What's on TV tonight: Peter Kay’s Car Share Unscripted, The Woman in White and more

The £100k Drop

Channel 4, 4.00pm

It has a new teatime slot and a 10th of the previous prize money, but Davina McCall is still in situ for this entertaining game show of general knowledge and playing the odds.

Tenko

True Entertainment, 6.00pm

The classic BBC drama set in a Japanese POW camp for British, Dutch and Australian women interned after the fall of Singapore in 1942 is being aired every weeknight at 6.00pm. It’s unflinching in its explorations of friendship, sexuality and the degradations of war.

Danceworks: The Dying Swan

BBC Four, 7.30pm

Beginning four consecutive nights of films exploring the world of British dance today, former Royal Ballet principal Zenaida Yanowsky explores the physical toll of her career as she attempts one final post-surgery comeback.

Dispatches: Britain’s Benefits Crisis

Channel 4, 7.30pm

Morland Sanders investigates the Government’s roll-out of the Universal Credit scheme. It is ostensibly aimed at simplifying the benefits system but instead it is dogged by controversy, cuts to provisions and administrative glitches.

ATP Masters Tennis: The Mutua Madrid Open

Sky Sports Main Event, 7.30pm

It’s the opening day of play in the clay-court tournament at the Caja Magica, where world number one and home favourite Rafael Nadal – in formidable form – is the event’s reigning champion.  

The Woman in White

BBC One, 9.00pm

Fiona Seres’s impressively sustained exploration of brutal, brittle masculinity and the stout resistance of their intended victims reaches a gripping climax as Lura (Olivia Vinall) and Marian (Jessie Buckley) strike back against the devious Fosco (Riccardo Scamarcio) and thuggish Sir Percival (Dougray Scott).

The Road to Palmyra

BBC Four, 9.00pm

Ebullient historian Dan Cruickshank and wry photographer Don McCullin make an odd couple, yet their journey through a ravaged Syria casts new light on both the conflict as well as what the material and spiritual costs will be for future generations. GT

Genderquake

Channel 4, 9.00pm

This gimmicky but occasionally enlightening TV experiment puts 11 strangers with different attitudes towards gender and sexuality in a house together for a week: prejudices are aired, preconceptions challenged and romances kindled. It concludes on Tuesday with further revelations and realisations, as well as a debate on the issues raised at 10.00pm. GT

Forrest Gump (1994) ★★★★☆

Sky One, 9.00pm

Robert Zemeckis’s Oscar-winning comedy drama is full of spirit – even if, at times, it’s slightly saccharine. Forrest (Tom Hanks) is a simpleton with a heart of gold, who, ever true to the homely advice of his mother (Sally Field) is reflecting on his improbable life as a Vietnam War hero, table-tennis champion and accidental millionaire. Hanks, depending on your sentimentality threshold, may prove to be adorable.

Notting Hill (1999) ★★★★☆

ITV, 10.20pm

This is the second of Richard Curtis’s romcoms, after Four Weddings and a Funeral, about bumbling good eggs and frightfully pretty girls. Hugh Grant plays a London bookseller who attracts the attention of a film star (Julia Roberts) – it’s amusing, in particular when Grant’s character ineptly poses as a journalist from Horse & Hound magazine at a press junket for her sci-fi movie.

Papillon (1973) ★★★★☆

BBC Two, 11.00pm

Based on the autobiography of petty criminal Henri Charrière – nicknamed Papillon because of his butterfly tattoo – this powerful prison drama is set in the infamous French penal colony Devil’s Island. Steve McQueen impressively stars as the title character, desperate to escape Devil’s Island’s gruesome brutality. Dustin Hoffman gives memorable support as his friend, the small-time fraudster Louis Dega.

Tuesday 8 May

Back to the Land with Kate Humble

BBC Two, 7.00pm

There aren’t many TV shows that merit the word “inspirational” but Kate Humble’s series looking at the lives and work of entrepreneurial countryside pioneers around the UK does. Here she returns for another 12-part run, beginning by visiting four new start-ups in Cornwall which were prompted by a perceived gap in the market. Her clear favourites – she returns again and again to check on their progress – are free-diving seaweed harvesters Caro and Tim. This sustainability-aware pair were looking to work locally when they realised that, despite seaweed becoming more fashionable as a cooking ingredient, no one was harvesting the plentiful supply in the sea near them. Much hard work and ingenuity later, it’s an unlikely business idea that looks set to be a winner. 

