What’s on TV: Thursday, January 24

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24

Alex Polizzi: The Fixer

The State depicts the lives of four young British Muslims who travel to Syria to join IS.Credit:Giles Keyte

SBS, 7.30pm

Having just screened Alex Polizzi's Secret Italy, where she journeyed through her family's homeland, SBS now has the British hotelier and presenter fronting up to more demanding work. The Fixer finds Polizzi attempting to repair family businesses that have reached ramshackle ends or can't find a way forward, allowing for both a fiscal and emotional reckoning. This week she's in Cornwall, where despite a deluge of holidaymakers every summer a family bakery is struggling with generational change and wan cash flow. "I'm the great visionary," declares matriarch Elaine, setting herself up as the stubborn founder, and really the familial dynamics and little twists will all prove familiar.What matters is how Polizzi, whose own family built a culinary empire, carries herself – as opposed to a Gordon Ramsay, who has made this kind of intervention part of his television remit. She swears less, but is just as demanding, although the references to her own successes can grate a little – not everyone's circumstances are the same. Nonetheless, she's a capable fixer.

The State

SBS, 10.30pm

This is the fourth and final episode of Peter Kosminsky's compelling follow-up to his adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, but the entire season is available on SBS on Demand and it is highly recommended. In depicting the lives of four young British Muslims who travel to war-torn Syria to join Islamic State, he has shown the distorted attraction of extremist philosophy and the misguided yearning for change that can be ruthlessly exploited. In detailing the breadth of experience the young men and women experience – warfare, atrocities, and forced marriages, as well as camaraderie and commitment – Kosminsky and a fine cast reveal the complex reality of radicalisation and the grim toll it exacts.

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