No Matter What, and more

Sunday 2 February

Miss Austen
BBC One, 9.05pm
Andrea Gibb’s subdued, elegantly moving four-part adaptation of Gill Hornby’s novel is a low-key triumph buoyed by fine performances and a narrative that offers a new perspective on a much-debated literary mystery: what possessed Cassandra Austen, Jane’s devoted sister, to burn a significant proportion of her correspondence, and what riches lay therein?

Patsy Ferran is, as usual, exceptional as the younger Jane but, while Janeites will take great joy in the balls, witty wordplay and real-life prototypes for some of her most memorable characters, the focus is on the younger and older Cassy (Synnøve Karlsen and Keeley Hawes, reunited after The Midwich Cuckoos and both superb) as they deal with and relive the heartache of betrayal and mourning. Older Cassy rushes to her late fiancé’s niece (Rose Leslie) to claim the letters secreted in the latter’s house, which is now up for sale, in doing so attempting to safeguard her sister’s reputation and disinterring long-dead memories. Real-life husband and wife Kevin McNally and Phyllis Logan do fine character work as the girls’ parents, and the whole feels like the most persuasive screen Austen facsimile for many years. GT

Guy Martin: Proper Jobs
U&Dave, 8pm
The affable mechanic heads to a remote island in the Irish Sea where four wardens live in an old lighthouse. Once there, he engages with his customary enthusiasm in conservation work with seals, puffins and shags among the visiting population.

Call the Midwife
BBC One, 8.05pm
The summer of 1970 brings with it the Commonwealth Games and much ad hoc athletics on the streets of Poplar; elsewhere a controlling husband is causing problems for his pregnant wife and a woman caring for her paralysed spouse receives a home visit from Shelagh (Laura Main) as the enduring ratings hit continues.

Out There
ITV1, 9pm
This tense rural noir has offered a fine showcase of Martin Clunes’s oft- underestimated gifts as a serious actor. These final two episodes find Nathan (Clunes) trying to play both sides of the county lines as he takes the fall for Kenny’s murder while trying to both woo and undermine the dangerous Turuk (Silas Carson).

Harrods: The Rise & Fall of a British Institution
Channel 5, 9pm
The decline of Harrods as national shorthand for quality and opulence began long before the allegations of rape against one-time owner Mohamed Al-Fayed were made public. This documentary explores its unpromising beginnings as a grocery store and its brush with disaster, before almost a century at the top of the retail tree was derailed by bad boardroom manoeuvres and increased competition, both online and on the high street.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Read with Reece Shearsmith
BBC Four, 9pm
Reece Shearsmith feasts on Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror about a doctor who begins to lose the battle with his depraved alter ego. The perfect pairing of narrator and material.

Boyzone: No Matter What
Sky Documentaries, 9pm
Louis Walsh’s first incursion into boy band territory may have appeared bland and cheesy, but that slick exterior masked deep personal tragedies, of which Stephen Gateley’s untimely end was of course the greatest. This unexpectedly engrossing three-parter, takes care to balance it all out with the fun and madness of late-1990s pop.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019) ★★★★
BBC One, 2.20pm 
The Secret Life of Pets was a Looney Tunes-esque animal odyssey through New York City. The sequel is, believe it or not, even better. It’s wittier, less frenetic and introduces fresh characters (even if there is less Taylor Swift on the soundtrack). On a family holiday to a farm, the first film’s hero, reliable Jack Russell terrier Max (Patton Oswalt replacing Louis CK) faces tough guy sheepdog Rooster (Harrison Ford).

The Pink Panther (1963) ★★★★
Sky Arts, 8pm 
This is the first of a number of cinematic adventures to feature bumbling French detective Jacques Clouseau, played by a terrific Peter Sellers and directed by Blake Edwards. Funnily enough, in this Sellers is not even the main attraction – the show is stolen by David Niven as the Phantom, a jewel thief in pursuit of the fabulously valuable “Pink Panther” diamond. Robert Wagner, Capucine and Claudia Cardinale also star.

