What’s on TV tonight: Olympics: Paris 2024, Game Night, and more

Saturday 27 July

Olympics: Paris 2024
BBC One/Two/Red Button, from 8am; Discovery+ & Eurosport, from 7.30am
The Games finally begin, with the next 16 days offering something for everyone across the BBC and Olympics Extra (accessible via the Red Button), along with live coverage from Eurosport 1-9 and Discovery+. There are a few familiar headline acts for British fans over this weekend, with today featuring GB’s much-fancied men’s hockey team launching their campaign against Spain (9am), the exciting Max Whitlock leading the British men’s gymnasts in qualification (from 10am), the singles tennis (from 11am) and Anna Henderson and Josh Tarling competing in the road cycling time trials (from 1.30pm). 

Elsewhere, there’s a clash of the titans in the pool, as US superstar Katie Ledecky goes head-to-head with Canada’s teenage prodigy Summer McIntosh and formidable Aussie Ariarne Titmus; the 400 m freestyle final is at 7.52pm tonight. Tomorrow is mostly about Adam Peaty, back after a testing few years and hunting a third gold in the 100 m breaststroke final, which takes place at 8.44pm. Look out, too, for hopefuls Chelsie Giles in the -52kg judo final (3pm) and Evie Richards in the mountain biking final at 1.10pm. A golden summer awaits. GT

Game Show Night
BBC Four, from 8pm
As the merest glance at television schedules would confirm, game shows remain at the heart of Saturday nights. Here, BBC Four takes us back to three of the finest examples, kicking off with a 1972 episode of Generation Game with Bruce Forsyth at 8pm. Then, Larry Grayson, David Jason and Barbara Windsor join Terry Wogan in Blankety Blank (from 1979) at 8.50pm, before Wogan digs further into the archives at 9.25pm with the Best of Blankety Blank. Finally, enjoy Mr Monkhouse at his smoothest (and holiday-providing) in Bob’s Full House at 10pm.

High Country
BBC Two, 9pm
Continuing to bring a heady touch of Nordic noir to the wild, vast mountains of Australia, this solid thriller finds Andie (Leah Purcell) drifting out of her depth as figures from her past resurface. Elsewhere, Helen (Sara Wiseman) finds a new muse close to home.

Sandringham: A Royal Residence with Nigel Havers
Channel 5, 9pm
Havers may be the name, face and voice of this three-part behind-the-scenes peek at Sandringham, but it is Channel 5 stalwarts JJ Chalmers and Raksha Dave who really get stuck in tonight. The former tears down the backroads in an old banger and tries out the on-site fire hose, while the latter stokes a fire and samples the high life of a royal house party.

Changing Ends
ITV1, 9.30pm
This broad love letter to 1980s’ life finds Alan (Oliver Savell) facing the doom-laden prospects of a school disco and a sex-education class, while dad Graham (Shaun Dooley) grapples with changing times when a lineswoman is assigned to a Cobblers match. Alan Carr himself makes an appearance, too.

Piglets
ITV1, 10pm
Stranger and sillier than your average sitcom, Victoria “Green Wing” Pile’s series finds the police recruits facing a sacking and potential misconduct case with their customary absence of sangfroid.

Love & Death
ITV1, 10.30pm
David E Kelley’s wonderfully cast but oddly underwhelming and superficial true-crime drama continues with the guilt over Candy (Elizabeth Olsen) and Allan’s (Jesse Plemons) affair threatening to overwhelm them both – sending the latter to a Christian marriage retreat for succour. 

Doctor Zhivago (1965) ★★★★★
BBC Two, 12.30pm  
David Lean’s classic, Oscar-winning adaptation of Boris Pasternak’s great novel is an extraordinary work of cinema and arguably the director’s greatest film. Omar Sharif plays a married physician and poet whose life is changed forever by the Russian Revolution’s ruthless onslaught and the subsequent civil war, while Julie Christie brings both heartache and glamour to the role of his long-suffering mistress.

Whisky Galore! (2016) ★★★
BBC Two, 4.35pm  
This remake of Alexander Mackendrick’s 1949 film (adapted from Compton MacKenzie’s novel, itself inspired by the wreck of a ship bearing 50,000 cases of whisky off the Hebrides) is a nostalgic treat. In 1949, the tale of starved islanders uniting against English bureaucracy to scavenge scotch was a quietly subversive comedy about defying the ration; in 2016 it felt a bit pointless, but Eddie Izzard is among the colourful characters.

