After Life

Couples Therapy 

Monday 

BBC Two, 9pm 

Viewers get to take an intimate look into the hidden world of other people’s relationships. 

University Challenge

BBC Two

Monday, 8.30pm

The grand finale of the 49th edition of University Challenge promises a clash of the titans between Cambridge’s Corpus Christi College and Imperial College London.

What happened in series one?

Series one introduced journalist Tony (Ricky Gervais), a man whose life is turned upside down when his wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman) dies from breast cancer.

Overtaken by grief and unable to move on, Tony considers suicide but instead decides to live a life doing and saying whatever he wants, regardless of who he offends.

Talking to his therapist, he remarks that a good day for him is "when he doesn’t want to shoot random strangers and then turn the gun on himself”.

Comedy, the late, great Tony Hancock would often tell his dinner guests, was simply “frustration, misery, boredom, worry – all the things people suffer from”.

This may go some way to explaining the success of a crop of deceptively simple, single-camera comedy-dramas that have all but replaced our more traditional idea of the sitcom in the television schedules.