What"s on the box this week?

'Charlie Bird"s Arctic Journey" (RTE 1, Monday) - Completing his dog sled journey with a spectacular polar bear encounter, the intrepid RTE reporter bids farewell to his Inuit guide and heads for Siberia. On his second major Arctic journey, he joins the most powerful nuclear icebreaker in the world and heads north from Russia on a voyage to the North Pole. Driven by two nuclear reactors, the ship can carve through ice up to three metres thick and takes just five days to reach the Pole. En route, Bird will visit some of the most remote islands in the world, Franz Josef Land, home to teeming wildlife and abandoned Cold War lookout posts. Finally, on day six, he descends onto the ice of the North Pole and stands on this mythical spot. 'The Life And Times Of Tim" (RTE 2, Thursday) - What happens when your girlfriend comes home before your hooker has left? How do you convince the police you weren"t really raped by a bum during a bachelor party? What do you do when a priest asks you to object to a wedding, as a prank? What happens when your boss orders you to change your ethnicity in order to meet his corporate quotas? In a new adult animation series from HBO meet Tim, an ordinary guy who makes a habit out of misunderstanding. 'Dodi Al-Fayed: What Really Happened?" (Channel 4, Thursday) - On 6th September 1997, two and a half billion people watched the funeral of Princess Diana. Six weeks later, there was another funeral. This time, there were no cameras and just a handful of mourners.This funeral was for Dodi Al-Fayed. In death, two different pictures of Dodi emerged: a talented man who"d won an Oscar for his first film, who was loved by family and friends; then came dark and salacious rumours of drugs and womanising. Meeting those close to Dodi, journalist Jacques Peretti asks who he was and how did he end up with Diana. 'Folk America" (BBC 4, Friday) - 'Folk America" is a landmark documentary series which tells the epic story of the American folk revival from the 1920s to the '60s, and how nostalgia for a lost past became bound up with the idea of progress - or why America wears blue jeans. The opening episode, 'Birth Of A Nation", focuses on a golden age for American music when artists such as the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Poole and Dock Boggs burst onto the recording scene, eager to share in the riches of the new record industry. The series continues with 'This Land Is Your Land", covering the increasingly political side of folk after the Depression, featuring the emergence of Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. It concludes with 'Blowin" In The Wind", which details how folk was picked up by the likes of The Kingston Trio, before Bob Dylan and Joan Baez took over and a new generation threw themselves into the civil rights movement, their equivalent of the idealism of the singers of the '30s and '40s. Contributors to the series include Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Odetta, Tom Paxton, John Sebastian, Roger McGuinn, Robbie Robertson, Country Joe and members of The Kingston Trio, The Mamas And The Papas and Peter, Paul And Mary. Movie Of The Week: 'Tara Road" (RTE 1, Wednesday) - Starring Andie MacDowell, Olivia Williams, Iain Glen and Stephen Rea, this adaptation of a Maeve Binchy book is all one would expect with drama and romance mixed in a stew that pulls you in from the start. Set in a Dublin where the sun shines far too regularly, the lives of a diverse cast intertwine in a tale that"s light and frothy, but still makes the Auld Sod look very appealing.