What Happens Later (2023) ★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm  
You’d be forgiven for seeing the name Meg Ryan in this romcom’s cast list (and as director) and getting immediately excited. But the star of When Harry Met Sally... fumbles without the great romance writer/director Nora Ephron at the helm. What Happens Later is the tale of an older couple (Ryan and David Duchovny) who broke up 25 years ago and are brought back together when grounded in an airport during a snowstorm. 

Deadpool 2 (2018) ★★★
Channel 4, 9pm  
As ever, Ryan Reynolds’s anti-hero is morally flexible, near-unkillable and entirely self-aware, but this time he’s more offensive, his injuries more grotesque and his quips more numerous. The plot, about a mutant boy in need of protection, is paper-thin, but the anarchic tone (so refreshingly unlike other Marvel offerings) remains the real reason to watch. New film Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now; Logan is on Sunday (Film4, 9pm).

Sunday 28 July

Saucy! Secrets of the British Sex Comedy
Channel 4, 10pm
The three-day week, miners and gravediggers defiantly on strike, mounting discontent… different Britons will have different memories of the 1970s. But one thing that certainly brought a divided nation together was the rise of saucy sex comedies that heralded a less conservative future, especially for young people. The genre exploded in the decade with comedies such as Adventures of a Taxi Driver, Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Come Play with Me; laden with innuendo, they offered welcome respite from the grey doom and gloom (and classic stiff upper lip) that often characterised everyday life elsewhere. 

In this fun, engaging clip show, former leading man Robin Askwith looks back on Confessions of a Window Cleaner, the 1974 sex comedy (and first of a four-part franchise) that made him a star – and his derrière the most famous in Britain. Alongside Askwith, film producers, directors and other actors reflect on how the advent of sex comedies changed the way that Britons viewed – and talked about – sex for good, paving the way for a TV and film industry that is increasingly reliant on lust. Continues on Monday. PP

Sarah Vaughan Night
BBC Four, from 8pm
A foot-stomping Prom from the Royal Albert Hall kicks off a night of tributes to the US jazz singer, who would’ve turned 100 this year. Guy Barker conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in a run of Vaughan’s hits, from If You Could See Me Now to Body and Soul. Then, Craig Charles introduces some of Vaughan’s tracks recorded for the BBC, before a rarely shown, star-studded 1975 edition of Jazz Ship at 10.55pm.

McDonald & Dodds
ITV1, 8.05pm
This cosy crime drama isn’t going to set your world alight, but it’s amiable Sunday-night fare. Jason Watkins and Tala Gouveia’s bumbling detectives must investigate the death of a man aboard a busy Bath bus – and no other passengers are willing to talk. Their hunt for clues takes them to a local art festival – because, in whimsical Midsomer Murder-esque fashion, of course it does.

The Turkish Detective
BBC Two, 9pm
Elevated by its absorbing Istanbul setting and a strong lead turn from Haluk Bilginer, tonight’s episode of the tense thriller centres on a dodgy house fire that could lead detective Süleyman (Ethan Kai) to the gangster he’s been chasing. More tomorrow.

Britain Behind Bars: A Secret History
Channel 4, 9pm
Rob Rinder continues his deep-dive into the dark history of Britain’s prison system. Tonight he’s at Shrewsbury, where he learns about the infamous Pierrepoint family of hangers who led hundreds of inmates to their death from the Victorian era to the 1950s.

Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple
Sky Documentaries, 9pm
“Yeah, zebra, I’m talking to you!” From Tony Soprano’s right-hand man Silvio Dante to unassuming New Jersey rock star as part of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, actor and musician Stevie Van Zandt has seen it all. This feature-length profile explores his long career, personal life and activism through extensive interviews with both Van Zandt and his famous friends, from the Boss to Bono.  

Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over
BBC Three, 9.15pm & 10pm
The third season of Dooley’s “real people” docu-series begins with former glamour model Carla Bellucci, gearing up to celebrate her 40th birthday, before Dooley meets 70-year-old Shelley, who is eschewing pensioner stereotypes by working as a dominatrix. 