Belfast (2021, b/w) ★★★★
BBC Two, 10pm 
Did Kenneth Branagh watch Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical black-and-white Oscar-winner Roma in 2018 and think, “I’ll have a bit of that”? It’s hard to shake that suspicion while watching the Northern Ireland-born director’s film about Belfast boy Buddy’s (Jude Hill) upbringing amid the tumult of the 1960s. Cosy, if a little impersonal, it’s anchored by a stellar cast that includes Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds.

The Sisters Brothers (2018) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.30pm 
“Have you noticed how long it’s been since anyone tried to kill us?” Eli Sisters (John C Reilly) observes as he and his brother, Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix), clop across the sunbaked Oregon bush. Based on Patrick deWitt’s novel, Jacques Audiard’s tale of two scrabbling assassins is a lively picaresque. Riz Ahmed plays their target; Jake Gyllenhaal is the man who’s meant to hand him over.

Monday 3 February

Go Back to Where You Came From
Channel 4, 9pm
“Winston b—–d Churchill would be rolling in his f—ing grave,” says Dave, a chef from Nottingham, as he stands upon the cliffs of Dover. His solution to immigrants crossing the Channel is for the Royal Navy to fill it with mines. “Any boat that comes within 50 metres of this lovely beach, they get blown up!” Immigration: one of the most complex, divisive political debates of our time.

In this four-part series, six cartoonishly opinionated Brits are asked to put their views to the test by recreating a refugee’s perilous journey to Britain. One group is dropped into Mogadishu in Somalia, a dangerous capital ravaged by conflict and famine; while another travels to Raqqa, Syria, where war has plunged millions into poverty. Some are unmoved. Nathan, a haulage business owner from Barnsley, clashes with “woke champagne socialist” Mathilda, from London, over his view that Mogadishu is a “s–thole”. Others are shaken. Dave breaks down crying after seeing a Syrian boy scavenging amid fly-infested rubbish. “The worst thing is I’ll probably want to take all of these back with me,” he says. SK

The Big Idea Works
BBC One, 2pm 
Dragons’ Den star Sara Davies built her fortune with a notion for a product that allowed people to make envelopes. In this jolly reality show, she opens up a workshop in the North-East to help others turn their big ideas (for example, a mess-free bird feeder) into prototypes.

The Making of Bill Gates
BBC Two, 7pm
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gives journalist Katie Razzall a tour of his childhood home in Seattle for this profile of the philanthropic billionaire. Inspired by his new memoir, they talk about his early passion for computing, the current state of politics and what made him the man he is today.

The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier
BBC Two, 9pm 
BBC Europe Editor Katya Adler first visited the Balkans during the 1990s, when the region was engulfed in war. In the first episode of this illuminating two-part documentary, she returns to countries such as Croatia and Bosnia to find them transformed. Yet beneath the peace thrums discord; with Russia and China looking to take advantage of Europe’s weakest link.

Boarders
BBC Three, 9pm & 9.50pm 
The first series of this sharp fish-out-of-water comedy followed five underprivileged black teenagers who receive scholarships to attend a prestigious boarding school. It now returns with higher stakes – acting headmistress Carol (Niky Wardley) is stripping away two of the scholarships. Alan Cumming pops up as a neurotic parody of himself and EastEnders’ Natalie Cassidy plays a teacher at a rival school.

Murder Suspect No 1
Channel 5, 9pm
This grisly true-crime documentary is a spin-off from Police: Suspect No 1, focused on more violent offences. Tonight, police in Humberside are in pursuit of a man who has attacked his ex-partner with an axe in broad daylight.

Mayhem! The Scandalous Lives of the Georgian Kings 
Sky History, 9pm 
The Georgian kings were one of the most dysfunctional dynasties in British history. In this four-part documentary, the story of each monarch is told through interviews and admirable dramatisations. Tonight’s premiere centres around George I, whose time on the throne was overshadowed by social and political chaos.

