Monday 8 July
Spent
BBC Two, 10pm; NI, 11.05pm
Two years after her extraordinary, idiosyncratic debut The Baby, Michelle de Swarte returns with another supremely confident and stylishly executed series, featuring probably the best soundtrack of the year. Drawing in part on her own experiences, De Swarte plays Mia, a catwalk model whose profligacy has left her facing bankruptcy. Forced to return home to London from New York, she finds her friends and family have moved on in her absence: her best pal (Amanda Wilkin) is engaged and a vulnerable teenager from the estate has moved into her old bedroom with her mum (Juliet Cowan). Modelling jobs, meanwhile, prove to be a rarity for a forty-something with few contemporary contacts, but Mia can’t bring herself to face the shame of admitting failure and resorts to sofa surfing.
Amid the well-tuned farce – a dogging encounter, inadvertent dogsitting – is an important and pertinent examination of midlife drift and the poverty trap at a time when too many are falling through the cracks. For all that Mia’s desperate predicament is largely self-imposed, De Swarte’s astute writing and subtle lead performance ensures she never loses our interest or sympathy. GT
House of the Dragon
Sky Atlantic, 2am & 9pm
“A king must always be prepared for war,” we were promised and, with the Battle at Rook’s Rest looming, war is almost here. Episode four promises more shocking revelations for Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and some spectacular dragon action to boot.
Long Lost Family
ITV1, 9pm
Continuing to tug at the heartstrings with ruthless efficiency, Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell return for a 14th series of detective work and family reunions. They begin with two women, one searching for the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption and the other looking for the brother from whom she was separated as a baby.
Help! We Bought a Hotel
More4, 9pm
Blending the home makeover with fly-on-the-wall hospitality doc and property hunt (three surefire winners in a crowded field) this series follows entrepreneurs as they renovate old properties – among them a derelict Welsh mansion, a historical palazzo and a French boarding house – and turn them into working hotels.
The Great
Channel 4, 10pm & 11.10pm
This gleefully irreverent drama is showing signs of running out of steam; and this third series is its last. Still, there is much to enjoy in Nicholas Hoult’s both-barrels performance as the buffoonish, psychotic Peter III, who marks surviving his wife Catherine the Great’s (the excellent Elle Fanning) assassination attempt with some marriage counselling while alliances shift around them – in one case, with fatal consequences.
The Sympathizer
Sky Atlantic, 10.10pm
The final episode of this excellent drama – entitled, with heavy irony, Endings Are Hard, Aren’t They? – finds the Captain (Hoa Xuande) Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), and Claude (Robert Downey Jr) preparing to depart for Vietnam, where true horror awaits along with a muted yet satisfying conclusion to this exhilaratingly weird trip of a miniseries.
We Hunt Together
BBC One, from 10.40pm; Wales, from 11.30pm
Mismatched cops Mendy (Babou Ceesay) and Franks (Eve Myles) saddle up for a second run of Alibi’s unsettling crime serial, targeting a suspected killer (Nico Mirallegro) with links to their sinister nemesis, Freddy Lane (Hermione Corfield) – a quest complicated by the involvement of an internet troublemaker (Tamzin Outhwaite).
Manodrome (2023) ★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 4.25pm
Director John Trengove attempts to make a Fight Club for the incel age, but winds up with a hollow rumination on masculinity. It’s an intriguing project for The Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg, but he hardly plays against type as a man riddled with anxiety. His character is Uber driver Ralphie, skint and with a baby on the way, who gets recruited by Adrien Brody’s men’s rights activist.
Evening (2007) ★★★
Great! Movies, 6.35pm
Lying on her deathbed, Ann Grant Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) recalls memories of her one true love, Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson). They met, decades before, at a friend’s wedding and had a brief, intense affair, but it ended when he left her to marry another woman. As Ann regales her daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) with stories, they must try to come to terms with her imminent death. Lajos Koltai directs.
Dirty Harry (1971) ★★★★
5Action, 9pm
“You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” In 1971, the world was introduced to “Dirty” Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) – a renegade San Francisco police inspector adept at bending the rules in the name of justice. It’s fast and brutal, but smart too, with a streak of moral ambiguity at its heart. The film had four sequels, but Don Siegel’s original neo-noir remains the most stylised and thrilling.
