The wild, beautiful Velebit Mountains of Europe belong to the wolf, not man. But even here, the ravages of war between Serbs and others who shared the former Yugoslavia have left their mark. When Paul Balenovic decided to return his pet wolf to the wild, he had to wait until the war was over and find an area not contaminated by land mines.
The Wolf Man (World, 9pm) roams Croatia, the setting for the first bloody conflict in Yugoslavia in 1991. But the war is incidental to this story. Central is an unusual man who has had an unusually close relationship with one of our most feared animals.
By the time this film was made, Balenovic, who made a living doing movie stunts, had kept the company of wolves, Lik in particular, for 17 years. Much is lyrically told through his own film footage.
We learn much about the type of relationship that is possible between man and wolf. A wolf, we find out, can be close to man, but does not make a good family pet. This film leaves a raw, impressionistic view of man and animals. Strangely, we see just one shot of Balenovic with his 'other family'. One lonely man living with wolves is one thing. We don't know how he reconciled this with his family life.
Top Secret: Scotland Yard (World, 10pm) tries to be more polished television. Tonight it is the turn of London's police force to receive its glamorisation from the other side of the Atlantic in a series that plays heavily on those magical words that belong better in Hollywood: top secret.
But as in previous episodes, this documentary concentrates on history rather than secrets. Narrator Johnny Depp talks us through a dramatised history of 'The Met', from Victorian days when 'Bobbies' wore hard top hats that they could stand on to survey a crowd, to modern-day battles against terrorism. 'Nipper' Read's victorious pursuit of the notorious 1960s gangsters the Kray twins forms the central storyline.