Only Connect (BBC2, 8.30pm)

If you want an example, here’s a question from the first episode in the new series. What connects Quintuple troth, Distress Signal, 1963 Lincoln Memorial Speech and an 1815 Belgian Battle?

In fact, the show is so highbrow, it took its title from the epigraph of EM Forster’s novel Howards End, and in its early days, contestants selected questions by choosing a letter from the Greek alphabet. At the beginning of Series Four, Coren Mitchell announced on air that the Greek letters were being dropped due to viewer complaints that it was too pretentious – and replaced with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Even Coren Mitchell herself admitted that she would probably struggle as a contestant. She told student newspaper Cherwell: “I can come across all Jeremy Paxman on air – but by the time the shows are on TV, I can’t answer any of the questions that I asked in the recording two months before.”

So far, so forbidding. But in fact, Only Connect turned out to be one of the most addictive quizzes on TV. Maybe it’s the Connecting Walls, in which the teams have to beat the clock to sort clues into groups, the sense of achievement when you get a question right, or just the opportunity to marvel at how clever the contestants are, but the programme became a hit.

And in 2014, we received proof of its popularity when it made the jump from BBC Two to BBC Four.

At the time, Coren Mitchell sounded a note of caution – with a Greek mythology reference thrown in for good measure. “I and the rest of the Only Connect team are hugely excited about our Icarus-like flight towards the sun of mainstream broadcasting. If our wings start melting, I’ll just flap harder.”

The opening episode sees the Operational Researchers taking on the Cluesmiths – and who knows? If this latest run is a hit, maybe a move to teatime BBC1 isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

Rookies (ITV, 9pm)

THE Met: Policing London may have ended last week, but ITV are filling the gap with another documentary series charting the work of the UK’s cops.

Filmed over the course of a year, Rookies follows trainee officers in Lincolnshire Police, charting their progress as they venture out onto the streets under the watchful eyes of experienced veterans. In the first episode, 26-year-old Jack finally moves out of the family home and away from his worried parents, while 35-year-old Dee finds the long unsociable hours actually brings her closer to her loved ones – especially her estranged father.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen: Cracking China (BBC2, 9pm)

WITH his foppish dress sense and even more flamboyant taste in interior decoration, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen was arguably the break-out star of the hugely successful Changing Rooms.

His fame helped him to launch his own range of cushions and picture frames, which he sells through a well-known catalogue, but in the current economic climate, even household names face difficulties shifting their wares.

Luckily, Llewelyn-Bowen thinks he has spotted a potential new market, as he tries to start a business selling to emerging middle classes of China and Mexico. However, instead of sticking to home decor, he is instead branching out into lingerie, and this documentary follows him in the build up to the launch.

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Want to Get a Higher-Paying Job? Change Your Google Ad Settings

Take a look at the ads populating your browser right now. Each one is targeted to users based on factors such as age, gender, location, and Web history—most of which users can select via Google’s ad settings for the purpose of transparency.

It’s no secret that Google collects and sells massive amounts of data from millions of users across the Internet, but the way advertisers are choosing to use that data could be leaving women at a severe disadvantage.  

When researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the International Computer Science Institute built an automated tool to examine the interaction between user behaviors, Google’s ads, and ad settings, they found that Google displayed ads for higher-paying jobs more frequently to men than to women. Researchers say the recent study is the first to provide significant evidence of potential discrimination in online advertising using information that is publicly available. The ratio of ads targeted to men versus women and by which companies was not specified, and researchers say the findings aren’t clear violations of Google’s privacy policy.   

“Advertisers can choose to target the audience they want to reach, and we have policies that guide the type of interest-based ads that are allowed,” Google said in a statement issued to the press. “We provide transparency to users with ‘Why This Ad’ notices and ad settings, as well as the ability to opt out of interest-based ads.” 

RELATED: In Some States, Women Will Earn Less Than Men for a Century to Come

The study’s conclusion was based on an online tool called AdFisher, which showed that changing a gender setting from male to female influenced the ads that appeared on employment-related websites during May 2014. Ads from one career agency, for example, promoted jobs with higher salaries specifically to Internet users who identified as male. In 2014, women accounted for 46.8 percent of the labor force, but the unemployment rates were roughly equal between the sexes, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.  

As the researchers point out, gender settings also have a somewhat practical—if not stereotypical—use: Ads for lingerie and bikinis can be targeted to women as opposed to men, for example. One obvious takeaway from the study: Job-seeking women looking to achieve equal pay might consider changing the gender on their ad settings. 

So, Why Should You Care? If closing the gender pay gap were as simple as clicking a button online, women on average wouldn’t still be earning just 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, with even wider disparities between the salaries of black and Hispanic women compared with white men. Still, the findings of the study point to the bigger reason why it’s so tough to solve the pay gap between men and women: It’s complicated. Gender biases manifest in many ways, and not all are immediately visible or tangible. 

Some employers have taken it upon themselves to tackle the wage gap, while others have put the onus on women to ensure equal pay. Reddit, whose interim CEO, Ellen Pao, sued one of Silicon Valley’s largest venture-capital firms for sex discrimination, have attempted to even the playing field by banning salary negotiations altogether. The reasoning: Women are less likely than men to negotiate a higher-paying salary. The tech company Salesforce sought to do its part by reviewing employee salaries and giving some women raises comparable to men’s salaries. Meanwhile, career coaching organizations like Levo offer courses and workshops aimed at teaching women the art of negotiation. 

Many of these initiatives are helping to combat the wage gap—or at least raise awareness about it—but it’s not as easy to track the consequences of sneaky, subtle practices like gender-targeted ads. 

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