Tuesday 9 July
Horsepower
BBC Four, 10pm & 11pm
First shown on Amazon Prime Video in 2022, this atmospheric access-all-areas documentary follows life behind the scenes at one of the world’s top racing stables. The focus of the four-part series is Park House Stables at Kingsclere in Hampshire, where trainer Andrew Balding (brother of broadcaster Clare Balding) stables and trains some of the best thoroughbreds in the world for some of the sport’s wealthiest owners. It is a huge operation with around 200 horses at any given time being prepared for racing greatness by dedicated, hard-working staff who are expected to give their all, and then some. “We have accommodation for 79 on site, so it’s intense” says Andrew’s wife, Anna Lisa, and that intensity comes across in every scene.
One of the series achievements is the sense it conveys of the bond that exists between them all, from the apprentice grooms who do the mucking-out to the stable’s champion jockey, Oisin Murphy, who delivers the wins. The latter’s 2021 brush with the racing authorities over alleged drug-taking adds a frisson of jeopardy to tonight’s opening two parts, though it hardly needs it. For racegoers, it’s more than irresistible enough already. GO
Our Great Yorkshire Life
Channel 5, 7pm
It’s a big day for florist Sarah Richardson, who’s arranging the showcase flower display at Newby Hall for the annual Harrogate Autumn Flower Show. And local news anchor Christa Ackroyd has a new assignment – tracing the county’s horseracing history at the St Leger Festival in Doncaster.
The Yorkshire Vet: Wedding Bells & Cow Bells
Channel 5, 8pm
There’s a change of scene as the vets head off to the Dordogne for colleagues David and Megan’s wedding day. But first, a bovine caesarean is on the cards for a cow who’s produced a calf so big it won’t come out any other way, and Peter operates on a sheep dog who’s broken his leg.
Secrets of the London Underground
Yesterday, 8pm
Tonight, we’re at Paddington, one of the best-connected stations on the network, with a wealth of oddities below ground. While loveable ferroequinologist Tim Dunn explores the mini “mail rail” line that used to transport post to sorting offices across the capital, his partner-in-trainspotting Siddy Holloway, bizarrely, unearths a forgotten airport luggage carousel.
Super Surgeons: A Chance at Life
Channel 4, 9pm
In the last episode of the series, at London’s Royal Marsden hospital, Prof Asif Chaudry tries pioneering robotic surgery for the first time to treat a rare form of cancer and Prof David Nicol prepares for a challenging operation that poses an exceptionally high risk of haemorrhaging.
Traitors to Hitler
BBC Four, 9pm
Following the failure of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944, the culprits were hunted down and hanged. To savour his revenge, Hitler ordered their trials and deaths to be filmed. This chilling Inside Story, first shown on the BBC 45 years ago and featuring the original footage, explores why the audacious plot failed.
The Spy in the Bag: New Revelations
Channel 5, 10pm
Re-examining the results of a recent review into the death of Gareth Williams, the MI6 spy found dead in a padlocked duffel bag in his London flat in 2010. Despite the bizarre circ*mstances, the review concurred with the police view that Williams acted alone, but new interviews suggest many of those close to the investigation remain unconvinced.
The Cat from Outer Space (1978) ★★★★
Talking Pictures TV, 5.50pm
Norman Tokar’s sci-fi comedy (and final film) is still a hoot. A UFO captained by an extraterrestrial cat (voiced by Ronnie Schell) is intercepted by the US military. The spacecraft’s pilot reveals to his captors that he must locate a substance called “Org 12” (also known as gold, here on Earth) to reunite with his mothership. Ken Berry plays the scientist who comes to his aid.
Inception (2010) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Greats, 8pm
Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending psycho-caper stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the ultimate thief: he steals ideas by sneaking into the subconscious of his victims. His latest task, however, involves doing the reverse: he must plant an idea deep in an unsuspecting mind. The dream-within-a-dream plotting is bewildering, but it looks dazzling, and the cast (Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy) is equally starry.
Ordinary Love (2019) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm
The lives of Joan (Lesley Manville) and Tom (Liam Neeson) are rocked by a cancer diagnosis. Thanks to the powerful performances of the leads, the simple nature of this story becomes its strength, but the modest virtues of the piece could have resonated profoundly had more been done to shake up the stifling minimalism. Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn direct; Owen McCafferty wrote the screenplay.
Wednesday 10 July
Sunny
Apple TV+
Resembling a Black Mirror episode spun out to the length of a series, Katie Robbins’s 10-part fable is, on the basis of its opening two episodes, something of a curate’s egg. Flirting with futureshock horror and conspiracy thriller, laced throughout with mordant humour, its protagonist is Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American in Kyoto whose husband and son are seemingly killed in a plane crash. Thanks to her husband’s job in robotics, she is gifted a “HomeBot” named Sunny by way of consolation. Initially less than impressed and indeed irritated by its solicitousness, she comes to rely increasingly on her new friend. Yet, as indications mount of foul play regarding her family and with stories appearing of malfunctioning HomeBots, her new attachment could prove perilous.