Chuck Chuck Baby (2024) ★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 4.20pm 
Janis Pugh’s uplifting comedy-musical is weird, wacky and wonderful, with notes of Billy Elliot. It follows Helen (Louise Brealey), a chicken-factory worker with an oaf of a husband who has brought his new girlfriend (and baby) to live with them. But she’s given a new lease of life when a childhood friend (Annabel Scholey) returns to town. Expect lots of Neil Diamond and Janis Ian. Streaming from Sunday.

The Iron Lady (2011) ★★★
Film4, 6.55pm 
Whatever your political leanings, best to put them on hold for Phyllida Lloyd’s fuzzy biopic of Margaret Thatcher, starring an Oscar-winning Meryl Streep (her third award, no less). Those on the left will think Abi Morgan’s screenplay ignores Thatcher’s socially divisive free-market policies that decimated mining towns, while loyal fans are unlikely to appreciate a framing device that paints her as a vulnerable old woman.

Mr Jones (2019) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm 
He won the nation over (and terrified us all) in Happy Valley, but James Norton’s captivating screen presence is displayed early on in this biographical thriller. It tells the story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who travelled to the Soviet Union in 1933 and uncovered the devastating scale of the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine that killed millions. It’s even more resonant today considering the horrors being endured by Ukraine.

Tuesday 4 February

Mussolini: Son of the Century
Sky Atlantic, 2am/9pm 
An extraordinary piece of televisual theatre, this Italian series – with a British director, Joe Wright (of Churchill drama The Darkest Hour) at the helm – vividly charts the political rise of that most preeningly preposterous of fascist dictators, Benito Mussolini. Very much the opposite of what you’d expect of political biography, it is high-energy all the way, with not a moment wasted on tedium. In fact, much of the time it’s more like Peaky Blinders Does Politics – dark, driven, gobby and packed with raw, unapologetic violence.

We first meet 35-year-old newspaper editor and political firebrand Mussolini (Luca Marinelli) in 1919, spouting ideas that could come straight from the playbook of any 21st-century right-wing populist today: “A time always comes when a lost populace turns to simple ideas, the cunning brutality of strongmen. In us they find an outlet for… their mortifying sense of impotence.” Contemporary resonances will make this a disturbing watch for many. Especially as – although fascism’s brutality and inhumanity are always to the fore – Marinelli captures the crazed charisma and unlikely popular appeal of this dictator all too well. GO

Alan Titchmarsh’s Underdog to Superdog
Channel 5, 7pm 
Alan Titchmarsh answers Channel 5’s insatiable appetite for dog shows with this series in which experts transform problematic pooches into heavenly hounds, starting with a scent-obsessed “sprocker” and a boisterous hyperactive poodle.

Great British Menu
BBC Two, 8pm
Ten episodes in and still only a third of the way through the competition, four chefs from South West England prepare canapes, starters and fish dishes for the banquet at Blenheim Palace – including a dish marrying sourdough with seaweed to celebrate pioneering marine botanist Elizabeth Warren.

David Mitchell’s Outsiders
BBC Two, 9pm
Previously shown on Dave, the second series of David Mitchell’s alternative game show sets another batch of comedians Taskmaster-style challenges, but in the great outdoors. Maisie Adam, Fatiha El-Ghorri, Darren Harriott, Jessica Hynes, Phil Wang and Joe Wilkinson are the willing victims, and begin with creating holistic treatments and bug racing.

Top Guns: Inside the RAF 
Channel 4, 9pm
An unexpected encounter with a Russian fighter jet above the Ukrainian border gets season two of this high-flying documentary series off to a hair-raising start. With plenty more dramatic moments – on spy missions over Syria, and intercepting an Iranian drone strike on Israel – ensuring the thrill-level stays high.

