TV choice weekend

NCIS (Channel 5, 9pm)

Ned Dorneget is back!

'Dorney' (Matt Jones) made his debut back in season nine when he was brought in as a temporary replacement for DiNozzo who was banned from investigating his father's wrong doings.

Tonight, the popular Special Agent from NCIS cyber operations helps Gibbs and the team when a Navy ensign who worked in the Office of Naval Intelligence is murdered.

A car crashes into a diner, narrowly missing a few customers.

The dead woman in the car is Navy Ensign Janine Wilt, and Ducky concludes that her cause of death is a deep wound on her neck that severed her carotid artery, probably caused by wide blade, with the killer holding the knife to her throat before slashing it.

Tony discovers a t-shirt from Gorton Poly High in the back seat, so Bishop and Gibbs head to the school to investigate.

They learn that Wilt volunteered and helped coach the girls' basketball team.

Her fellow coach says that she was at the school the previous night but that she didn't know what she did for the Navy, only that she 'worked with computers'.

Then after speaking to Wilt's commanding officer, Vance and Gibbs learn that she was an expert code breaker working on a Colombian drug ring that had been smuggling drugs through US ports.

McGee and Tony head to Wilt's apartment and look through her laptop, before calling on NCIS Cyber, who send over Special Agent Dorneget.

Abby also finds out that Wilt was using her laptop to gain access to a home computer owned by Adem Faruk Korkmaz, whose PC is handed over to the NSA.

But that is when the plot thickens somewhat - the team finds out that the chief suspect is being protected by the NSA, so Bishop ends up confronting Jake about the suspect.

Later, Jake turns Korkmaz' laptop over to Gibbs and the team finds out that Korkmaz has been visiting a chat room.

In the interrogation room, Korkmaz denies any involvement but recognises a particular user name - Scout99 - which belongs to his daughter, who goes to Gorton Poly High and is on the basketball team.

So was the girl, Layna, responsible for Wilt's death?

Or could there be a far-reaching terror network at large who are preying on vulnerable teenagers?

Elsewhere, Tony is fascinated to learn that Jake and Gibbs meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays to play racquetball.

But perhaps Jake should be concentrating on working out his issues with Bishop, who reveals that she shot a man last week in Kabul.

This fast-paced episode marks the beginning of the final three-episode season 12 arc that is said to culminate with the death of an NCIS fan favourite.

Although Dorneget has only just returned, he and McGee are traveling to Egypt next week, so his days could well be numbered...

Sunday 17/07/16

The Secret Agent (BBC One, 9pm)

Sarah Morgan

What's the key to creating a great drama?

Obviously the plot is crucial, but getting the casting spot on is also important.

Every few years, an actor comes along who seems to land a series of exciting roles; he (or she) becomes the go-to person for a generation. At the moment, Toby Jones is filling that role.

He's not your archetypal film or TV star, but that is perhaps his strength - he can play an everyman, even if that everyman has quirks, personality defects or other offbeat characteristics. As a result, he's a man in demand.

During the past 10 years or so, he's been a Doctor Who villain, Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter movies, an extraordinarily coiffed commentator in The Hunger Games, played Alfred Hitchcock and Truman Capote as well as Captain Mainwaring, and a disturbed cinematographer in The Berbarian Sound Studio.

Jones has recently been cast as another bad guy in the next series of Sherlock, while arguably his best two roles have come for the BBC - as Lance in Mackenzie Crook's Detectorists and Stoke City supporter extraordinaire Neil Baldwin in Marvellous.

Is he about to add a third to that list? The stars do seem to be aligning - Jones takes the lead role of Verloc in the Beeb's new, three-part version of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent this week.

"I am both excited and intrigued by the challenge of playing Verloc, the eponymous hero of Conrad's startlingly relevant novel," says Jones.

He will appear alongside Vicky McClure, who portrays his character's wife, Winnie. It's perhaps an odd piece of casting; here's hoping they go together better than Jones did with Rachael Stirling, who took the role of his other half in the drama Capital last November.

McClure is simply thrilled to finally be paired with a man she's been admiring from afar for some time: "I'm so excited to play the part of Winnie," she reveals. "It's an incredible script. And delighted to be working with Toby Jones - I've always been a huge fan of his."

Taking a period role is something of a departure for McClure, who is best known for her participation in more modern-day projects such as Broadchurch, Line of Duty and, of course, This is England.

The latter also featured Stephen Graham, who also pops up here, alongside Ian Hart, Tom Goodman-Hill and David Dawson.

It's a great supporting cast, but this is really Jones's show. Set in London in 1886, it follows shopkeeper Verloc's fortunes as he earns extra cash by spying on a dangerous anarchist cell by the Russians.

When his paymasters order him to orchestrate a bombing that can be blamed on the cell's members, he must source an explosive from the so-called Professor, but without raising the suspicious of his wife and the local police chief.

It's an intricate tale which is in Jones's safe hands - we can't wait to see how it all pans out.