TV Highlights

'The Business' (RTE 1, Friday, 8.45pm) - 'From Beer to Boxes to Pigs Ears' is the title of tonight's programme as George Lee visits five Irish businesses that are thriving during the recession. He finds out the secret of their success and reveals the five golden rules for starting up in a downturn. There are also be valuable business insights from some of the biggest players in Irish business, including Jerry Kennelly of Tweak.com, Domini Kemp of Itsa Bagel, Nicola Byrne (11890), Mary Ann O'Brien, Lily O'Brien's Chocolates, and Supermacs supremo, Pat McDonough. ___________________________________________________________ 'Monroe' (ITV, Thursday, 9pm) - 'Monroe' (James Nesbitt) is a brilliant neurosurgeon, a husband and a father. At work, he has the courage to perform cutting-edge brain surgery - operating on the very thing that makes us who we are. At home, he's afraid to admit that his life is falling apart. To his patients, he is the most powerful person in the world: the man with the power to change their lives forever. Yet he is also human, and every bit as flawed as he is brilliant. Nobody is more aware of Monroe's flaws than Jenny Bremner (Sarah Parish), a glacial cardiac surgeon with little time for Monroe and his emotional approach to his patients. Bremner is a closed book, but with the help of his best friend and anaesthetist Laurence Shepherd (Tom Riley), Monroe is determined to unearth her sense of humour. __________________________________________________________ 'The Kindness Of Strangers' (BBC 4, Friday, 7.30pm) - The fifth film in the Tony Palmer retrospective season explores the career of composer and pianist André Previn. He was born in Berlin in 1929 and emigrated in 1938 to the United States, where his family settled in Hollywood. The four-time Oscar winner's career reached a climax in 1998 with the world première of his first opera, 'A Streetcar Named Desire', at the San Francisco Opera. Previn talks openly about himself during the backstage trials and tribulations, from first rehearsals to opening night, as the film offers insights into his remarkable international life and career. The New York Times described 'The Kindness Of Strangers' as "a profoundly disquieting study of loneliness and the frailty of human relationships". __________________________________________________________ 'Families In The Wild' (RTE 1, Monday, 9.35pm) - This new series sees clinical psychologist David Coleman taking three individual families feeling the stresses and pressures of family life away from home to the isolation and tranquillity of the Kerry wilderness for a week of activities and therapy. Here, each family member has the opportunity to get a fresh perspective on how they get on with each other and, with Coleman's help, they can begin to understand each other's issues and needs as well as begin to communicate in a more positive way. After a week of David's help, as well as an action-packed week of activities, it is his hope that the families will return home with new-found communication skills which will help them to get on better on a daily basis and help improve their family life. At least, that's the plan….. __________________________________________________________ 'A Passage Through India' (ITV, Tuesday, 9pm) - This new series sees actress and TV presenter Caroline Quentin embark on a journey of discovery through one of the world's most remarkable and diverse countries. She travels over 4,000 miles from the far north of the country to Kanyakumari, in India's southernmost tip, exploring the contrasts of the country's landscape and the varied lives of its population. She experiences Indian society at every level, staying with local families throughout the journey, meeting everyone from Maharajas to mahouts, and gaining first-hand experience of unique elements of the country's richly diverse culture along the way. She encounters the extremes of wealth and poverty in India's most economically dynamic city, Mumbai, going designer clothes shopping with a glamorous Bollywood star and meeting a Mumbai slum family living under a piece of plastic sheeting whose plight moves her to tears. __________________________________________________________ Movie Of The Week: 'Walk The Line' (RTE 1, Wednesday, 9.35pm) - Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon co-star in this chronicle of country music legend Johnny Cash's life, from his early days on an Arkansas cotton farm to his rise to fame with Sun Records in Memphis, where he recorded alongside Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. She won the Oscar, but he should have, too, in this excellent movie about the Man In Black.