This is grim, gut-punching viewing. But it can’t represent the sheer extent of the carnage

The concept of “balance” in BBC reporting is a cornerstone of the corporation’s journalistic ethos, but it may well come to be seen as a key factor in its decline. On everything from Brexit to climate change, the obsession with giving equal exposure to each participant in an unequal dispute has proven to be a poison. So it is with The Darkest Days: Israel-Gaza Six Months On, an assiduous application of the BBC’s famed ability to see both sides.

The process of distribution here is stark. The Darkest Days is split into two separate programmes, bookended by brief remarks from the BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet. Equal time is given to the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas, during which Israeli authorities say about 1,140 people were killed, and the six months of attacks on Gaza that followed, during which Palestinian authorities say at least 33,000 people have been killed so far.

This interview format is a breath of fresh air: funny, endearing, novel – and the Welsh actor is charm personified. Expect tears, laughter and unexpected celebrity beatboxing

First question: “Was John Taylor from Duran Duran your first ever crush?” Answer: “I thought he was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, man or woman. His hair was like a miracle.” And so begins The Assembly, in which 35 autistic, neurodivergent and learning disabled people quiz one Michael Sheen, the award-winning Welsh actor. I think we can safely assume in more than three decades of interviews that Sheen has never been asked whether he knows “anything about the long-term celebrity Tom Jones?” It’s a question that leads to an anecdote about Sheen bonding with the Welsh singer’s sister over a broken toe in hospital in LA. You won’t find this sort of thing in Sight and Sound magazine.

I love the concept of this special, which airs during Autism Acceptance Week at a time when diagnosis is increasing and support has never been more stretched. The Assembly is simple and profound. I say this as the parent of a 10-year-old autistic boy who asks me about 100 questions a day, the revolving top two of which this week are: “Can we go skiing?” (we’ve never been) and “are you wearing tights?” (a sensory thing). My son loves to ask highly specific questions as much as neurotypical people in positions of power love to evade them. As for answering them? Not so much. He didn’t, indeed couldn’t, answer questions for years. He still answers very few, and finds open-ended ones especially overwhelming, incomprehensible, meaningless – or perhaps has entirely another feeling about them that I don’t yet understand.

The Assembly aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer.

The final part of a trilogy of documentaries about the TV presenter’s husband’s battle with Covid is honest, sweet and unsentimental. It’s a beautiful testament to the miracle of love

There are several miracles on show in Kate Garraway: Derek’s Story, the final part of what has become a trilogy of documentaries since the TV presenter’s husband, former Labour adviser Derek Draper, was felled by the catastrophic consequences of Covid four years ago.

The first is the absolute resistance by the makers of any temptation to wallow in the sadness. Like Garraway herself, all the films have been brisk, to the point, honest and deeply loving. This last part, despite covering the final year of Draper’s life, is as short, punchy and sweet as all the others.

Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed spent four years following the circus created by the rightwing TV host after he claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting never happened

There is a statistic dropped into the middle of the new HBO documentary about Alex Jones and his conspiracy-laden campaign to deny the Sandy Hook school massacre that is so startling it changes the complexion of the film.

It’s tempting to see the blustering alt-right InfoWars host as little more than a charlatan selling snake oil conspiracies to the fringes of American society. But then The Truth vs Alex Jones tells us that one in four Americans believes Jones’s claim that the 2012 murder of 20 small children and six staff at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, never happened.

Ade Adepitan makes a brave attempt to understand South African racial separatists; GoT’s creators deliver a mind-blowing sci-fi epic; Kristen Wiig tries to infiltrate a Palm Beach elite; and vaping goes under the microscope

Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure Channel 4 | channel4.com
3 Body Problem Netflix
Palm Royale Apple TV+
Jordan North: The Truth About Vaping (BBC Three) | iPlayer

Where to start with the Channel 4 documentary Whites Only: Ade’s Extremist Adventure? It’s one of the tensest you are likely to see all year. British Paralympian Ade Adepitan is the first black person to stay (for a week) in the South African whites-only Afrikaner town of Orania . In a global climate of attacks on multiculturalism, Adepitan asks if “racial separatism can ever be justified”.

A four-part docuseries details allegations tied to Dan Schneider’s time at the network when hit programs The Amanda Show, iCarly and Drake & Josh aired

Even in an unprecedented era of vigilance following the exposure of sexual predators Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, the #MeToo movement and revelations from the Adult Survivors Act , Hollywood retains its capacity to shock. The latest scandal swept through tinseltown like a tornado this week – and it was not a good look for Nickelodeon, the doyen of children’s television networks.

The whirlwind was a four-part documentary called Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV , streamed over two consecutive nights on the Investigation Discovery network.

Jordan North makes some shocking discoveries about the nation’s bad habit. Plus, the emotional final episode of Bring the Drama. Here’s what to watch this evening

This documentary attempts to grill Charles Sobhraj – whose crimes were fictionalised in BBC drama The Serpent – but he’s as maddeningly evasive as a politician. Luckily, its research segments are highly compelling

If you missed the numerous books, articles and documentaries about him, and the fictionalised version seen in the BBC drama The Serpent in 2021: Charles Sobhraj was convicted of killing two people, but is thought to have killed many more during a spree in the 1970s. He befriended naive tourists who were travelling on the “hippy trail” in south Asia, before drugging them and stealing their passports and money.

Sobhraj admits the drugging and robbing; that he would often then kill his victims is something he now denies, although he did confess it when interviewed by Richard Neville for a biography (co-authored with Julie Clarke) that became a worldwide bestseller in 1979. Sobhraj has never been tried in Thailand, where many of his alleged killings took place, but has served time for murder in India and Nepal.

The Real Serpent: Investigating a Serial Killer aired on Channel 4 and is available online

In this intense series, the convicted killer is asked about murders he has never been tried for. Plus: The Hairy Bikers Go West comes to a poignant end. Here’s what to watch this evening