The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

last updated 8 January 2015

The Human Camera

Artist Stephen Wiltshire is autistic, but he has the remarkable ability to draw buildings in virtually photographic detail from memory—including entire cities on giant canvases. Cameras follow Wiltshire as he sets out to draw the largest-ever panoramic view of his native city of London—after studying its skyline for only 30 minutes from a helicopter. Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m., BBC America

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A year after Luciano Pavarotti’s passing, this 90-minute retrospective combines rare performance footage of the operatic tenor with the recollections of friends and admirers. Interviewees include Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, his partners in the famed Three Tenors, as well as soprano Joan Sutherland and Juan Diego Flórez, who may be the next superstar tenor. Wednesday, Sept. 10, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listings

In this documentary, footage from more than 100 sources is woven into a single chronology of the Sept. 11 attacks, presented without narration, comment, or commercial interruptions. Recordings from police, firefighters, and emergency calls as well as more than 500 hours of video have been edited together. Afterward, a supplementary short, I-Witness to 9/11, presents comments from contributors. Tuesday, Sept. 11, at 9 p.m., History Channel

In this elegiac documentary, recollections of the Sept. 11 attacks are the starting point for a rumination on why prosaic objects assume the significance of artifacts. Moving accounts by 9/11 survivors and family members of those who lost their lives—as well as visits to the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial—reflect poignantly on the power conveyed by objects that survived those traumatic events. Items such as a fireman’s shattered helmet are “emissaries from the past,” observes Sarah Henry of the Museum of the City of New York. Monday, Sept. 8, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

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