Flying Scotsman with Robson Green (ITV, 9pm)

BACK in February, the legendary locomotive 60103 Flying Scotsman, came back into service following a painstaking decade-long £4.2 million overhaul. Crowds gathered at King's Cross for its scheduled departure at 07:40 to York and thousands lined the route, while some of the 297 passengers paid up to £450 for a ticket to travel on the train.

The LNER Class A3 “Pacific” steam locomotive was built in 1923 at Doncaster Works, and was the first UK locomotive to reach 100mph in 1934. Throughout its 40-year life on Britain's railways, it clocked up more than two million miles, before being retired from mainline duties in 1963. Then, in 2004, the engine was bought for the nation by the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York, with the aim of returning the icon back to it former glory.

In this special one-off documentary, actor Robson Green spends a year working with the team of engineers who were commissioned to rebuild the most famous steam engine in the world. Robson meets the works director and team leader, Colin Green, who shows him the Flying Scotsman and gets him to do some welding.

Robson wants to discover why they believe it is so important to rebuild what some might regard as a “boiling kettle on wheels”. In search for answers, the Grantchester star goes to the Durham Coalfield and discovers how steam changed the world. Then he's off to the North York Moors where he tells the remarkable, and for Robson, emotional, story of how the Flying Scotsman came into his family.

During Britain's General Strike, in 1926, men from his great-grandfather's trade union, The Northumberland Miner's Federation, derailed the train. Seven men went to jail and the Flying Scotsman's reputation was soured. At the North Yorkshire Moors Railway he meets historian Robert Gwynne who shows him a brilliant invention by the Scotsman's original designer, Nigel Gresley, which allowed the train to travel from London to Edinburgh without stopping – a world first – and helped turn the Flying Scotsman into a global brand.

After the end of the Second World War, steam engines became scrap as Britain modernised. The Flying Scotsman was bound for the furnace and Robson travels to North Wales to meet the woman whose father saved the engine by stepping in at the 11th hour and paying £3,000 for the privilege. Robson then meets one of Britain's eccentric aristocrats, Sir William McAlpine, who paid a handsome price to rescue the Scotsman from the US. "I could not let it rot in the States and become a hotel," he says.

Then, after a year in the workshop, the Flying Scotsman is ready for its first test run and Robson gets the opportunity to live out his boyhood dream and ride on the footplate of the world's most famous steam engine.

Ben Fogle: The Great African Migration (C5, 9pm)

THE adventurer travels to east Africa, stage to one of the most extraordinary natural spectacles on Earth – the annual migration of over two million wildebeest, zebra, antelope and other mammals on a 650km trek from the Serengeti plains in Tanzania to the highlands of Kenya's Maasai Mara and back again. In the first programme, Ben is joined by Dr Grant Hopcraft, one of the world's leading researchers of wildebeest, to catch his first glimpse of the mighty herds from the vantage of a hot-air balloon.

Billy Fury: The Sound of Fury (BBC4, 10pm)

LIVERPOOL-born Ronnie Wycherley became an overnight sensation in 1958 when he was asked by showbiz impresario Larry Parnes to go on stage and sing a couple of his self-penned songs. Ronnie's knees shook with nerves, but more than 2,000 screaming girls welcomed the new star of British rock 'n' roll. Parnes immediately signed Ronnie to his stable of artists and christened him Billy Fury. This documentary recounts Fury's story, and his impact on the birth of popular music in Britain. Contributors include David Puttnam, Mark Kermode, Amanda Barrie, Vince Eager and Imelda May.