TV Highlights: 1 November - 7 November. We Preview All-Star Choir, Broadmoor and more

Gareth Malone’s All-Star Choir (Mon, 9pm, BBC1)

In honour of Children in Need, the delightful Mr Malone will be whipping a ragtag bunch into shape to sing on the charity campaign’s official single. Actresses Alison Steadman and Linda Robson will sing alongside EastEnders actor Nitin Ginatra and Strictly Come Dancing Queen of Mean, Craig Revel-Horwood. Also searching for their inner songbird are Countryfile’s John Craven, Blue Peter’s Radzi Chinyanganya, Bake Off co-host Mel Giedroyc and comedian Jo Brand. Fabrice Muamba and Margaret ‘The Machine’ Alphonsi join the choir from the world of football and rugby respectively, and the line-up is completed by Radio 1 DJ Alice Levine and actor Larry Lamb. In the first of this two-part documentary, Gareth assembles his motley choir, and the challenge he faces becomes abundantly clear.

The Passing Bells (Mon-Fri, 7pm, BBC1)

This sensitive drama, shown each night this week, tells the parallel stories of a young English lad, and his German counterpart, at the start of World War I. Deep in the countryside, Michael and Katie are young and in love, as yet untouched by rumours of war. In a small town, delivery boy Thomas is equally oblivious to the rumblings of conflict coming from the continent. But as the news trickles through to their small communities, both boys are inspired by the thought of heroic deeds and foreign lands. When war is announced, both Michael and Thomas defy their parents and slip out to the recruitment office, alongside thousands of other young men. As the boys don their uniforms, we see that Thomas is a British soldier and Michael is German. Paddy Gibson plays Thomas, Jack Lowden plays Michael, and Sabrina Bartlett plays Katie.

Broadmoor (Wed, 9pm, ITV)

The name of Britain’s most famous high-security psychiatric hospital can strike a chill, not least because of the role call of patients who have been treated there. Charles Bronson, Ronnie Kray and Peter Sutcliffe are among those who have lived behind its forbidding walls. For the public, all too aware that people in there have committed sickening crimes, it can be hard to understand that it is not a prison, but a hospital. This brave and upsetting two-part doc, which has amazing access, tries to explain more about the place. Clinical Director Dr Amlan Basu expresses it well: ““Patients that come here, they will have perpetrated often horrendous crimes but they are also victims and it’s very easy to see somebody as either the perpetrator or the victim. It’s much more difficult to understand that somebody might be both.”

MasterChef: The Professionals (Tue, Wed and Thu, 8pm, BBC2)

Sad news for fans of Michel Roux Jr; he has ended his tenure as the BBC’s resident star chef/judge/inspiration/mentor on this ever-popular show after a clash of commercial interests. His place is taken by Marcus Wareing, who was once a young up-and-comer at the Roux mothership, Le Gavroche. It was there that he served alongside Gordon Ramsay, who would become his mentor and business partner until they had a spectacular falling-out. Wareing is not as shouty as Ramsay but he’s definitely got a sharper tongue than lovely Michel, and the latest batch of young hopefuls are in for some cutting words. Incidentally, Wareing himself has apparently changed his opinion of TV cookery shows. In 2012 he said: “The key to success is longevity, not a five-minute trip on television, five-minute wonder.” Funny how views evolve…

Toast Of London (Mon, 10.35pm, C4)

Not to everyone’s taste, but I for one think this is ruddy hilarious and am very happy it has got a second series. Matt Berry is brilliant as his self-penned creation Steven Toast, a pompous, bombastic actor whose career is on the skids so badly that he is forced to take on the part of Charles Dickens… on a themed London bus tour. There are genuine, rude laughs in bizarre comic ideas like a Prostitutes And Celebrities Blow Football Tournament but for me the delight is the mixture of derision and pity that Toast evokes. Wonderful support comes from Doon Mackichan as his inept agent Jane Plough and Robert Bathurst as his loyal, loveable flatmate Ed Howzer-Black. A silly delight.