Ringer | Kidnap And Ransom | This World: Fukushima | The Great Ticket Scandal: Dispatches | Pramface | Catholics

Ringer
8pm, Sky Living

Ringer's delightful episode title, What Are You Doing Here, Ho-bag?, refers to the introduction of another new character for Bridget/Siobhan to pretend to recognise/get to know: Juliet's mum (and Andrew's ex). Even though this is only the 12th episode, this show has had so much going on (fake junkie hitmen/pretend pregnancies/disappearing frenemies), that the return of evil drug dealer/strip club owner Macawi (you know, the one that got Bridget in this complicated mess in the first place) is almost a surprise. Richard Vine

Kidnap And Ransom
9pm, ITV1

In this second series set in the crisis-stricken Kashmir, Trevor Eve's negotiator finds his efforts to secure the release of a British Asian family hampered by the violent interventions of local police. The two kidnappers, Anwar and the mysterious, somewhat nervous Leela, take the family's son, Mahavir, and then hijack a tourist bus. There's a faint undercurrent of Celebrity Road Trip about the collection of hapless passengers, who include Kimberley Nixon (Fresh Meat) and Christopher Fairbank (Auf Wiedersehen Pet) but it's Eve who dominates, caught between desperate kidnappers and trigger-happy police. David Stubbs

This World: Fukushima
9pm, BBC2

Around this time last year, Japan nearly contributed a third city to the list of those destroyed by nuclear technology. In the aftermath of the tsunami, the nuclear plant at Fukushima suffered a meltdown. This was bad – indeed, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl – but as this terrifying film's interviews with survivors, employees, rescue workers and the prime minister of the time make clear, it could have been calamitous. The consolation is this chance to admire the courage and ingenuity that averted disaster. Andrew Mueller

The Great Ticket Scandal: Dispatches
9pm, Channel 4

It's a familiar tale: you try to get tickets for a gig or event, only to be left empty-handed when it sells out in minutes. So how come there are tickets available online at inflated prices – and who is selling them? Morland Sander investigates the business of ticket reselling, and undercover reporters try their luck on two major fan-to-fan ticket exchange websites to find out who is profiting and how they get away with it. Hannah Verdier

Pramface
9pm, BBC3

BBC3 wanted a new Gavin & Stacey. All it got was this lousy straight-to-DVD Knocked Up/buttoned-up Inbetweeners/Skins. In attempting to be all things to all viewers, this first episode fails to come close to any of them. Laughs are thin on the ground, and a bedroom wank scene manages to be boring. With some quality cast members – Angus Deayton is a shady father and Submarine's Yasmin Paige is the precocious and lovelorn best friend – we're still hoping Pramface can find its voice. Clare Considine

Catholics
9pm, BBC4

A new three-part series in which film-maker Richard Alwyn investigates what it is to be a Catholic in modern Britain. The episodes are themed around men, women and children: the first takes a behind-the-scenes look at Allen Hall seminary in Chelsea, following those men who have been called to the priesthood. These include an ex-roadie and a former law practitioner; both have signed up for a minimum six years of training, this at a time when the number of applicants is in severe decline. It's a fascinating insight into how priests are made, and why they choose to devote their lives to the Church. Martin Skegg

International Atomic Energy Agency team blocked by authorities in Tehran from visiting suspect site

The diplomatic options for a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis narrowed on Wednesday after a team of UN nuclear inspectors returned from Tehran without agreement on visiting a suspect site.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is due to issue its latest report on the Iranian nuclear programme on Friday, but took the unusual step of criticising Tehran's approach in a statement issued while the inspectors were still flying back to its headquarters in Vienna.

The main stumbling block was Iran's refusal to allow the IAEA team to visit a military site at Parchin, where the last agency report, issued in November, said there was a steel chamber which could have been used for testing explosives of a type performed in the development of a nuclear warhead.

"It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin during the first or second meetings," said the agency's director general, Yukiya Amano. "We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached."

Herman Nackaerts, the IAEA deputy director general and head of the safeguards department, who headed the mission, had made a Parchin visit the main litmus test for its success, according to diplomatic sources, but was rebuffed by the Iranians.

Speaking at Vienna airport on his return, Nackaerts said his team "could not find a way forward".

A Vienna-based diplomat briefed on the visit said Iran had sought to focus the talks on a work-plan circumscribing the conduct of IAEA inspections.

"It was very hard work. The Iranians focused exclusively on process and they tried to get the team to sign a document which governed the ways they would work," the diplomat said. "My reading is, what happened was that the meetings were monopolised by a lot of unproductive discussions on the wording of the agreement and practical questions put forward by the agency were put to the side."

The IAEA said: "Intensive efforts were made to reach agreement on a document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran's nuclear programme, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions. Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on this document."