Humble also meets a couple who reversed their farm’s declining fortunes by taking a leap of faith into free-range duck breeding, two best friends who supply native-flower bouquets to Cornwall’s booming high-end wedding market and a lavishly bearded brewer whose wild foraging in the local fields and hedgerows supplies the ingredients for his uniquely flavoured “wild” beers. Gerard O’Donovan

Danceworks: Street to Stage

BBC Four, 7.30pm

Rising British star Dickson Mbi displays a range of talents in this film following him and his hip-hop popping team, Fiya House, competing in an international street dance competition.

Eurovision Song Contest 2018

BBC Four, 8.00pm

The Eurovision song contest circus kicks off tonight in Lisbon with the first semi-final featuring 19 countries (including Ireland) of the record-equalling 43 competing this year. UK fans have to wait for Saturday’s Grand Final to hear SuRie sing our entry, Storm. 

The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds

Channel 4, 8.00pm

The first in a two-part special exploring how children learn the difference between right and wrong, as another class of five-year-olds are challenged to decide if it’s OK to cheat and what to do when someone tells you a secret. 

Abandoned Engineering

Yesterday, 8.00pm

The series exploring mysterious abandoned buildings returns for a second series. This week, a vast labyrinth of crumbling tunnels, bunkers and towers in northern Poland, once a cutting-edge oil refinery, reveals its former role as a pivotal part of Hitler’s war machine. GO

The Split

BBC One, 9.00pm

Abi Morgan’s legal drama hurries on apace with further revelations drawing us deeper into the lives of Hannah (Nicola Walker) and her dysfunctional family of lawyers. Tonight, things get heated in a case involving frozen embryos, and matriarch Ruth (Deborah Findlay) is evasive over finances.

Later Live: with Jools Holland

BBC Two, 10.00pm

Returning for a 52nd series, Jools Holland welcomes more acts to play live in studio. Among them are Snow Patrol, Plan B, Bettye Lavette, and rising stars Shame and Jade Bird.

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle: The Engagement Interview

BBC One, 11.40pm; NI/Wales, 12.05am; Scot, 12.45am

In case you won’t catch the endless clips in royal wedding-related programming over the next 10 days, here’s a repeat of the interview the couple gave Mishal Husain at Kensington Palace last year on the day they announced their engagement. GO

My Cousin Rachel (2017) ★★★☆☆

Sky Cinema Premiere, 2.30pm and 11.30pm

“Did she? Didn’t she?” ponders stricken hero Philip Ashley about the titular character and the possible murder of her husband/his cousin. This is based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1951 novel, but there was also a film version in 1952, an Eighties BBC version, on radio, and on the stage. Young Philip, the heir to a fortune, is played in Roger Michell’s stylish but sexless adaptation by a rakish Sam Claflin.

Hot Fuzz (2007) ★★★★☆

ITV2, 9.00pm

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s follow-up to the cult comedy-horror Shaun of the Dead (and the second chapter in the Cornetto Trilogy) reunites Pegg with Nick Frost in the story of two policemen who uncover a conspiracy in a Somerset village. Timothy Dalton is a sinister triumph as a millionaire baddy. Sharp, funny and with explosive action scenes, it’s a very British action-comedy that does everything it should.

Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) ★★★☆☆

Talking Pictures TV, 9.00pm

This is the third in a trilogy of Robert Aldrich-produced films (following What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte). It also features two female leads – this time, an Arizona widow (Geraldine Page) hires housekeepers to con them out of their money before murdering them, but Ruth Gordon’s Alice Dimmock isn’t easily fooled.

Wednesday 9 May

Britain’s Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

BBC One, 9.00pm; Scotland, 10.45pm

He tried to get Newcastle exercising together and demonstrated to the unconvinced in Bristol just how much sugar there is in a smoothie, now, in this final episode, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall faces his toughest test of all – he heading to the Tory Party Conference to speak about obesity and attempting to get an audience with Health Minister Jeremy Hunt. But can he convince the ministers – and the hard-to-pin-down Hunt – that they need to do more to combat both national awareness of what we eat and the country’s fitness levels? 