Summer Holiday (1963) ★★★
BBC Two, 1.50pm  
In this feel-good musical, a group of London bus mechanics decide during one wet British summer lunch break to “borrow” a double-decker from their employer, convert it into a holiday caravan and drive across Europe to Athens, picking up a group of female companions on the way. It was Peter Yates’s directorial debut and stars some young crooner named Cliff Richard.

High Society (1956) ★★★★★
BBC Two, 3.35pm  
MGM’s glorious musical version of The Philadelphia Story brings together a cast to die for: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Grace Kelly (who was actually the makers’ second choice after Elizabeth Taylor). Cole Porter’s songs have great wit as well as enduring melodies (You’re the Top is a particular standout), while Kelly’s acting talent and mesmerising beauty more than compensate for her inadequacy as a singer.

Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963, b/w) ★★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 6.35pm  
They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Joan Littlewood directs a fizzing kitchen-sink comedy based on Stephen Lewis’s 1960 play Sparrers Can’t Sing (itself loosely based on Frank Norman’s Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be). James Booth is Cockney sailor Charlie, who returns home from sea to find his wife Maggie (Barbara Windsor) missing. He soon finds her: with a new man and baby in tow.

Film of the Week: The Shining (1980) ★★★★★
BBC Two, 10pm
While filming The Shining, Stanley Kubrick pushed Shelley Duvall to her absolute limits. The role required her to do “12-to 16-hour days… for a year and one month. The role demanded that I cry for at least nine of those months,” she later said. Watching the film, you can almost see the actress, who died, aged 75, a fortnight ago, break down on screen; her mental and physical state chipped away at until a mere shell of a woman remains. Set in a deserted hotel that’s in the care of writer Jack (Jack Nicholson) and his family for the winter, Kubrick’s psycho-horror, based on the novel by Stephen King, is stuffed with unforgettable nerve-jangling shocks. The film is filled with terrifying altercations, from the famous moment when the crazed Jack smashes his way through a door with an axe as his wife (Duvall) cowers in the corner to those spooky girl twins in their cute blue dresses, peering out from blank, cold eyes. A horror film for the ages that didn’t get its dues at the time (it received no Oscar nominations, but got two Razzie – the awards for box-office bombs and stinkers – nods. A travesty). Also showing on Thursday (BBC Four, 9pm).

Le Week-End (2013) ★★★★
Film4, 11.45pm  
This smart, thoughtful drama about a long-married couple from Birmingham on a mini-break in Paris becomes richer the deeper you probe, like a bitter chocolate soufflé. Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan star as Nick and Meg Burrows, who return to the French capital 30 years after their honeymoon to see what has changed: the answer, of course, is them. Only time will tell if they can add the city’s sparkle to their own lives.

Monday 29 July

Eiffel Tower: Building the Impossible
BBC Four, 9pm
There are few monuments as famous, or as unmistakably French, as the Eiffel Tower. It is difficult to imagine the Paris skyline without it. And yet, of course, that was once the case. This absorbing documentary tells the story of Gustave Eiffel, the genius architect and engineer with a dream: to build the world’s tallest man-made structure. Having conceptualised the 300-metre iron colossus, he had just two years to build it; otherwise it would miss its unveiling at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. 

The documentary’s argument is that Eiffel had been building up to this challenge his entire career. While working on Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, for instance, he designed a giant pylon with a lattice design that would prove influential not only in the tower’s aesthetic but in its enduring resilience against wind. Equally fascinating is the story of its afterlife. Due to be dismantled in 1909, it was saved by Eiffel himself. His proposal was that it be used to test the emerging technology of radio telegraphy. A boon for national defence – not to mention magnifique architecture. SK

Signora Volpe
Acorn TV
The first series of this crime drama followed disillusioned spy Sylvia Fox (Emilia Fox) as she solved murders in the luscious Italian town of Panicale. She returns tonight with a new series and a new mystery: the stabbing of a local man considered a pillar of the community. 

Futurama
Disney+
The animated sci-fi comedy returns for a 12th series with another batch of revival episodes. The opener is a dated riff on the brief internet trend of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), while other episodes parody Squid Game and see Leela (Katey Sagal) befriend a chatbox. It’s not bad, but it lacks the magic of the original series (that often rivalled The Simpsons for terrific animation and timeless humour).