In the wake of the collapse of the mission, Friday's report will almost certainly give a negative assessment of Iranian co-operation while noting the progress of the country's nuclear programme and uranium enrichment, which the UN security council has demanded Tehran suspend.

Iran insists it has a right to enrich uranium and the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, put on a show of defiance on Wednesday with a rare meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists, insisting their work was peaceful, that Iran had no intention of building a bomb and vowing the programme would continue in the face of mounting international pressure.

"With God's help, and without paying attention to propaganda, Iran's nuclear course should continue firmly and seriously," Khamenei said on Iranian state television. "Pressures, sanctions and assassinations will bear no fruit. No obstacles can stop Iran's nuclear work."

Doubts have now been cast over tentative plans to hold a new round of talks between Iran and a six-nation group of major powers, including the five permanent members of the UN security council together with Germany. The group, known as the P5+1, had been waiting for the new IAEA report before deciding whether to proceed with the talks.

It was also seeking clarification on whether Iran had dropped its earlier preconditions for negotiations, which included an immediate end to sanctions and a guarantee that uranium enrichment was a non-negotiable Iranian right.

There had been hopes that the P5+1 meeting could agree confidence-building measures, possibly including an exchange of Iranian low enriched uranium for French-made fuel rods. Diplomats said the group would now have to reassess if there would be any purpose in a meeting.

Some western capitals are pushing instead for Iran to be referred to the UN security council by the IAEA board of member states, with the aim of imposing further sanctions. An EU oil embargo is already planned for 1 July, at about the same time of US financial sanctions against the Iranian global oil trade.

The diplomatic options are narrowing on Iran after failure of second UN mission

There is no ambiguity about the failure of latest UN mission to Iran. Statements by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are normally studies in blandness, giving nothing away. The lines the agency put out at 1am Vienna time, however, reflected deep frustration at the lack of progress produced by two missions to Tehran within a month. This is what it says:

A senior IAEA expert team is returning from Iran after two days of discussions with Iranian officials held on 20 and 21 February 2012. The meeting followed previous discussions held on 29 to 31 January 2012.

During both the first and second round of discussions, the Agency team requested access to the military site at Parchin. Iran did not grant permission for this visit to take place.

Intensive efforts were made to reach agreement on a document facilitating the clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran's nuclear programme, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions. Unfortunately, agreement was not reached on this document.

"It is disappointing that Iran did not accept our request to visit Parchin during the first or second meetings," IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said. "We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached."

The emphasis put on Parchin is particularly striking. In the last agency report on the Iranian nuclear programme, the inspectors raise particular questions about Parchin, and cite evidence of a steel vessel said to have been used for explosives testing of the type necessary to build a warhead. There had been previous IAEA visits to Parchin which had turned up nothing, but supposedly this vessel was on a different part of a sprawling facility and the inspectors wanted to have another look.

It seems that Herman Naeckerts, the IAEA deputy director general and head of the safeguards department who led the mission, decided to make Parchin the main litmus test for success, and he was thoroughly rebuffed. Speaking at Vienna airport this morning he said his team "could not find a way forward". This from a man who declared the January visit "a good trip", although it later became clear that he had got nowhere.

As Naeckaerts' team was flying home, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei held an unusual meeting with nuclear scientists and repeated the substance of his fatwa against nuclear weapons, declaring:

We are not seeking nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic of Iran considers possession of nuclear weapons a sin ... and believes that holding such weapons is useless, harmful and dangerous.

The Islamic Republic of Iran wants to prove to the world that possessing nuclear weapons does not bring power and that might doesn't come from atomic weapons. Might based on nuclear weapons can be defeated and the Iranian nation will do this.

The unanswered question here is why the Iranians, under extreme pressure from all sides, did not try harder to keep talks going with the IAEA. "They didn't even seem interested in going through the motions," said a diplomat briefed on the trip.

This may have something to do with the fact that parliamentary, Majlis, elections are coming up in a matter of days in Iran and a highly politicised Supreme Leader did not want to appear to be bowing to foreigners on a matter of national security. If that is the case, the timing of the IAEA visits is unfortunate.

It is worth also recalling the Iraqi experience, in which a paranoid regime bristled at foreigners nosing around its military sites, even though it had no WMD. Or in the Iranian case, the regime might have something it does not want seen.

Either way, there seems little doubt that the new IAEA report on Iran, due to be distributed to member states on Friday, will be damning, and that could complicate hopes of a resumption of broader talks with the P5+1 group of powers in March.

The Iranian nuclear crisis has been on a downward spiral a long time now, and the agreement on this IAEA mission was a very rare bright spot on a dark diplomatic landscape. That seems now to have been well and truly extinguished.