Easter TV this year kicks off with a fascinating documentary on Maundy Thursday (Bronx To Bradford: Friars On A Mission, BBC1, 10.45 p.m.) about the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, who were founded by eight Capuchin priest friars in New York in 1987. The programme follows the community of five friars now established in this country – in Bradford. We see them at work in their soup kitchen, among the poor and homeless, and at their efforts to restore an old, run-down Catholic church to which they want to attract a new congregation in a city with a thriving Muslim population. The order is traditionalist, the friars bearded and in grey habits, and they have thrown open the doors to welcome others to their way of life.

On Good Friday, breakfast television stalwart Fern Britton journeys to the Holy Land (Fern Britton’s Holy Land Journey, BBC1, 9 a.m.) visiting the places associated with the Passion – Jerusalem, Gethsemane, Golgotha among them – and talking to archaeologists, historians and Fr Gregory Tatum OP of L’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, who give their insights. Britton is a warm and engaging broadcaster – so that bodes well: apparently she “marks her pilgrimage in a way she will remember forever”.