Totally Completely Fine
ITVX
This acerbic six-part Australian dramedy has a deliciously dark premise. The self-destructive Vivian (Thomasin McKenzie) inherits her grandfather’s cliffside mansion. The catch? It is also a popular suicide spot. McKenzie is particularly great here as the reluctant saviour of the suicidal; her no-nonsense cynicism strikes a chord with those close to the edge. 

House of the Dragon
Sky Atlantic, 2am & 9pm
There is a new dragon rider in Westeros: the ostensibly low-born Addam (Clinton Liberty). In tonight’s penultimate episode, Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra orchestrates a showdown to find out whether he is team green or black. Slowly but surely, the pieces of all-out dragon war are being moved into place. 

Jamie: What to Eat This Week
Channel 4, 8pm
Jamie Oliver’s mini-series of summer cooking tips concludes with seasonal plums and fresh honey, harvested from the chef’s beehives. The hero dish is crispy duck, paired with a pepper panzanella salad. Oliver also picks some homegrown courgettes and serves up a sumptuous dessert of sour cherry frangipane.

Shark Tank: Dragons’ Den US
BBC Three, 8pm
The American remake of Dragons’ Den is bigger, shinier and – in the case of tonight’s special opener – recorded live in front of a studio audience. Pitches range from an eco-friendly compostable clothing brand to a hero product for parents that can clear the snotty noses of babies. In a unique twist, the hooting audience are allowed to weigh in on whether the “sharks” should invest. 

Bumblebee (2018) ★★★★
Film4, 2.25pm  
Director Travis Knight takes the lucrative Transformers franchise and gleefully sidesteps into 1987; it’s still a giant toy advert, but there’s artistry on display here too, rather than just crash, bang, wallop. Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld) is the teenage heroine for whom freedom from her mother (Pamela Adlon) rests on gaining a set of wheels. Enter a robot from the planet Cybertron, followed by the usual hectic action sequences.

The Road (2009) ★★★★
Great! Movies, 9pm  
This apocalyptic film may match the current mood, what with the US on the brink of all-out mutiny and climate change growing ever more terrifying. John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is as harrowing as its source. Stunning landscape shots set the melancholy mood, as a nameless father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) wander an American wasteland after an ecological disaster. Nick Cave’s score is perfect.

The Pianist (2002) ★★★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 11.05pm  
Roman Polanski’s story about a Polish-Jewish pianist dodging the Nazis in occupied Warsaw (adapted from Władysław Szpilman’s memoirs) won Oscars galore, including a deserved Best Actor nod for Adrien Brody. Atrocities are seen from Brody’s point of view as the film develops into a gripping, harrowing story of survival against the odds. Incidentally, Polanski escaped from the Kraków Ghetto as a child.

Tuesday 30 July

Cooking with the Stars
ITV1, 8pm
The last thing we need is more cookery on television; although, at least it’s not more sport. However, this celebrity-driven competition, returning for a fourth run, has the saving grace of refusing to take itself seriously. That’s thanks largely to the presenting style of Tom Allen and Emma Willis, who keep the emphasis firmly on fun. “Here’s the twist: none of them can cook,” quips Allen at the outset. But it’s also helped by some particularly good casting this time round. 

With the fairly laid-back likes of Carol Vorderman, Katherine Ryan and Christopher Biggins balancing out the more win-focussed approach of some of the other competitors (Olympian Linford Christie, model Abbey Clancy, Strictly’s Pasha Kovalev and influencer Harry Pinero). And, of course, the vested interests of the eight star chefs with whom they’re paired (Michael Caines, April Jackson, Michael O’Hare, Poppy O’Toole, Rosemary Shrager, Tony Singh, Shelina Permalloo and Jack Stein). Tonight’s opening round sees Vorderman take on Clancy in a steak versus salmon challenge, while vegan Kovalev goes head-to-head with Pinero to see whether cauliflower can beat duck. GO

Secrets of the London Underground
U&Yesterday, 8pm
Tim Dunn and Siddy Holloway explore the 1843 Thames Tunnel, which was the first in the world to run beneath a major river. They also delve into the history of Lambeth North station and look at new plans to extend the Bakerloo Line to Lewisham in southeast London. 

