Reporting Trump's First Year: All the President’s Men meets House of Cards as Trump becomes news

The parallels are obvious but you have to wait until the second episode of Liz Garbus’s extraordinary documentary about the New York Times before someone puts it into words.

There is a mention of Woodward and Bernstein, and more than a hint of All The President’s Men in the way the reporters huddle around screens, arguing over adjectives, or take angsty phone calls while typing furiously about the latest presidential indignity.

But it falls to reporter Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’s White House correspondent, to articulate the thought.

Haberman, who has a worrying habit of reading Twitter while driving to her appointments, takes a phone call in the car. “Are you just calling to say, ‘Holy s***, I can’t believe this is not a House of Cards episode’?” she asks. (They aren’t, but they could be. Though Kevin Spacey’s fake president is quite an old-fashioned political psychopath, by current standards).

But that’s episode two. Episode one (Sunday, BBC2, 9pm) focuses on the Times’s reporting of the not fake president’s first 100 days, and watching it now is both instructive and chastening.

Instructive because it reminds us how we got to where we are. And chastening because you can see the excitement in the newsroom every time reporters uncover stories which have the potential to become history-shaping Watergate-type revelations, yet the world keeps turning regardless.

Well, almost. Trump’s first 100 days were chaotic. The hapless press secretary Sean Spicer — remember him? — has numerous tugs at the elasticity of the actualité before being handed his own petard and receiving the order to hoist it. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” Spicer says to the White House press pack. “I can sense the love in the room.” James Comey, meanwhile, does a diplomatic dance as the abnormality of the new normal begins to dawn.

The heroes here are the journalists (another retro sentiment) and there are some lovely turns of phrase. Dean Baquet, the charismatic NYT executive editor, talks of a “nut-grab”; a technical term which sounds more painful than it should, while someone else mentions “crazy-pants b*******” — an appropriate summary of where we’ve been, and where we’re going. It falls to Haberman to make sense of Hurricane Donald on day 12 of the presidency. “Everything is through the lens of himself,” she says, with the fatalistic weariness of a woman who has been staring into a smashed kaleidoscope for 20 years.

In The Bridge (BBC2, 9pm), the story is starting to congeal; a relief after six weeks of subtitled red herrings. Next week’s episode is the end, and the sainted Saga Noren looks as if she will a) accept the advice of her therapist and allow herself to be more selfish or b) remain dutiful and die.

This being The Bridge, the happy option is given only fleeting consideration, while Saga examines the scorecard of the current serial killer: “Poison. Gas. Hanging. Decapitation, Firing Squad.” It’s surely the right time to retire Saga. Those undiagnosed quirks — absolute dedication to logic, the startled deer approach to emotions — have become cartoon-like.

But you wouldn’t wish her ill. “It often turns out wrong, even when I do the right thing,” Saga says, still weighing the question of whether dying is more important than doing a good job.

What to Watch/Capital Conversation - Sunday, London Live, from 5pm

The property market in London is no joke but new comedy Stath Lets Flats, starring Jamie Demetriou as hapless listings agent Stath and Natasia Demetriou as dance student Sophie, is a total hoot. The on-screen and off-screen siblings discuss script influences and M&Ms in What to Watch.

Then, in Capital Conversation, host Michael Hayman welcomes former special forces operator turned cyber security expert Oz Alashe MBE.

The English Patient - Saturday, London Live, 7pm

Had the studio stamped its heels hard enough, Kristin Scott Thomas would never have won an Academy Award nomination for her performance as Katherine — they wanted Demi Moore for that leading role. In the same year that this was released, Moore starred in Striptease. That received zero nominations at the Academy Awards.

The grandeur of this romance, told with passion and intelligence, still enthrals as Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes sweep across the screen, their story told in flashback by a mysterious burns victim during the last days of the Italian front in the Second World War.