Stacey Dooley steps into the travel genre for a new series that takes her to overlooked corners of Australia, The Guardian reports in its television listings for Sunday evening. The opening episode follows her to Kangaroo Island, a scenic location that was badly damaged during the bushfires of 2019–20. The programme examines how the island's remarkable wildlife is recovering, and Dooley meets a couple who started a sanctuary for orphaned baby kangaroos after the fires left them feeling adrift, according to The Guardian.
Why it matters
The listing places Dooley's programme alongside a schedule that ranges from natural history to comedy, drama and live sport. Her move into travel presenting is notable because the subject she explores — a community rebuilding after a devastating fire season — gives the format a documentary edge rather than a simple sightseeing tour. The Guardian's preview frames the episode around recovery, both of the island's animals and of the people who stayed to care for them.
What else is on
The Guardian also flags the final episode of a children's adaptation stuffed with comedians, based on Eric Morecambe's book. Young prince Valentine, played by Lenny Rush, faces a decision as his vampire coming-of-age ceremony approaches: admit that he is human, or gamble on a pretence of being a bloodsucker. The Guardian describes the series as boisterous.
Natural history viewers get another immersive instalment of Blue Planet III, this time set in the open oceans. The Guardian points to rough-toothed dolphins, which hunt in packs without stress, and the mola mola, or sun fish, which alternates between being cleaned by other fish and basking in the sun.
On the drama front, The Guardian reports that Michael Kavanagh and Diana receive an unwelcome call from Spain, and that the week also brings an engagement party for Jamie and Melissa. The Phelans strike a deal with Ozzie Thompson, and the question is whether that earns him an invitation.
Bob and Paul head to Shetland, the northernmost destination they have visited, in an episode where fishing takes a back seat to meandering conversation. The pair discuss school trips and teenage drinking, and Bob flies a kite, according to The Guardian.
In another drama, tension runs high between the Kirkmans and the Brookes following a fire at the school. The Guardian notes that longing glances continue between Dominic Cooper's Tom and Romola Garai's Beth, even after his admission in the previous episode that he wishes he had never met her.
Film viewers can catch Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot. The Guardian describes it as close to perfect: two jazz musicians, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, witness a gangland shooting inspired by the St Valentine's Day massacre and go on the run, joining a touring all-female band whose singer is Marilyn Monroe's Sugar Kane. Curtis's character pursues Sugar while impersonating Cary Grant, and Lemmon's is courted by a determined millionaire.
The Guardian also highlights the feature debut of Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares, set in a near-future London that could pass for the present. Residents of a run-down but close-knit estate, most of them Black, resist violent eviction attempts. The solitary Izi, played by Kane Robinson, wants out until he meets Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) at the funeral home where he works; the boy may be his son. A rival father figure appears in Staples (Hope Ikpoku Jr), a vigilante leader in the Robin Hood mould.
Sport fills the afternoon. Crystal Palace face Liverpool at 12.30pm on Sky Sports Main Event, with Manchester United against Aston Villa at 4.25pm. In rugby's Nations Championship, England host Australia at 2pm on ITV1, with Maro Itoje captaining the home side at Twickenham, The Guardian reports.
A schedule built on contrast
Taken together, the evening's lineup moves between catastrophe and comfort. Dooley's Kangaroo Island episode deals with the aftermath of fire, while Blue Planet III offers ocean life undisturbed by human events. The drama strand trades in friction between neighbours and families, and the Wilder comedy supplies farce as relief. The Guardian's selections suggest a night weighted toward real places and real animals, with fiction on hand for those who want it.
For viewers deciding what to watch, the Dooley programme is the one with the clearest news hook: a landscape and its wildlife measured against the damage of a few years ago, and the people who responded by building a refuge. The Guardian's preview does not say how the recovery is faring; that answer is left to the episode itself.
Dooley's series begins with Kangaroo Island, and further episodes are expected to visit other neglected parts of Australia, according to The Guardian.