First, he checks in with some of those who have signed up for the Newcastle Can scheme; heads out for a surfing lesson with Janet, a willing but struggling participant; trials a weight-loss experiment at the GP’s surgery and looks at the way in which marketing affects our understanding of food. Whether or not he manages to replicate the impact that Jamie Oliver had on the government during his school dinners campaign remains to be seen, but this impassioned series will surely have convinced the UK’s couch potatoes that it’s time to embrace the sunnier weather and start walking. Sarah Hughes

DanceWorks: Choreographing History

BBC Four, 7.30pm 

“With contemporary dance we don’t inherit ready-made stories, so we have to make up our own,” says choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh in this fascinating film. Jeyasingh’s latest work, Contagion, takes the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as its subject, and this documentary follows her as she translates her research into a haunting, beautiful piece of work. 

The Secret Life of the Zoo

Channel 4, 8.00pm

The fallout from orangutan Emma’s pregnancy continues this week as the new mother pushes away the older child to raise the baby, leaving the zoo staff increasingly worried as to how the abandoned youth will cope. 

Mystery of the Lost Paintings

Sky Arts, 8.00pm

This episode examines the 1958 fire at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which destroyed two of Monet’s famous Water Lily paintings, before attempting to digitally reconstruct one of the damaged works.  

Love in the Countryside

BBC Two, 9.00pm

Everything moves up a gear as lovelorn dairy farmers Pete and Ed invite their three prospective partners over for a weekend. Cue early issues as fiftysomethings Helen and Caroline struggle in the face of thirtysomething Frannie’s more obvious assets.

One Born Every Minute

Channel 4, 9.00pm

It’s an emotional finale at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital as we meet Lauren and Rachel, who are preparing for a second child, and Urwah and Nadhia, who are about to meet their fifth. Meanwhile, Laura and Paul, friends turned lovers, have nine kids between them and another on the way.  

Harry & Meghan: A Love Story

Sky One, 9.00pm

Bafta-winning film-maker Toby Sculthorp turns his eye to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, talking to close friends and former head of the British Army, Richard Dannatt. SH

Tortured By Mum and Dad: The Turpin 13

Channel 5, 10.00pm

When 13 children were discovered shackled and starved by their parents, David and Louise Turpin earlier this year, it made global headlines. This documentary returns to the case, asking how the pair managed to hide their terrible secret for so long. 

A Walk in the Woods (2015) ★★☆☆☆

Film4, 9.00pm

Robert Redford turns Bill Bryson’s elegant travelogue about his middle-aged attempt on the Appalachian Trail – a 2,000-mile trek through the eastern United States – into a sloppy sitcom. The great American outdoors, however, are shot in picturesque fashion. Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson star as Bryson’s travelling partners, who at least reveal that the human condition is no walk in the park.

Scream (1996) ★★★★☆

Sky One, 10.00pm

Wes Craven rebooted the teenage-horror genre with Scream. It’s gory, but clever and funny, too, particularly in its own self-awareness: the characters talk constantly about being in a slasher movie. And Craven wrong-foots us with a terrific opening sequence that gleefully breaks the rules of film-making. Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell star. The sequel Scream 2 is on Friday at 11.00pm.

I Love You, Man (2009) ★★★★☆

5STAR, 11.00pm

Paul Rudd, realising he has no best man for his wedding, sets out to find himself a buddy in this contrived bromance from Meet the Parents/Fockers creator John Hamburg. Beer-swilling Jason Segal seems to fit the bill, but of course things go wrong. The results aren’t hilarious, but both leading actors have their amusing moments, particularly Rudd with his James Bond impressions and bad air guitar.

Thursday 10 May

Safe

Netflix, from today

For the man who played serial-killing forensics expert Dexter and funeral director David in Six Feet Under, it’s fitting that we first encounter Michael C Hall’s latest deeply flawed antihero, Tom Delaney, by his wife’s grave in this opening set-piece of his new drama. 

This UK-set eight-parter then skips forward six years, with Tom (Hall’s English accent is pretty passable) managing two teenage daughters, his work as a paediatric surgeon and life in a “safe” gated community. What becomes rapidly clear is that his neighbours are also nursing guilty secrets and haunted by past failures: from best mate Marc Warren and Amanda Abbingdon’s dogged detective to Nigel Lindsay’s jovial life-and-soul type. Then Tom’s oldest daughter goes missing during a house party, and skeletons tumble out of closets in an enjoyably twist-riddled affair. 