With its themes of technology gone wrong and the inherent dangers of a surveillance society, Sunny has a few familiar plot beats. Yet it rides these out with some well-judged moments of culture clash and very persuasive world building: tech is present and admired without being flaunted. Jones, meanwhile, offers a low-key masterclass in grief, confusion and the stubborn refusal to give in to either. GT
Receiver
Netflix
Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Amon-Ra St Brown are household names in the US as five of the NFL’s leading pass catchers. This follow-up to Netflix’s series on quarterbacks follows their lives.
Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken
Paramount+
The link between troubadour and outlaw has been present for centuries, and was made explicit by Johnny Cash when he played to the inmates of Folsom Prison. This powerful, mournful two-part documentary sees Melissa Etheridge crafting a song out of letters written to her by five prisoners in a Kansas prison, all of them affected in various ways by addiction – as indeed was Etheridge herself, her son having died from opioid addiction in 2020.
Mike
UKTV Play
Mike Tyson denounced this 2022 biopic series from Steven Rogers (I, Tonya) for not seeking his involvement, but also, perhaps, for the deeply unflattering portrayal of a gifted, troubled man capable of unspeakable behaviour both inside and outside the ring; Mike’s primary interest clearly rests on the latter. It begins with his hardscrabble formative years before cycling through his rapid rise, shocking fall, conviction for rape and ongoing rehabilitation in the public eye; Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes is as sensational as the material is sensationalist.
Loyalty Cards: Are They A Rip Off?
Channel 5, 7pm
Alexis Conran – a loyalty card naysayer – considers whether supermarkets’ canniest promotional wheeze is simply a ruse to access our data, and if so what precisely becomes of the information we so willingly offer up in exchange for discounts.
Battle of the Bagpipes
Sky Arts, 9pm
This surprisingly gripping series steps up a gear with the World Pipe Championships just one week away, and the leaders of our three featured piping groups intensify the demands on their bands.
GF Newman Remembers Law and Order
BBC Four, 10pm
Not to be confused with the venerable US procedural, GF Newman’s magnificent 1978 miniseries took four interlinked perspectives of a police investigation and its aftermath: the detective, the villain, the brief and the prisoner. The first three air tonight, preceded by the writer recalling its creation.
Hidden Figures (2016) ★★★★
Film4, 6.25pm
Theodore Melfi’s life-affirming film highlights a trio of black female Nasa employees’ contributions to the Space Race via a heavyweight line-up of Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe. Henson tops the bill as Katherine G Johnson; Spencer plays “computer” Dorothy Vaughan, and Monáe holds her own as engineer Mary Jackson. You’ll certainly be doffing your hat to the women they’re playing, too.
Gravity (2013) ★★★★★
BBC One, 10.50pm
Alfonso Cuarón’s film is a heart-aching reflection on the miracle of motherhood, and the billion-to-one odds against any of us being here, astronauts or not. It’s also a totally absorbing, often overpowering spectacle – a $100 million action movie (whose production was littered with disasters) in which Sandra Bullock and George Clooney play two spacefarers, fighting for their lives 375 miles above the Earth. Also on Tuesday, same time, same place.
The Rolling Stones: Rock and Roll Circus (1996, b/w) ★★★★
Sky Arts, 11.35pm
In 1968, the Rolling Stones staged a TV concert in a circus tent and invited their best mates, including John Lennon and Eric Clapton. Mick Jagger dressed as the ringmaster and they even hired a trapeze artist. The result is this bunch of sensational live performances, as well as circus interludes that are positively Fellini-esque in their weirdness. Michael Lindsay-Hogg directs.
Thursday 11 July
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning
W, 9pm
Swedish Death Cleaning – or dostadning – is a variation on the ongoing decluttering craze, its founding principle concerning why one should keep only truly valued possessions to avoid burdening your heirs in the event of your death. Although, as Amy Poehler’s pathologically perky narration underlines: “This is not a show about death, it is a show about life.” Sending three empathetic but unsentimental Swedes into the frequently sappy world of US reality television (this is made by NBC’s streaming spin-off Peaco*ck) is a smart move, and the culture clashes prompt both jovial humour and frank, emotional truth-telling.
