What"s on the box this week?

'Bones" (Sky One, Thursday) - This crime drama starring David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel has been a perennial favourite with critics and audiences alike. Based on the successful Kathy Reichs" novels, the hit show has been described as a sexed up 'CSI" with humour, like 'Silence of the Lambs" mixed with 'Moonlighting", and possessing that magical Sam and Diane, Mulder and Scully, will they won"t they, opposites-attract quality. A huge success in the US, with a popular regular cast, 'Bones" has always recruited surprising guest stars including Ryan O"Neal, John Francis Daley, Heavy D and Britain"s own Stephen Fry who returns as psychiatrist Dr Gordon Wyatt in the episode 'Mayhem on a Cross". With his British wit, a curious sense of humour and a knack for rubbing FBI Agent Seeley Booth up the wrong way, Dr Wyatt is always a welcome addition to the team of squints at the Jeffersonian Institute. 'Afghanistan: Siege City" (CH4, Friday) - Reporter Peter Oborne and director Alex Nott travel to the Afghan capital to find a city under siege, with suicide bombings, shootings and kidnappings on the increase. Until recently, Kabul had largely escaped the violence that has plagued the rest of the country, but a resurgent Taliban and increasingly powerful criminal gangs are creating levels of instability and lawlessness that many liken to the period before the Taliban"s rise to power. One doctor tells Oborne that he was kidnapped by men who identified themselves as intelligence officers. They tortured him before demanding a $200,000 ransom. He claims the authorities never investigated the abduction and believes the police and government officials were involved. Improving women"s rights in Afghanistan is a key plank of UK and US policy. However, pupils at a girls" school tell the team that the security situation is reversing advances, with many parents now unwilling to let their daughters leave their houses to go to school, for fear of kidnapping, rape or suicide bombings. As the Taliban gains strength, many girls who took off their burkhas are now putting them back on. 'Islands Of Britain" (ITV, Sunday) - Martin Clunes embarks on an epic journey to search for island paradise in a new series charting his travels from the most northern tip of Britain to the southerly seas to visit some of the 1,000 or so islands off the country"s shores. In the three-part series, the actor explores hidden Britain - the stunning, wild, curious and culturally diverse islands around its coast, and listens to the fascinating stories of what life is like away from the mainland from the people who live there. 'I have always been fascinated by life on remote islands, and wanted to know what it is like to live there, and how the islanders cope with the isolation,' says Clunes. 'There are at least 1,000 islands off the coast of Britain. I wasn"t able to visit them all, but I was thrilled to have the chance to discover first-hand what living on an island is really like; paradise or not.' 'Living The Wildlife" (RTE 1, Tuesday) - Presenter Colin Stafford-Johnson takes to the road in his campervan home once again on a journey of discovery across the length and breadth of Ireland. As an Emmy-award winning wildlife cameraman, he has travelled the world filming the strange and the exotic, but has now returned home eager to document the nature that inspired him throughout his childhood. Between filming in a farmer"s shed in Cork, sleeping in ruined monastic settlements on a deserted island in Connemara and exploring the sands of Dublin Bay, he has a lot to contend with as he attempts to open eyes to the wildlife that is all around us. As he ponders on the arrival of Ireland¹s newest mammal, The Greater White Toothed Shrew (whose name is longer than it is), he also wonders at the incredible singing of humpback whales and reports on the mysterious disappearance of Ireland"s freshwater eel. Movie Of The Week: 'The Full Monty" (CH4, Wednesday) - Peter Cattaneo"s low-budget tale of unemployed Sheffield steelworkers putting on a striptease show stormed the box office on both sides of the Atlantic, and became one of the most successful British films ever made. The film skillfully interweaves laugh-out-loud scenes with the tragedy of unemployment in the prime of life and the subject of men pawning their dignity for economic survival.