Higher channels

John Davies scans the schedules. (All times pm unless stated.) friday march 5

Pinochet and Allende: Anatomy of a Coup (10.00 Discovery Channel). Eyewitness accounts and contemporary footage of the events of September 1973, when the military overthrew Salvador Allende. A Canadian-French co-production made last year.

News at Ten (10.00 ITV). The last ITN ten-o'clock bulletin. (See also Sunday C4.) SaturDAY march 6

Descendants - The Strange Tale of Lafcadio Hearn (2.30 R4). Journalist Richard Dowden on his ancestor Hearn (1850-1904), a writer considerably better known in Japan than in the West.

Cold War (8.15 BBC2). "Detente 1969-75": SALT; a Vietnam peace deal; the Helsinki Declaration.

Mapping the World (9.30 World Service, repeated Sunday 5.30). Four-part series begins by asking if animals can have mental maps. Later programmes examine the politics, history, literature and technology of mapmaking.

sunDAY March 7

The Sunday Feature: Settling the Score (5.45 R3). Changing attitudes to teaching and learning music this century.

Time Team (6.00 C4). An Iron Age village in the Malvern Hills.

Access All Areas: The Down's Syndrome (7.30 C4). Does the medical profession discriminate against people with Down's?

And Finally (8.00 C4). A look back at over 30 years of ITV's News at Ten, with lots of archive footage, of course.

Shanghai Vice (9.00 C4). More about life and death in Shanghai, plus an earthquake in Lijiang, location of Phil Agland's previous documentary series, Beyond the Clouds.

Now That History Hasn't Ended (10.45 R4). John Gray on living with political instability.

Heart of the Matter (11.30 BBC1; 12 midnight in N Ireland). More argument about genetically modified foods.

monDAY March 8

Cutting Edge: Asylum (9.00 C4). Poignant documentary on the conversion of Friern Barnet mental hospital into a residential "gated community", with the views of its former and prospective inhabitants.

Postscript (9.20 R3). Five specially commissioned radio poems begin with George Szirtes's "Lullaby on Broadway". He is followed by Michael Hofmann (Tues); Mark Beeson (Wed); Ken Smith (Thurs); and Peter Reading (Fri). Why no women poets?

tueSDAY March 9

Virus - The Unseen Enemy (9.00 R4). Ebola and other new diseases.

Close Up: Jackson Pollock (9.30 BBC2).

Night Waves (10.45 R3). Richard Coles talks to Germaine Greer.

wednesDAY March 10

University Challenge (8.00 BBC2). Sheffield vs Trinity College, Cambridge.

A Living Hell (11.20 BBC2). Lewis Wolpert continues to explore the roots and treatment of depression. This week's experts include academic psychiatrists Ian Goodyer (Cambridge), Linda Gask (Manchester) and Wayne Drevets (Pittsburgh).

thursDAY March 11

In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg (9.00am R4). Ecologist Jared Diamond and historian Richard J. Evans on the possibility of global history.

What If? (8.00 R4). Counterfactuals with Christopher Andrew. First question: what if there had been no Great Fire of London?

Horizon: New Star in Orbit (9.30 BBC2). The story so far of the International Space Station - the biggest, most expensive object ever built. What is it for?

Email. Daviesesaol.com