The Body Detectives
Channel 4, 9pm
The second episode in a gripping series featuring the work of Locate International, an organisation that investigates missing persons’ cases, follows former detective Dave Grimstead as he turns the clock back 30 years to shed light on the identity of an unknown man found dead in London in 1994.

Your Kitchen: 60 Years of Fads and Gadgets
Channel 5, 9pm
Random celebrities – Janet Ellis, Danny John-Jules, Jenny Eclair (is it a J-thing?) – road-test once-innovative electric whisks and carving knives in this two-parter; reminding us just how much gadgets and gizmos have improved life since the laborious food-prep and laundry-mangling days of the 1950s. 

A Storm Foretold
BBC Four, 10pm
There’s never any doubt on which side of the Trump debate director Christoffer Guldbrandsen stands in this shocking profile of the former president’s longtime ally, the conservative lobbyist Roger Stone. Still, the greed, nastiness and cynicism on display needs no enhancement. A repellent insight into the murky inner workings of US politics. 

Women on Death Row
Channel 4, 11.05pm
The second in this series explores the case of US mother Sandi Nieves, who in 1998 was convicted of the first-degree murder of her four daughters and the attempted murder of her son. Although California’s supreme court commuted her death sentence in 2021, it upheld the convictions. Now, Nieves hopes a new trial might enable her to see her son again.

On Assignment
ITV1, 11.35pm
More topical reports from ITV’s team of foreign correspondents, as James Mates attends anti-tourism protests on the popular, luxurious Greek island of Santorini, Faye Barker learns about methods of sustainable cockle-harvesting in Spain, and Barnaby Papadopulos reports on 50 years of division between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. 

Jerry Maguire (1996) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Greats, 8pm  
In Cameron Crowe’s macho romcom, Tom Cruise plays a sports agent who has an attack of conscience and urges his colleagues to consider their clients’ welfare. This being capitalism-loving America, he’s duly fired, but decides to start his own agency. A washed-up American footballer (Cuba Gooding Jr) and a single mother (Renée Zellweger) agree to go with him. It was here that the line “you had me at ‘hello’” was born.

Mission: Impossible III (2006) ★★★
Sky Showcase, 9pm  
JJ Abrams made his first foray into feature film-making (pre-Star Wars and Star Trek) with this, the third instalment of an often mediocre franchise. The indefatigable Tom Cruise, still hanging off of planes to this day, reports for duty, doing all of his impressive stunts, as special agent Ethan Hunt – called out of retirement to track down a ruthless arms dealer (a scene-stealing Philip Seymour Hoffman). 

Tremors (1990) ★★★★
ITV4, 11.10pm  
Ron Underwood’s monster horror comedy is a pure slice of 1990s bombast; Netflix’s Stranger Things certainly borrowed a plotline or two. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward play a pair of handymen who end up tasked with saving the world from ruin – and ginormous, terrifying monsters. With the help of a seismologist (Finn Carter) and a survivalist couple (Michael Gross and Reba McEntire) they try to fight back.

Wednesday 31 July

Atomic People
BBC Two, 9pm
On 6 August 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in an attempt to end the Second World War. Eighty thousand people were killed, and then, three days later, another bomb and 40,000 more people died in Nagasaki. Within a year, those numbers rose to 140,000 and 74,000. These were the first and – one hopes – the last atomic bombs to be used in conflict. 

Benedict Sanderson and Megumi Inman’s engrossing film explores the long-lasting effects on the “Hibakusha” – those who survived. Their decision to meld subtitled interviews with harrowing archive footage from the blast gives the survivors’ words even more heft as they recall their happy pre-bomb childhoods, but also being taught to hate “demon-like” Americans, while others struggle to describe the devastation that the bombs wrought. “It was a scene from hell,” says one. They talk about health problems and the difficult decision whether to have children, who could have been damaged by the fallout. One man movingly describes why Hibakusha want to speak out now: “History could repeat itself, so we need to document the proof of how terrible it was.” This quietly affecting film is an important document in itself. VL

Women in Blue
Apple TV+
Set in Mexico in 1971, this fact-based drama introduces us to the country’s first female police officers. Maria (Bárbara Mori) and her colleagues (played by Ximena Sariñana, Natalia Téllez and Amorita Rasgado) soon realise that their hiring is a publicity stunt intended to distract attention from a serial killer on the loose. But they commit to finding the killer regardless.