Black Box Diaries: Storyville
BBC Four, 10pm
The shocking but inspiring story of how 25-year-old journalist Shiori Itō took on the Japanese establishment when the authorities refused to investigate her claim that she had been sexually assaulted by a leading political journalist who had powerful friends in the police and government – among them Japan’s then-prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Alone USA
Channel 4, 10pm
The ninth season of the big money (a $500,000 winner-takes-all prize) American survival challenge gets underway. Ten more hardy types are dropped separately into an unforgiving frozen wilderness in Canada, believing they have what it takes to survive longest, completely isolated and unsupported – this time with the added danger of hungry polar bears.

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 5.50pm 
Hailed by none other than Martin Scorsese as an “emotionally and psychologically powerful” piece of cinema, Jane Schoenbrun’s psychological horror stars Justice Smith and Jack Haven as two troubled teenagers with an intense connection to their favourite TV show. It deals with the heavy themes of identity and belonging with a deft touch. Fred Durst and Helena Howard co-star.

Castaway (1986) ★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 9.15pm 
Nicolas Roeg’s films all had a twisted note, from the anguish of Don’t Look Now to rock stars on the edge (Mick Jagger in Performance; David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth). Here, Roeg adapts Lucy Irvine’s real story of when she spent a year living on a remote island with a man she hardly knew; it’s less idyllic getaway, more desperate fight for survival. Amanda Donohoe and Oliver Reed take the lead.

AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) ★★★★
Film4, 10.45pm 
Steven Spielberg’s futuristic reworking of Pinocchio stars Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) as an advanced robotic boy, who has the capacity to feel love. His creator, however, has failed to take account of the spitefulness that a human sibling might have towards him – unlike Spielberg, who, of course, has planned exactly how we should respond to him. Jude Law also stars.

Wednesday 5 February

Amandaland
BBC One, 9pm
“If anything, I’m a victim of my own success!” Lucy Punch’s acerbic “Alpha Mum” Amanda seemed to predict this spin-off back in Motherland; fans loved her cutting insults (who could forget “healthy looking” Anne, a polite way for Amanda to say she’d gained some extra padding) so much that her own show seemed inevitable. Anne, played by Philippa Dunne, is one of the familiar faces back for this hilarious new series, along with Joanna Lumley’s delightfully catty Felicity – though Anna Maxwell Martin, the original show’s star, will not appear in any of the six episodes.

Kicking off tonight with 30 minutes of witty on-the-nose ruminations about the trials and tribulations of middle-class family life – post-divorce, Amanda is grappling with tragedy (moving from Chiswick to South Harlesden), child troubles (little Georgie and Manus are now at – gasp! – the local state school), and a packed social life – Motherland fans will be relieved to hear this spin-off is just as laugh-out-loud funny, while writer Holly Walsh perfectly depicts all the dramas that come with parenting – not least, the fraught relationship between mother and daughter, so brilliantly portrayed by Lumley and Punch. PP

Celebrity Bear Hunt
Netflix
This eight-part reality series promises to make SAS: Who Dare Wins look like child’s play. Holly Willoughby hosts from the Costa Rican jungle, welcoming 12 celebrities – Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Lottie Moss, Danny Cipriani, Leomie Anderson, Boris Becker, Kola Bokinni, Joe Thomas, Zuhair Hassan, Mel B, Steph McGovern, and Shirley Ballas – to take on brutal physical challenges set by adventurer Bear Grylls.

Grantchester
ITV1, 9pm
New vicar Alphy (Rishi Nair) has been up against it since landing in the village: Geordie (Robson Green) doesn’t trust him and now there’s talk of blending his parish with another nearby. Elsewhere, a welcome spotlight for the usually very male-driven show’s female characters, as police secretary Miss Scott (Melissa Johns) heads uncover in Esme’s (Skye Lucia Degruttola) sexist workplace after a murder.

George Clarke’s Building Home
Channel 4, 9pm
Another series of envy-inducing builds from George Clarke, who tonight meets a young couple in the Ribble Valley who are turning their grandparents’ old bungalow into their dream family home.

