Meet The Romans With Mary Beard
9pm, BBC2
The Cambridge classicist explores life in the Roman home. She's helped in this endeavour by evocative, if singed, artefacts found in the ruins of Pompeii, which include a cradle, recovered along with a tiny skeleton. But if such items speak of quiet domesticity, that's by no means the whole story. Beard takes much delight, for example, in the menage a trois living arrangements of Allia Potestas. Another recurring theme Beard explores is Roman slavery: if this was the brutal institution we often imagine, she asks, how come so many chose to be buried with their servants? Jonathan Wright
The Hunt For Bin Laden
9pm, ITV1
It's the first anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces. This doc recaps his career as a jihadist and the 15-odd years the Americans spent chasing him, identifying the missed opportunities, agency divisions and military mistakes that held up the hunt. There's little here that's new, and no insights as to what happened on the Seal mission, but there are some nice details: in order to focus his mind, one investigator had a 6ft picture of Bin Laden on the wall in his bedroom. Martin Skegg
Ancient X Files
9pm, National Geographic
Silly documentary speculating upon the actual identity of the smirking woman in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, as well as the possible subtexts of the painting itself. There's not much need to stay tuned past the point at which the voiceover advances Dan Brown's dreadful Da Vinci Code as reason to believe that the portrait might contain portentous secrets. If you do, however, you'll at least receive a masterclass in what's wrong with so much modern documentary television: desperate references to popular culture; hopeful stoking of barely existing drama; and an unnecessary soundtrack. Andrew Mueller
The South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2012
9pm, Sky Arts 1
Host Melvyn Bragg describes tonight's glitzy do as "The only awards ceremony in the world solely dedicated to the arts," so it must be important. There's a pretty broad remit, with categories including visual art, theatre, opera, pop music, dance and literature. The nominees are diverse, too: Attack The Block, Senna and We Need To Talk About Kevin are all up for the best film award, while Sherlock, This is England '88 and Top Boy fight it out for the TV drama gong. Interestingly, the pop music achievement is a women-only affair, with Kate Bush, Adele and PJ Harvey up for the award. MS
Mad Men
9pm, Sky Atlantic
The counterculture came crashing into SCDP last week, what with Roger's gleeful investigation of Dr Timothy Leary's "product" to the strains of Pet Sounds, and Peggy's pot-informed cinema-hall tryst. Yet there are signs this week that the company might be struggling to keep up with the times. Will Don – too preoccupied with his marriage to actually bother doing any work so far this season – finally step up to the plate? Gwilym Mumford
Later Live – With Jools Holland
10pm, BBC2
With Blur on the way out, Damon Albarn has been keeping himself off the streets with a musical about 16th-century alchemist John Dee. Tonight, he brings songs from Dr Dee to Jools's manor. Unsurprisingly, it's a long way from Parklife. Sheffield great Richard Hawley is in the house too, showing off the big, crashing sounds of new album Standing At The Sky's Edge, while the lush-voiced St Vincent makes her Later debut. Hannah Verdier