First up for designer Johan, psychologist Katarina and organiser Ella is 75-year-old Suzi, a brashly charming “turkey vulture” (20 years older than a “cougar”) who is finding her attachment to the past is stopping her from engaging with the present or imagining a future. Yet who else, she wonders, could possibly want her many photos from her past as a singing waitress, or walk-in wardrobe of sequins and gold lame? The Swedes find answers to all the above and more over the course of a genuinely life-affirming hour. GT
Mastermind: to Think Like a Killer
Disney+
The FBI’s pioneering behavioural science specialist Dr Ann Burgess – the inspiration behind Netflix’s psychological thriller Mindhunter – is profiled over three gripping episodes, which reveal how her focus on the victims as much as the perpetrators helped the former find closure and the latter be brought to justice.
Tom Kerridge Cooks Britain
ITV1, 8.30pm; UTV/Wales, 10.45pm; not STV
Having long ago taken his role of good egg seriously enough to start resembling one, Tom Kerridge is back on the road in his food truck to champion British ingredients. This week he visits the Pennines in search of British beef to make a lip smacking steak Diane. His next stop is Lancashire for tomatoes to help comprise a tomato and feta flatbread – another appealing combo of technological boundary-pushing and down-home cooking.
Los Angeles: Stories from the City
PBS America, 8.55pm
Hollywood, with its promises of escape and riches, is as good an emblem as any for the illusions and realities of the American Dream. This solidly informative two-parter explores how the myths underpinning LA were established centuries earlier when it was just a dusty outpost, seized from Spain by Mexico after the latter won its independence.
Douglas Is Cancelled
ITV1, 9pm
After two episodes of sharp satire, Steven Moffat’s comedy-drama takes a gut wrenching swerve into the latter with a flashback: three years prior to Douglas’s (Hugh Bonneville) gaffe, Madeline (Karen Gillan, superb) has an encounter in a hotel room which does much to explain what we have seen so far.
So Help Me Todd
Alibi, 9pm
The second and final series of CBS’s amiably unchallenging legal procedural begins with wily attorney Margaret (Marcia Gay Harden) and her firm’s loose-cannon PI, Todd (Skylar Astin), dealing with the unexpected reappearance of her ex-husband (Mark Moses) and a murder on the local morning news.
Coupling
BBC Two, 10pm
While Steven Moffat’s latest series continues on ITV1, BBC Two shows an episode from the second series of his most successful sitcom. Dismissed by some as a watered-down “British Friends”, this episode, with Richard Coyle’s Jeff to the fore, is a reminder of its excellence.
Vanished into the Night (2024)
Netflix
Renato De Maria’s Italian crime thriller follows a desperate father (Riccardo Scamarcio) as he embarks on a dangerous mission following the abduction of his children. Annabelle Wallis is his American ex-wife who is convinced a shady group of loan sharks is responsible. What ensues is a tale of how far ordinary people will go to protect those they love; like Taken, with the spires of Paris swapped for Puglia’s sprawling green hills.
The Lodge (2019) ★★★
Film4, 10.50pm
Richard Armitage stars in the sort of knotty, atmospheric thriller that has made him a mainstay of British TV (Fool Me Once, The Stranger). When his ex-wife Laura (Alicia Silverstone) kills herself, he and new girlfriend Grace (Riley Keough) are handed custody of their kids. But then an idyllic Christmas getaway goes horrifically wrong, and Grace’s murky past threatens to wreck all of their lives.
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) ★★★★
ITV1, 11.15pm
Christopher Lee steals the show as Scaramanga in this classic Bond film, director Guy Hamilton’s last. Roger Moore’s 007 must pursue him with the help of sidekick Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland); they head off to the villain’s island to prevent him harnessing the power of the Sun. Moore and Lee’s duels are crackling; this certainly isn’t the pinnacle of Bond, but Lulu’s theme song is still great fun.
Friday 12 July
SisterS
UKTV Play
Sunny Canadian optimism meets pitch-black Irish cynicism in this charming, if slight sitcom (all episodes available now). It follows the unrelentingly upbeat Sare (Sarah Goldberg), who has just found out that her late father was not her actual father. The real deal was an Irish busker who her mother met while backpacking around Ireland. Cue a flight from Toronto to Dublin to track him down – a trip that brings her into contact with Suze (Susan Stanley), the hard-drinking half-sister she never knew she had.
