On the box
Monster: Frankenstein, ITV1, Wednesday at 21:00 BST
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Monday, 22, Oct 2007 05:16
We glance at this week's TV highlights, including a Panorama double, Frankenstein and Brat Camp: Mums and Daughters.
All times BST.
On Monday Panorama (20:30) journalist Andrew Jennings investigates whether England's potential World Cup 2018 bid is on the rocks due to the alleged levels of corruption within Fifa.
The programme uncovers what it claims is damning evidence implicating senior officials from football's governing body with corrupt practices and asks Fifa ethics committee head Lord Coe - the man who won London the Olympics - why he is not doing anything about it.
Half an hour before Panorama starts, Channel 4's Lost for Words season begins with Dispatches: Why Our Children Can't Read.
The hour-long documentary attempts to get to the bottom of why - by the government's own admission - one-fifth of children cannot read or write when they leave primary school.
Sticking with Channel 4, on Tuesday at 10:00 is Brat Camp: Mums and Daughters; a wily twist on a tried and tested formula.
In the programme four unbelievably-rude teenage madams and their long-suffering mothers are whisked away to the Arizona wilderness in a bid to heal their broken relationships.
Five continues its penchant for historical documentaries with The Family that Defied Hitler: Revealed at 20:00 on the same day, which, as the title suggests, reveals one of only two Jewish families thought to have survived the Nazi Holocaust of the second world war intact.
ITV1 gets in on the modern retelling act on Wednesday in Frankenstein (21:00), starring Helen McCrory, Neil Pearson, James Purefoy and Lindsay Duncan.
The one-off drama 'cleverly' brings Mary Shelley's classic gothic novel into the 21st century by making the eponymous Frankenstein a) female and b) a stem cell researcher.
On Thursday BBC1 takes centre stage again with Panorama special Kidnapped: The Alan Johnston Story (21:00).
In the film the BBC correspondent publicly discusses in detail for the first time the ordeal of his 114-day captivity in Gaza, which ended dramatically on July 4th this year.
The documentary also features the behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the BBC and the Foreign Office that led to the journalist's release.
On the same channel on Friday, comedy duo Armstrong and Miller (21:30) reunite for the first time in six years, with a raft of new material on show.
And on Saturday, flagship weekend shows The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing go head-to-head on ITV1 and BBC1 at 17:45.