What's on the box this week?

Five Decades Of Roses' (RTE 1, Monday) - For half a century, a small town in County Kerry has hosted an annual pageant celebrating the qualities of Irish women. For a week each August, the Rose festival plays host to thousands of visitors in Tralee, and is seen by millions of people around the world - often via footage shot by Irish immigrant families. Yet, despite its undoubted success, The Rose of Tralee Festival has met with criticism along with the praise. Some even wonder why it still draws the crowds. Yet, through emigration, feminism, recession and boom times, women from around the world have travelled to Ireland in the hope of being crowned the 'Rose of Tralee'. 'Five Decades of Roses' is a documentary celebrating this major anniversary in Irish life told through the eyes of five Roses (one from each decade). They include the 1959 Rose, Alice O'Sullivan; Orla Burke, the 1977 Rose; Brenda Hyland, the title-holder in 1983; Kirsty Flynn, the 1993 Rose, and Roisin Egenton, the Millennium Rose of Tralee, crowned in August 2000. ___________________________________________________________ 'Bus Pass Bullfighter' (Ch4, Friday) - Frank 'El Ingles' Evans is Britain's only professional matador. In 2005, he retired from the sport under doctors' orders to undergo knee replacement surgery and later a quadruple heart bypass. But last year, Frank announced that he was making a comeback to the bullring at the age of 65. This film follows his progress over a three-month period as he prepares to enter the dangerous and controversial world of professional bullfighting once again. The son of a Manchester butcher, who was inspired to bullfight after reading about 1940s and '50s British matador Vincent Charles Hitchcock, Frank became the only Englishman to achieve the 'Matador de Toros' accolade. After practising with a cape in a park in Salford, he travelled to Spain to fight his way into bullfighting school and went on to surprise Spanish crowds, confounded at the sight of the sunburnt Englishman performing. He claimed his first bull in Montpellier, France, in 1966. During his long career, he sustained two broken legs, multiple rib fractures and a gored anus. Frank might be an old man, but there is a lot of fight left in him. "At the end of the day, I only want to be looked upon as a bullfighter," Frank says, "Not some old codger who's got a heart condition and a metal knee." ___________________________________________________________ 'The Cube' (ITV, Saturday) - Phillip Schofield hosts this new game show which tests contestants' skill, nerve and determination to win. 'The Cube' will challenge members of the public to attempt apparently simple tasks under the spotlight in a large perspex cube - intensifying the pressure. With each task worth a cash prize, the challenger will have to keep their nerve in this high-pressure game of skill and strategy to move higher up the board and closer to the top prize of £250,000. The challenges range from tasks of agility to seemingly straightforward trials such as bouncing a ball into a bin, or stopping a clock at precisely 10 seconds. 'The Cube' features state-of-the-art filming techniques to illustrate the intense pressure felt by the contestants. Each player starts with nine lives and has to complete up to seven tasks to win the jackpot, but if they accept the challenge and lose all their lives, they leave with nothing. 'Rivers With Griff Rhys Jones' (BBC 1, Sunday) - Griff Rhys Jones ends his journey through Britain's rivers by exploring East Anglia in this week's concluding episode, where he follows in the footsteps of generations of locals and paddling into hidden backwaters, as he visits the waterways of the East. "I'm going to be crossing three distinct watery worlds, from the Fens to the Broads and back to my home in Suffolk, via the Stour - the East Anglian river I know best," says Griff. "All three show the conflicting demands we make on our waterways." He asks how, with conflicting interest groups including farmers, anglers, canoeists, industry and nature lovers, the future of Britain's rivers is decided. It's a question of equal importance for Ireland. ___________________________________________________________ Movie Of The Week: 'Miss Congeniality' (RTE 1, Wednesday) - Starring Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Caine and Candice Bergen. When a serial killer indicates that his next target is the Miss United States beauty pageant, the FBI puts in an undercover agent as a participant in the contest, replacing the unfortunate Miss New Jersey, who was found to have dabbled in porno movies. This is the kind of comedy Bullock does best - a bumbling cop with some snappy one-liners.