Cumbria: The Lakes & the Coast
Channel 5, 8pm
This week we’re in Appleby-in-Westmorland to visit Harriet and Chris McPhee’s herd of goats. The pair are hoping to turn the goats’ milk into delicious cheese, while at Lowther Castle, custodian Jim works with local stone mason James Lightfoot to restore as much of the ruined building as they can. Jim Carter narrates.

Catching a Killer: A Stab in the Dark
Channel 4, 9pm
Tonight’s episode follows Thames Valley Police’s painstaking investigation into the murder of 21-year-old Kyron Lee, who was knocked off his bike, chased and stabbed to death in 2022. With only CCTV of the five masked suspects and a stolen vehicle to go on, the detectives have a tough task on their hands.

Mr Bigstuff
Sky Max, 9pm
Ryan Sampson’s amiable comedy continues. Wrong ‘un Lee (Danny Dyer) reveals more about the “naughty people” who are after him, while things continue to fall apart for his brother Glen (Sampson). Judi Love does an amusing guest turn as a security guard left to tussle with Kirsty (Harriet Webb) who is caught shoplifting.

Peter Davison Remembers… Campion
BBC Four, 10pm
The Doctor Who actor looks back at 1989’s  Campion, adapted from Margery Allingham’s detective novels, in which he played aristocratic sleuth Albert Campion, reputedly a parody of Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey. In the two-part story (written by Alan Plater) that follows at 10.15pm and 11.10pm, Campion battles a gang of international thieves. 

Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa (2024) ★★★★
Netflix 
Lhakpa Sherpa works full time as a dishwasher, but she is also an acclaimed mountain guide – she was the first Nepali woman to climb Mount Everest. Lucy Walker’s film tells her remarkable story against the backdrop of the mountain.

Song of the Sea (2014) ★★★★★
Film4, 12.45pm  
Every scene of Tomm Moore’s beautifully drawn, Oscar-nominated animation feels like a warm hug. It begins with a young boy (David Rawle) preparing for the arrival of his baby sister. But one morning, Ben’s mother has gone – and his father (Brendan Gleeson), cradling a new baby in his arms, is bereft. Years later, a discovery spirits brother and sister away into a magical world of faeries, elves and enchanted wells. Lovely, intelligent stuff.

Midnight Special (2016) ★★★★★
Sky Sci-Fi, 9pm  
Jeff Nichols’s sci-fi chase movie mixes superpowers, religion and an offbeat cast to dazzling effect. Two shifty-looking guys, played by Michael Shannon and Joel Edgerton, are on the run with the former’s son. But the boy’s blue goggles aren’t the only thing to mark him out. A highly watchable scrap ensues as both government agencies and a fanatical cult pursue our heroes. Fans of Ad Astra, Super 8 or even Blade Runner will love this.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm  
Cate Blanchett took Shekhar Kapur’s 1998 film Elizabeth by storm, winning an Oscar for her portrayal of a young Elizabeth I, and she does it again in this sequel, set a decade later, between 1585 and the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The script takes a few liberties with the truth, but it favours romanticism over the dark complexities of its predecessor. Clive Owen, Geoffrey Rush and Samantha Morton also star.

Thursday 1 August

Interview with the Vampire
BBC Two, 9pm
Boxsetted from this evening, the second series of this brilliantly realised adaptation of Anne Rice’s novels joins vampire Louis (Game of Thrones’ Jacob Anderson) and freshly converted teenage bloodsucker Claudia (Delainey Hayles, replacing Bailey Bass) as they cross eastern Europe at the tail end of the Second World War, finding abundant evidence of man’s inhumanity. After feeding off some dastardly Nazis, they arrive in Romania hoping to find evidence of Vlad the Impaler. There, they are greeted cautiously by resident villagers who – wisely, it transpires – seem to fear the supernatural as much as their Soviet occupiers.What they discover in the woods is revealing and oddly poignant amid the clamorous gore. 

