almost 50 years old, this classic sci-fi movie stars Charlton Heston as the US astronaut who heads for the future and ends up on a planet where humans are ruled by apes.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 11.05pm, Sunday, Channel 4

Not to be confused with the classic original starring Danny Kaye, this 2013 version sees Ben Stiller in the eponymous role, an assets manager whose head is filled with daydreams and a desire for co-worker Kirsten Wiig.

Weekend Box Set

Happy Valley, Netflix

This multi-award-winning BBC drama is one of the best TV shows of the last decade, with Sarah Lancashire putting in a career-defining shift as Catherine Cawood, a strong-willed police sergeant in West Yorkshire.

She's coming to terms with the suicide of her teenage daughter eight years earlier. Now divorced, Cawood is living with her sister Clare (Siobhan Finneran), a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, who is helping her bring up Becky's young son, the product of rape.

It's no barrel of laughs, but Happy Valley is superbly written and the cast is outstanding.

The first two seasons are available on Netflix, so if you missed them first time around on the Beeb or RTÉ, here's your chance to catch up with this modern classic.

Weekend View: TV highlights: Friday to Sunday

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