The first collaboration between Safe’s co-creators, bestselling novelist Harlan Coben and screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst (Accused; Ordinary Lies; Come Home), marries the former’s love of a cliffhanger and skill with fast-paced narrative with the latter’s facility for character and emotional insight. Gabriel Tate

PGA Tour Golf: The Players Championship

Sky Sports the Players, 12.30pm

It’s day one of the tournament widely regarded as the unofficial fifth Major, held at TPC Sawgrass in Florida. Last year, Kim Si-Woo, at 21, became the youngest champion in Players history and it was much deserved: his was a nerveless display that belied his young age. 

Danceworks: Prejudice and Passion 

BBC Four, 7.30pm

Choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra invites the cameras into his latest production for children at the Birmingham Rep, a work challenging assumptions of gender and identity with its story of two male penguins raising a chick together.

Premier League Football: West Ham United v Manchester United

Sky Sports Main Event, 7.30pm

Looking to secure their safety, relegation-threatened West Ham United welcome Manchester United to the Olympic Stadium. The Hammers will need to banish the memories of their last match against Man United, when Anthony Martial, Paul Pogba and a brace from Romelu Lukaku gave Jose Mourinho’s side a 4-0 win. 

Eurovision Song Contest 2018 

BBC Four, 8.00pm

Rylan Clark-Neal and Scott Mills are joined by British Eurovision hopeful SuRie to introduce coverage of the second semi-final from Lisbon, with 10 of the 18 featured acts making it to Saturday’s final.

Food Unwrapped: China Special 

Channel 4, 8.00pm

Jimmy Doherty and his team explore artisanal and commercial methods of production for garlic, noodles, soy sauce and fortune cookies.

Red Ape: Saving the Orangutan 

BBC Two, 9.00pm

This alarming and frequently harrowing documentary makes direct connections between Borneo’s plummeting orangutan population, the boom in illegal animal trading and rocketing global demand for palm oil, but there are glimmers of hope, due to the ceaseless diligence of local activists. 

Urban Myths: David Bowie and Marc Bolan 

Sky Arts, 9.00pm

Luke Treadaway and Jack Whitehall star as the teenage David Bowie and Marc Bolan in this by turns silly and oddly poignant comedy of two icons bonding, bickering and dreaming of stardom while earning a crust decorating their manager’s office. GT

Riot Girls 

Channel 4, 10.00pm

A gleefully ribald new prank show from the supremely talented and smart quartet of Grace Campbell, Jen Wakefield, Cam Spence and Sophie Duker, using stunts to highlight the casual sexism and gender inequality in society from manspreading on the tube to contraception. It’s as crude as it is funny and effective.

Great Art

ITV, 10.45pm; not STV

Tim Marlow’s admirably unadorned visual arts series returns to profile a man not unscrutinised over the years, but if this pen portrait fails to add much new to the David Hockney story, it’s an efficient and entertaining primer, focusing on his Royal Academy landscape and portraiture exhibitions of 2012 and 2016. GT

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) ★★★★☆

ITV4, 9.00pm

Continuing the story of Jason Bourne, this sequel sees the former assassin (Matt Damon) living in Goa with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente) when a Russian assassin arrives to plunge him back into the deep end of a CIA conspiracy. While this is not quite on a par with the first film, Paul Greengrass’s direction is typically exhilarating, and Joan Allen and Brian Cox lend excellent support.

Cocktail (1988) ★★★☆☆

Sony Movie Channel, 11.10pm

Tom Cruise plays a tequila-tossing barman in this romantic drama which cashed in on his heart-throb image. After leaving the army, Brian (Cruise) gets a job working in a Manhattan bar. His Martini mentor is Doug (Bryan Brown), who soon teaches him the tricks of the trade, but when the pair fall out over a girl, Brian heads for the Caribbean. It’s a bland concoction but strangely agreeable.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) ★★★★☆

Film4, 11.15pm

This startling debut by Marielle Heller shows the funny side of a teenager’s explorations into her sexuality as a 15-year-old wannabe cartoonist Minnie (Bel Powley) seduces her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård). Heller’s nimble direction and clever script ensure that the film never paints either Minnie or Monroe entirely as victim or predator.

Friday 11 May

The Bridge

BBC Two, 9.00pm

With the exception perhaps of Wallander, of all the Scandi-noir characters that we’ve seen in recent years it is The Bridge’s Saga Norén (Sofia Helin), a committed Malmö detective with a level of social dysfunction that implies autism, who has burrowed deepest into the hearts of UK viewers. She struggles to cope emotionally with the world around her, but that only makes us like her all the more. When last we saw Saga, at the close of series three two years ago, she had solved another major murder case but stood accused herself of killing her abusive mother. At least she had the consolation of meeting a soulmate of sorts in Henrik Sabroe (Thure Lindhardt), a police colleague from across the Øresund bridge linking Sweden and Denmark, and a man deeply damaged by the murder of his wife and the disappearance of his two young daughters. 