Miyazaki: Spirit of Nature
Sky Arts, 9pm
One for Studio Ghibli fans: film-maker Léo Favier explores the life and works of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, beloved creator of films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away. But it’s not just his animation that has made him a shining light – as the film details, he has spent years tirelessly campaigning for the environment.

Am I Being Unreasonable?
BBC One, 9.30pm
A welcome second series for Daisy May Cooper’s deliciously bleak comedy. Nic (Cooper) is newly homeless, as skint as ever and a social pariah; pal Jen (Selin Hizli) is prepared to open her doors to Nic and her son (played by the excellent Lennie Rush), but could a drunken night out ruin that too?

Dubai: Buying the Dream
Channel 4, from 10pm
Tax-free, shiny, sunny and comparatively safe – it’s little wonder that Britons are flocking to the UAE in their droves. This new Selling Sunset-esque series takes us inside one of Dubai’s top estate agencies, who in tonight’s double-bill must shift the penthouse suite at Raffles hotel and a £33m villa – complete with indoor cave.

Kinda Pregnant (2025)
Netflix 
The latest “chaotic millennial woman goes through life-altering event” comedy to star Amy Schumer, Tyler Spindel’s film has all the makings of a hit: cheese, pregnancy jokes and a central love story. Schumer plays Lainy, a down-on-her-luck singleton who grows jealous when her best friend gets pregnant – and decides to get in on the fun by donning a fake belly and pretending to be expecting herself. One small snag: she soon meets the man of her dreams.

Respect (2021) ★★★
BBC One, 11.15pm 
Liesl Tommy’s biopic of the “Queen of Soul” is just a little too respectful. Jennifer Hudson, however, stuns in her finest role since Dreamgirls as Aretha Franklin; we follow the singer from her difficult childhood through abusive marriages and, of course, her record-breaking music career that spawned hits including A Natural Woman and Think. But it’s all a bit shiny and surface-level.

A Little Chaos (2014) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.30pm 
Alan Rickman turned his hand to directing (for the second, and final, time, following 1997’s The Winter Guest) for this period drama, set during the reign of France’s Louis XIV. It follows architects André Le Nôtre (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Sabine de Barra (Kate Winslet) as they attempt to design the grand Gardens of Versailles for the King. A little soppy, but the costumes are gorgeously opulent.

Thursday 6 February

Apple Cider Vinegar
Netflix
“This is a true story, based on a lie,” says Belle Gibson (Kaitlyn Dever) at the start of this gripping Australian drama, which tells how Gibson created a wellness empire using products she claimed cured her non-existent brain tumour. In the early days of social media, she gained millions of followers before she was exposed as a fraud, here represented by the fictional characters Chanelle (Aisha Dee), who helps Gibson build her platform, and Milla (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Gibson’s rival wellness guru. Tilda Cobham-Hervey, meanwhile, is Lucy, a cancer patient who is taken in by their pseudoscientific claims.

There’s a lot going on in the first episode, as the timeline jumps between Gibson’s fall from grace in 2015 and the events that lead up to it, but it efficiently lays out the story to be told over the following five episodes. It’s adapted by Samantha Strauss from Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano’s book The Woman Who Fooled the World, their breakdown of how they exposed Gibson’s wrongdoing in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. Mostly, Apple Cider Vinegar is a depressing exploration of not just wellness culture and its iffy claims, but how Instagram has negatively impacted our lives. VL

Clean Slate
Amazon Prime Video
A new eight-part comedy drama, centering on trans woman Desiree (Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox) who returns home to rural Alabama after a 23-year estrangement from father Harry Slate (George Wallace), an old-school car wash owner who still thinks of her as Desmond. As the punny title indicates, it’s played for light laughs rather than big emotion as they try to reconnect.

Cassandra
Netflix
This creepy six-part German thriller will reappear in your dreams (or nightmares if you are concerned about the overreach of AI technology). A family moves into a prize-winning smart house where Cassandra (voiced by Lavinia Wilson) is the super-efficient virtual assistant. But why does she call it “my house”?