The fresh new setting proves a smart move, while the apparitions of Louis’s estranged lover LeStat (Sam Reid) and flashforwards to the titular interview between Louis, fading hack Daniel (Eric Bogosian) and irritating “new” lover Armand (Assad Zaman) pop the pomposity and provide much needed injections of humour. Camp it certainly is, but also impressively thoughtful, tender and occasionally devastating; a little reminiscent of True Blood at its peak. GT

Unstable
Netflix
One of those Netflix comedies that just seems to exist while making no discernible impact (see also: The Kominsky Method, The Ranch), this rote workplace comedy – given a frisson by its father-son casting – sees awkward Jackson (John Owen Lowe) lock horns with his tech bro father, Ellis (Rob Lowe).

The High Street Shops We Loved & Lost
Channel 5, 8pm
Ever wanted to hear about Eamonn Holmes’s stint working in ladies lingerie in Primark? How about Lesley Joseph’s thoughts on the demise of Debenhams? The talking heads may be as random as usual in these types of shows, but there are points of interest in this trawl through the recent history of our high street, as well as its possible future.

Bangers & Cash
U&Yesterday, 8pm
The UKTV warhorse returns for a 10th series taking us inside North Yorkshire family business Mathewsons, which auctions off old cars. Tonight, they tackle a Subaru Impreza and E-Type Jaguar, blunder over a Ford Mexico and consider the prospects of a Rolls-Royce once owned by Hollywood icon Fred Astaire.

Fantasmas
Sky Comedy, 9pm
The definition of an acquired taste, this beguiling, deeply eccentric comedy (created by and starring Julio Torres) is worth a look for its guest stars alone (tonight’s double bill features Paul Dano and Steve Buscemi) as Torres’s oddball character embarks on a vignette-filled odyssey across New York City in search of a golden earring. A surreal morsel.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
Sky Max, 9pm
As The Walking Dead universe expands, Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) washes up in France – a nation with its own zombie-based challenges – as he tries to make his way across the country to find a way back home, negotiating paramilitaries and religious fanatics (the latter led by the excellent Clémence Poésy). The best spin-off to date; it hinges on a far stronger plot than The Ones Who Live.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA
Channel 4, 10pm
A bewildering, uncalled-for revival for a moribund format, this eighth series (coming nine years after the seventh) begins with the perennially shouty chef offering his own brand of tough love to help two brothers steer their NYC diner through choppy waters. 

Downton Abbey (2019) ★★★
ITV3, 8pm  
This big-screen version of the beloved costume-drama is a lavish reunion; Michelle Dockery, Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville and co are out in force. Nestled among the Yorkshire countryside lies the huge hereditary pile of the Crawley family, but now it’s 1927 and things have changed – and there’s tragedy in store. Julian Fellowes cooks up a royal visit and assassins in a story that will be lapped up by fans. A sequel is on the way.

Jericho Ridge (2023) ★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 10pm  
There are shades of Rio Bravo in Will Gilbey’s tense thriller (and his directorial debut). It follows Nikki Amuka-Bird’s gritty cop as she’s forced to defend her smalltown sheriff’s office from armed invaders. The remote mountain setting adds to the knife-edge atmosphere; you feel like violence can come bursting out at any moment. This is England’s Michael Socha co-stars. Streaming from Sunday.

The Theory of Everything (2014) ★★★★
BBC Two, 11.35pm  
Eddie Redmayne deservedly won an Oscar for his portrayal of British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking in James Marsh’s moving adaptation of Jane Wilde Hawking’s (played here by Felicity Jones) memoir. His battle with motor neurone disease is well-handled but it’s the affecting story of love and the passing of time in a marriage that lies at the film’s heart.

Friday 2 August

Miriam Margolyes: A New Australian Adventure
BBC Two, 9pm
Ever since her forthright opinions caught the public imagination on The Real Marigold Hotel in 2016, Margolyes’s autumn-years career as a presenter of thoughtful yet highly entertaining factual programmes has flourished. This is her third series on Australia – her “second home” as a UK-Australian citizen – which she begins in the western city of Perth. 