At the start of this instantly gripping fourth and final series, things are not looking good for Saga as she wakes up in a cold, grey, unfamiliar environment. Meanwhile, Henrik is called to the scene of a particularly grizzly murder in Copenhagen that has a link to the controversial deportation of an Iranian illegal immigrant. Gerard O’Donovan

Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist

Netflix, from today

A bank raid gone wrong, a horrific bomb-collar murder, a cat and mouse hunt by the FBI to track down a former beauty queen turned self-styled criminal. This anticipated documentary picks apart the bizarre story of the so-called “pizza bomber heist” that gripped the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 2003. Fifteen years later, the discovery of new evidence suggests that the story could be even more strange.

The One Show: NHS Patients Awards Special

BBC One, 7.00pm

A special edition marking the 70th anniversary of the NHS and celebrating the work of doctors, nurses and medical staff who deliver outstanding care – as nominated by viewers and the Patients Association. Matt Baker and Alex Jones present. 

BBC Young Musician 2018

BBC Four, 7.30pm

Violinist Nicola Benedetti and trumpeter Alison Balsom join presenter Josie D’Arby for the competition’s semi-final, in which five individual category winners – including percussionist Matthew Brett, cellist Maxim Calver and saxophonist Robert Burton – compete for a place in the final. The judges include conductor Jessica Cottis and composer Kerry Andrew. GO

Unreported World

Channel 4, 7.30pm

Krishnan Guru-Murthy reports from the popular tourist resorts of the Dominican Republic, where a UN investigation has uncovered shocking crimes against young people at the hands of sex tourists.

Britain’s Great Cathedrals with Tony Robinson

Channel 5, 8.00pm

In the final programme of his excellent series, Tony Robinson recounts the tangled – and entertaining – history of Winchester Cathedral, whose bishops were once among the richest, most influential and worst behaved in Britain – and where one of England’s greatest novelists, Jane Austen, is buried.

Portillo’s Hidden History of Britain

Channel 5, 9.00pm

Bringing his foray to a close, former defence secretary Michael Portillo visits the village of Imber on the Salisbury Plain, which was taken over by the Army in 1943 for use as a wartime training ground and, despite promises to the contrary, still remains in the hands of the military. GO

Test Cricket: Ireland v Pakistan

Sky Sports Main Event, 11.50pm

A historic occasion, this, as Ireland play their first-ever Test match, with Pakistan as the opposition at Malahide Cricket Club. Over the next few years, Ireland will have 60-65 home internationals, including 15 Test matches. Uncapped batsman Imam-ul-Haq, the nephew of former skipper Inzamam, has been named in Pakistan’s squad.

Northern Soul (2014) ★★★☆☆

Film4, 11.15pm

The nostalgia is potent in this chronicle of the popular northern soul dance halls in the Seventies. The soundtrack is as evocative and wonderful as you might expect, and the drama offers a charming slice of social and cultural Lancashire history. It’s just a shame that the storyline has to follow the same innocent young man led astray/conflict-resolution story arc of nearly every coming-of-age film out there.

Buried (2010) ★★★☆☆

BBC One, 11.55pm; N Ireland, 12.25am

Ryan Reynolds plays an American truck driver ambushed in Iraq and buried by insurgents in a coffin, with only a phone and a Zippo lighter at his disposal. One might assume the dramatic opportunities for a man in this predicament are finite, but Chris Sparling’s inventive screenplay and Rodrigo Cortés’ direction open up the story beyond the confines of the space in which Reynolds is trapped.

The Crying Game (1992) ★★★☆

Channel 4, 12.05am

Neil Jordan’s tremendous psychological thriller, set against the backdrop of the Irish Troubles, still contains one of the great cinematic twists. Stephen Rea stars as Provisional IRA volunteer Fergus, who helps to kidnap a British soldier (US actor Forest Whitaker) in order to secure the release of jailed IRA members. However, things go wrong when Fergus begins to form a bond with his prisoner.

Television previewers

Toby Dantzic, Sarah Hughes, Gerard O'Donovan, Vicki Power and Gabriel Tate