1. Bri­an Cox’s Night With The Stars – BBC2 9pm, Sun 18^th.

With his recent book on Quan­tum Physics mak­ing it abun­dant­ly clear that the poster boy of pop­u­lar sci­ence is first and fore­most a seri­ous sci­en­tist, this one hour spe­cial is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for him to open up that dizzy­ing­ly com­plex area to the gen­er­al public.

Any­one lucky enough to have seen either his Won­ders of The Solar Sys­tem, or the sub­se­quent Won­ders of The Uni­verse (see below) will know that this the one man capa­ble of mak­ing the Quan­tum uni­verse gen­uine­ly excit­ing and ever so slight­ly less opaque.

2. The Con­formist – Channel4 230am, Monday/Tuesday 19/20^th.

A rare chance to see (or at least to record) Bertolucci’s sem­i­nal film from 1970. Osten­si­bly the sto­ry of a man who just wants to fit in, and who there­fore joins the Ital­ian Fas­cists in the 1930s, the ordi­nar­i­ness of his wish­es are con­tin­u­al­ly under­cut by the film’s rich­ly stylised and self-con­scious­ly Brecht­ian por­tray­al of the world he inhabits.

Huge­ly influ­en­tial, the film’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vit­to­rio Storaro was prompt­ly poached by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, for whom he went on to shoot The God­fa­thers I and II, Apoc­a­lypse Now and One From The Heart. For­get the fact that Bertoluc­ci went on to prove him­self quite the most over-rat­ed film mak­er of his gen­er­a­tion. Sit back and lux­u­ri­ate in this opu­lent style fest.

3. The Art of The Night – BBC4 9pm, Wed 21^st.

Walde­mar Janusz­cak, the bril­liant art crit­ic for the Sun­day Times, has been pro­duc­ing exem­plary pro­grammes on art and artists for over 15 years now. Most famous­ly, he and John Richard­son pro­duced the peer­less Picas­so: Mag­ic, Sex and Death, and most recent­ly with The Impres­sion­ists (reviewed ear­li­er here). So this one hour spe­cial on Rem­brandt, Velázquez, Van Gogh and co. is not to be missed.

4. Oth­er Voic­es NYC – RTE2 805pm, Christ­mas Day.

The only out­let for alter­na­tive music any­where on Irish tele­vi­sion, this (pre­sum­ably tem­po­rary) move from Din­gle to New York should play into the show’s strengths, by fur­ther high­light­ing the com­mu­nal roots that Irish and Amer­i­can music mine and share.

5. The John­ny Cash Christ­mas Show – BBC4 950pm, Christ­mas Day.

John­ny Cash joined by Roy Orbi­son, Carl Perkins, The Ever­ly Broth­ers and of course the Carter fam­i­ly for a 1970 Christ­mas spe­cial. Enough said.

6. For One Night Only – The Dublin­ers – RTE1 1030pm, Christ­mas Day.

The 50^th anniver­sary of their com­ing togeth­er, and a cel­e­bra­tion of the release of the orig­i­nal line-up’s first three albums. A rare treat.

7. Won­ders Of The Uni­verse – BBC4 7pm night­ly. Mon 26^th-Thu29th.

For any­one who missed it first time around, here’s anoth­er chance to see Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Cox’s pleas­ing­ly dense overview of what we now know about the uni­verse, and how we now know it. And don’t be put off by the some­what pon­der­ous first half hour. From then on in, it’s glo­ri­ous­ly detailed and hap­pi­ly sci­ence heavy (reviewed ear­li­er here).