The Åre Murders
Netflix
Another stylish Scandi-noir to add to the list, this time based on Viveca Sten’s novels about Stockholm detective Hanna Ahlander (Carla Sehn). A stay at her sister’s home in the ski resort of Åre falls off the rails when a woman goes missing and the under-pressure local police officer (Kardo Razzazi) reluctantly accepts her help in solving the case.

Can Elon Musk Rule the World?
Channel 4, 9pm
Matt Frei explores what influence the billionaire, X (formerly Twitter) owner and rocket enthusiast – plus, of course, self-proclaimed “first buddy” who had a front-row seat at Donald Trump’s inauguration last month – may prove to have on the White House, and how that could affect the wider world.

The Vanishings
Channel 5, 9pm
A feature-length episode introduces this hokey Irish crime thriller; reporter Lisa Wallace (India Mullen) teams up with detective David Burkley (Allen Leech) to investigate whether her mother’s murder 20 years before is connected to the disappearance of a young woman from the same area.

G’wed
ITV2, 10.05pm
The filthy, funny comedy set in a Wirral secondary school – a sort of Grange Hill meets Derry Girls – returns for a second series. It’s a new term and, in tonight’s opener, Ted and Albie (Dominic Murphy and Joseph Edwards) grapple with a new mentoring scheme, and dinner lady Jodie (Leanne Best) gets some robust advice from two of the pupils as she tries out online dating. There’s also a bittersweet cameo from drag queen The Vivienne, who died last month.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) ★★★
Film4, 9pm 
The alien symbiote living inside Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock returns in this sequel to the middling 2018 film. Leaning further into the outlandish concept of the original, Brock and Venom must stand up to Carnage, another symbiote who has taken up residence inside the body of serial killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson). Hardy brings a sense of fun camp to his voice-work as Venom, channelling Brian Blessed.

As Good as It Gets (1997) ★★★★
Comedy Central, 9pm 
Jack Nicholson hops through the streets of Manhattan, trying to avoid cracks in the sidewalk in this edgy James L Brooks-directed comedy. Nicholson, as brilliantly magnetic as ever, plays the obsessive-compulsive novelist Melvin Udall, who befriends his gay neighbour (Greg Kinnear) and falls in love with a waitress (Helen Hunt) at a diner, all the while trying to stay true to his character as a reclusive brute of a man.

Wind River (2017) ★★★★
Great! Movies, 9pm 
Missing Yellowstone? That series’ creator, Taylor Sheridan, directed this chilly noir set on a Native American reservation high in the Wyoming wilderness – a place of “snow and silence”, as Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) puts it. Renner gives his subtlest performance in years as he attempts to track down the killer of a girl found in the snow. It masterfully shows Sheridan’s deep understanding of abandoned communities.

Friday 7 February

Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey
BBC One, 7.30pm
While we await the surely inevitable spin-off Extraordinary Shirts and Jackets with Bill Bailey, this blissfully simple series returns with Bailey once again the wise and gently silly soul to steer everyone through an occasionally testing process. At 25, Clare was diagnosed with breast cancer; a year later, she was given the all clear, only for it to return three years later, this time terminal. Now 30, she is spending her time fulfilling some dreams – firewalking, jetskiing, getting married – and setting up a charity to support other young people facing terminal or incurable cancer diagnoses, many of whom keenly feel the loneliness of a situation so few can truly understand.

Portraitist Oriane Pierrepoint has been chosen to draw her and opts to use her own homemade charcoal; with her assignment intended to provide Clare’s friends and family with a permanent memento of their loved one, there is much to consider. The portraiture process itself is lovely, albeit with Lily Allen singing Keane to put us all through the emotional wringer. And the result is testament to Oriane’s perspicacity, Clare’s courage and this series’ heartwarming premise. GT

Newtopia
Amazon Prime Video
Simon Pegg likes to claim Shaun of the Dead as the first rom-zom-com. Well, here is the latest iteration of the same from a nation with plenty of form in all three genres. This Korean eight-parter follows Lee Jae-yoon (Park Jeong-min) and Kang Young-joo (Jisoo, from K-pop group Blackpink), a couple who split up after an argument just before he is called up for military service. Inconveniently, Seoul and the wider world are then thrown into chaos by a zombie outbreak.