Still recuperating following a heart operation, the 83-year-old is in marginally less boisterous form than usual, but she’s soon venturing out on her mobility scooter meeting people – whether they’re members of a Jaguar car-owners club or tattoo-festooned sex workers – and reflecting on how their chosen paths compare with her own life choices and attitudes. The most affecting sequences are an encounter with a local rabbi, which forces Margolyes to re-examine her own resolutely secular Jewishness. And, especially, her meeting with survivors of Australia’s horrifying “stolen generations” scandal which saw local authorities, over decades, forcibly seize the children of Aboriginal people and remove them from their families. Even here, her positivity doesn’t run dry. GO

Cowboy Cartel
Apple TV+ 
Narcos meets No Country for Old Men in this stylish four-part border-country documentary about the infiltration and corruption of the lucrative Texas horse racing industry by a violent Mexican drugs gang – and the efforts of US law enforcement to take them down. With heroes, villains and life-or-death moments, it builds and builds. 

BBC Proms
BBC Four, 8pm 
A performance, by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Nicholas Collon, of Olivier Messiaen’s electrifying Turangalîla-Symphony sits alongside the world premiere of composer Anna Clyne’s The Gorgeous Nothings, inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and featuring the renowned vocal group The Swingles. 

Champions: Full Gallop
ITV1, 9pm
Excitement is high as more than 70,000 racegoers descend on Cheltenham for four days of racing. One of the biggest meets of the National Hunt calendar, Cheltenham is key for anyone hoping for glory in the trainers’ championship – such as up-and-comer Dan Skelton, who’s keen to give his former boss and mentor Paul Nicholls a run for his money. 

Terror at 30,000 Feet
Channel 5, 9pm
Just what you need before boarding a plane for your summer holiday. The story of Britannia Airways flight 226A from Cardiff, which crashed with 236 passengers on board (one person died) while attempting to land in terrible weather at Girona in 1999. Cutting-edge special effects and eye-witness testimony reveal the full horror.

The Claremont Murders
More4, 9pm
A powerful two-part Australian true-crime drama about the decades-long police investigation into the disappearance, in the 1990s, of three young women from the wealthy Perth suburb of Claremont. Tonight, as the investigation gets underway, police detectives reluctantly begin to suspect a serial killer is on the loose in their quiet community. 

Sir Cliff Richard at the BBC 
BBC Four, from 10.05pm
A late-evening line-up of Cliff clips and concerts gets under way with a 2020 assemblage of performances from the BBC archive that includes everything from his 1958 hit Move It through to The Millennium Prayer. Concert film Cliff in London, from 1980, and Cliff Richard: Live at the Albert Hall, from 1994 follow. 

Rebel Moon – Part Two: Director’s Cut (2024) ★★
Netflix  
Star Wars fans, look away now – Zach Snyder’s cheap rip-off is back for a second instalment. The Justice League director’s space opera passion project this time centres on a group of heroes who vow to fight against intergalactic baddies the Imperium. Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein and Charlie Hunnam star. For more CGI-heavy action, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is streaming on Disney+ from today (Friday 2).

Trolls Band Together (2023) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 4pm  
What a delightful, neon-hued barrage of family friendly chaos Trolls is. This third instalment in the hit DreamWorks franchise goes full Smurfs via way of Pitch Perfect, as pink troll Poppy (voiced by Anna Kendrick) and BFF Branch (Justin Timberlake) chase former musical glories. Looking for more kid-friendly summer fun? New SpongeBob Squarepants film Saving Bikini Bottom is on Netflix from today (Friday 2).

Official Secrets (2019) ★★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm  
Keira Knightley stars in this strong political thriller relating the true story of Katharine Gun, a linguist working for GCHQ who, before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, leaked a memo from the National Security Agency exposing a surveillance operation targeting the UN security council. Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans are among its sprawling cast; South African director Gavin Hood takes the helm.

Pride (2014) ★★★★
BBC One, 12.10am  
Directed by Matilda the Musical’s Matthew Warchus, Pride tells the story of the gay and lesbian activists who rallied to the support of striking Welsh miners in 1984, and features a fine cast including Imelda Staunton and Dominic West. All pints of mild and choral singing, acid-wash denim and disco, it has the energy of a great stage show. The dance scene in the pub will have you both weeping and roaring with laughter. A true British gem.

Television previewers

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