David Tennant On UK TV Tonight

Two David Tennant programmes première on UK TV tonight, both showing on BBC Two.

At 10.00pm David narrates the latest installment of Twenty Twelve. In episode 6, 'Inclusivity Day' we catch up with the Olympic Deliverance Committee as the London 2012 Games creep ever closer.

Episode information:

Having been shot in the foot with a doctored starting pistol, head of deliverance Ian Fletcher discovers that he is also shortly to be without a PA as current PA Daniel Stroud has been offered another job.

Back over at the offices of the ODC they try to work out how to launch Inclusivity Day in London on the same day that Seb Coe is launching Diversity Day in Oldham, when even though both Boris Johnson and Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson have agreed to take part, no-one knows what Inclusivity Day is.

Meanwhile over at PR company Perfect Curve, Siobhan Sharpe and her team devise a viral campaign designed to change the face of women's football without mentioning women's football following catastrophic ticket sales. The clock ticks on.

Twenty Twelve can also be seen on BBC HD and is repeated on Sunday 22nd July at 11.30pm.

At 11.20pm, David turns documentary presenter for the final episode of  Shakespeare Uncovered: David Tennant On Hamlet. In the series of hour-long programmes, six Shakespearean actors and directors have examined some of the Bard's greatest plays to discover the meanings behind them and why they continue to appeal to audiences today. From the BBC programme page:

In Hamlet, David Tennant, whose own RSC performance was a huge hit, meets other actors who have played the role - from the legendary David Warner in the 1960s to the recent Jude Law. He also tries, alongside Simon Russell Beale and Ben Whishaw, to unravel the meaning of the play and the reason why it is considered by many to be the greatest play Shakespeare ever wrote.

David Tennant surprised when he took on the role of Hamlet - most did not know that he had trained in and worked for many years at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But that didn't mean he wasn't scared stiff at the prospect of taking on the legendary role. Now he takes up the challenge of unravelling the story and trying to uncover what it is about it that has made Hamlet the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays.

He revisits his own performance, alongside his director Greg Doran, and he meets up with other actors who have tackled the role. With the historian Justin Champion he tries to enter the mindset of the 16th century audiences who would have watched this story and he discovers how different generations of actors, directors and scholars have interpreted the play.

What he discovers is that Hamlet is a play full of questions rather than answers - but they are the questions we all continue to ask ourselves to this day. Questions about who to believe, who to trust, how to live and how to love, how to understand life and how to face death. What all the actors who have played it seem to share is that the process of acting the role is deeply and profoundly personal - and perhaps that is why audiences also feel that the play touches them more than any other play before or since.

The episode is repeated on BBC HD on Wednesday 18th July at 11.50pm