From U-Boats to hard oranges

U-Boat Wargamers

Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the Nazis’ U-boat fleet, has brought Britain to the brink of starvation by ruthlessly destroying close to a thousand of their merchant ships. If the transatlantic shipping route is cut off, the Allies will lose their last foothold in Western Europe.

The Royal Navy turns to retired war gamer Gilbert Roberts. Roberts is to use war gaming to try to decipher and combat Dönitz’s tactics. To do this, he needs a team, but the Navy can’t spare any men. Instead, he risks the ridicule of high command by turning to the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) to war game the U-boats’ tactics.

In partnership with Jean Laidlaw, one of Britain’s first female chartered accountants, and a small team of resourceful female mathematicians, Roberts acts out naval battles and games the U-boats’ moves on a linoleum floor, using chalk and wooden model ships.

In tonight’s edition, after the fall of France in 1940, Dönitz’s trio of Kriegsmarine U-boat aces – immortalised in the Sky drama series Das Boot – embark on a race to send British merchant ships to the bottom of the ocean in this, episode two of the series, False Dawns.

Converging on merchant convoys in co-ordinated wolfpack attacks. In Britain, an increasingly desperate Admiralty sends for Roberts, at last willing to entertain his newfangled wargaming ideas to try and identify ways of thwarting the deadly U-boat wolfpacks.

SKY History, 9pm

Kavos Weekender

Weekender continues and this season the reps are in the Greek party capital, Kavos, to give their guests a weekend to remember! Head rep David Potts, aka ‘El Jefe’, returns and he’s brought with him, his most experienced rep, Tash. David has made her his Deputy, which is just as well, as he has a new team of rookies to train up, ‘David style’.

Tonight in the 9th offering this series El Jefe is putting his reps to the ultimate test this weekend with more guests arriving than ever before, Ethan’s pulling out all the stops for Tash now their bed-sharing ban has been lifted, and hot gossip from Joel and Lucy leaves everyone shocked.

ITV2, 10.05pm

The Girl in the Box: The Kidnapping of Stephanie Slater

The first in a two-part series takes us back to January 1992 when 25-year-old estate agent Stephanie Slater is kidnapped after arranging to show a man around a property for sale in Birmingham.

The kidnapper contacts her employer demanding a £175,000 ransom and threatens her life if the police are involved.

Despite the threat, police are brought in and a team of elite detectives prepare for a top-secret surveillance operation to try and intercept the kidnapper as he collects the ransom. But is this the first crime this mysterious villain has committed? Six months before Stephanie’s kidnap, a young woman from Leeds had been kidnapped and murdered.

Similarities led the police to believe that her killer could now be the man who’d taken Stephanie. The police knew the ransom run was their best chance of catching him. On the night of the drop, the courier and the surveillance operation follow a series of instructions from the kidnapper to a remote Yorkshire track, while battling some of the worst fog of the year… Will they catch the kidnapper red-handed?

Channel 5, 9pm