It is fairly broad stuff. Ireland is introduced to the sounds of Dirty Old Town by The Pogues. While Suze’s mother, Sheryl (Sophie Thompson), is the quintessential caricature of the eccentric Irish “mammy”. Take the scene in which Sare turns down a sausage roll because she’s Jewish, leading to Sheryl sighing: “Haven’t the Jews suffered enough?” SisterS’ strength is the chemistry between Goldberg (best known for Barry) and Stanley, both of whom are co-creators. There is a wit and warmth in their characters’ unlikely relationship, which thaws over the course of a road trip from Dublin to Galway – undertaken, of course, in the crumbling wreck of an ice cream van. SK
Dolly Parton at the BBC
BBC Four, 9pm
From 9 (but sadly not to 5), it’s Dolly Parton night. First up is this collection of BBC archive performances, which is then followed by a re-airing of 2019 documentary Dolly Parton: Here I Am. Make sure to stick around for Parton’s euphoric 2014 Glastonbury set. Another BBC archive compilation, Country at the BBC, is at 12.40am.
Sister Boniface Mysteries
Drama, 9pm
Great Slaughter Cricket Club are facing rivals Stowington in the county final, which obviously means that there’s been a murder – their star player has been found dead, crushed by a fallen sight screen. Lorna Watson’s sleuthing nun suspects foul play – the kind that is just not cricket.
The Sommerdahl Murders
More4, 9pm
Tonight’s double-bill of the Danish detective drama is a two-part mystery about a playboy millionaire who is found dead in his hot tub. Could it have been a misadventure? Not likely, considering that his accountant has also been reported missing. The brooding Detective Sommerdahl (Peter Mygind) and his partner, Flemming (André Babikian), must track them down if they want to solve the case.
Extras
BBC Two, 10pm
BBC Two’s classic comedy repeat tonight is a hilarious 2006 episode of Ricky Gervais’s showbiz sitcom. It features a teenage Daniel Radcliffe playing a womanising parody of himself – a gag which inevitably leads to the former boy wizard accidentally flicking a condom onto the head of unimpressed acting great Diana Rigg.
Celebrity I Literally Just Told You
Channel 4, 10pm
Jimmy Carr hosts this special edition of TV’s most chaotic game show – the memory quiz where the questions are written in situ. The contestants tonight are Jonathan Ross, Josie Gibson, Oti Mabuse, Chico Slimani and Rylan Clark. Can you guess which one is eliminated for not being famous enough?
TRNSMT Festival
BBC One, 12.10am; BBC Scotland, 10pm; not Wales
Shereen Cutkelvin hosts highlights from the first day of the music festival, taking place on Glasgow Green. Liam Gallagher is tonight’s headliner, but you will also be able to catch performances by alt-rockers Garbage, pop royalty Sugababes and current indie darlings The Last Dinner Party.
The Iron Claw (2023) ★★★★
Amazon Prime Video
Who would’ve thought that the star of Disney’s 2006 smash-hit High School Musical had this much gravitas as an actor? All-American boy Zac Efron plays wrestling champion Kevin Von Erich, part of the Texan wrestling dynasty plagued by tragedy and unmanageable pressure from father Fritz (Holt McCallany). The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and British actor Harris Dickinson star alongside Efron as the other brothers.
Descendants: The Rise of Red (2024)
Disney+
The fourth instalment in the mega-successful, musical franchise, which follows the dastardly offspring of Disney villains such as Maleficent and the Evil Queen. This latest spin-off follows the daughters of the Queen of Hearts and Cinderella as they enrol at fairytale boarding school Auradon Prep. Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker take the lead, while China Anne McClain and Melanie Paxson resume their roles from the original films.
The Nun II (2023) ★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm
Internationally, the biggest hit to date in the Conjuring franchise is a spin-off: The Nun (2018), which was the fifth film, and one of the silliest. It grossed $366 m worldwide from a mere $22 m budget, proof that scary nuns drum up cracking business overseas. This sequel involves much of the same demonic terror and religious allegory, with Taissa Farmiga as holier-than-thou Sister Irene and Bonnie Aarons as her demonic counterpart.
I Give It a Year (2013) ★★★
BBC One, 10.40pm
This cheerfully abrasive British comedy (directed by Sacha Baron Cohen’s regular writing partner, Dan Mazer) offers a fresh twist on a tested format, starting with a happy ending and asking what comes next. Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall crackle with chemistry to play two newlyweds whose first year of marriage is more testing than the whirlwind romance that preceded it. In support are Olivia Colman and Minnie Driver.
Television previewers
Stephen Kelly (SK), Veronica Lee (VL), Gerard O’Donovan (GO), Poppie Platt (PP) and Gabriel Tate (GT)