Monty Don’s British Gardens
BBC Two, 8pm
The last edition of this charming series decamps to the South West, where the warmer, wetter weather lends itself well to exotic flora and Monty finds some ingenious storytelling through horticulture.

Alcohol-Free Booze: Is It Worth It?
Channel 4, 8pm
With alcohol-free options taking up a growing share of the drinks industry, Denise van Outen talks to scientists and sits in on taste tests to consider whether these beverages present good value for money.

Death in Paradise
BBC One, 9pm
Greenhorn DI Mervin Wilson (Don Gilet) has extended his stay on Saint Marie. And why wouldn’t he, given the hilariously meta mysteries he’s tasked with solving? Tonight, a game show participant is killed while on a zip line, and several of the production crew are on the list of suspects.

Hacks
Sky Max, 9pm & 9.40pm
Much garlanded and rightly so, this superb comedy makes its broadcast debut and is essential viewing for those who haven’t already enjoyed the first two series on Amazon Prime Video. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder generate impeccable sour-sweet chemistry as, respectively, the once-beloved comedian now down on her luck and the young gagsmith looking to bounce back after an online cancellation.

The Graham Norton Show
BBC One, 10.40pm
Tonight sees another of those gloriously bizarre combinations of global superstars and stalwart British TV names on Graham Norton’s sofa, with Alan Carr talking about refurbishing a Spanish villa, Holly Willoughby on dodging Bear Grylls in a jungle, Mikey Madison angling for an Oscar in Anora and Robert De Niro becoming one of the last New Hollywood icons to take on a TV series in Netflix’s Zero Day. Elton John and Brandi Carlile provide the music.

The Bikeriders (2023) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm 
Tom Hardy channels Marlon Brando in Jeff Nichols’s gritty drama, which depicts the lives of the Vandals Motorcycle Club (a fictional version of the Outlaws). Hardy is old-hand gang-leader Johnny, who takes a young gun (Austin Butler) under his wing; Jodie Comer is excellent in support as Johnny’s wife, while West Side Story’s Mike Faist is, once again, mesmerising as the young reporter sent to follow the gang.

Free Solo (2018) ★★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm 
Ascending alone and unassisted by ropes, but followed by a crack camera crew who fear for his life at every stage, intrepid climber Alex Honnold plots his defeat of Yosemite’s terrifying El Capitan rock face. This enthralling, bracing documentary, which won an Oscar for directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, digs into the strange psychology of thrill-seeking. Watch it through your fingers.

The Straight Story (1999) ★★★★★
Film4, 11.20pm 
You may have already begun your Twin Peaks rewatch, or dug the DVD of Mulholland Drive out of the cupboard, in honour of David Lynch’s death last month. But here’s a rare chance to catch one of the peerless film-maker’s less famous works: a moving biographical drama, based on the true story of Alvin Straight’s (played by Richard Farnsworth) journey across the US, from Iowa to Wisconsin, on a lawn mower.

Superbad (2007) ★★★★
BBC One, 11.30pm 
A sporadically hilarious coming-of-age comedy in which two high-school misfits, diffident Evan (Michael Cera) and sarcastic, sex-obsessed Seth (Jonah Hill), try to get their hands on enough alcohol – they’re not yet 21 – to fuel a raucous end-of-term party. The script was written by childhood friends Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the latter of whom also stars as a bumbling cop. A pre-Oscar storming Emma Stone also appears.

Television previewers

Stephen Kelly (SK), Veronica Lee (VL), Gerard O’Donovan (GO), Poppie Platt (PP) and Gabriel Tate (GT)

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