Have I Got News for You
BBC One, 9pm
After 20 years, Have I Got News for You remains the funniest, freshest and most intelligent panel show on television. The news, the guests and the host change every week, and the relationship between Ian Hislop and Paul Merton never loses an odd-couple edge of strangeness. The only predictable quality of the show is its unpredictability. For this new run it is returning to its spiritual home on Friday nights. It has always been an end-of-week show, and the Friday slot gives it an extra day of news to dismember. The host for the opening show is Jack Dee, with Richard Madeley as one of the guests. Incidentally, the three hosts that the producer, Richard Wilson, would most like to recruit are Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and Jeremy Paxman. But no luck so far.
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7.30pm
The reporter Jenny Kleeman meets Nigerian women who are trapped into a life of sex slavery by their belief in black magic. There are 20,000 Nigerian women working as prostitutes in Italy. One 27-year-old that Kleeman meets has sex with ten men a day, seven days a week, for €20 (£17) a time in order to repay a €50,000 debt to her traffickers. She also has to pay an additional €300 a month for the privilege of soliciting from a piece of waste ground at the side of the road. Like many Nigerian prostitutes, she has sworn a juju oath of loyalty to her traffickers, and she fears the power of the spirits far more than her traffickers, clients or the police. The juju, however, offers no protection from HIV. Even by its own bleak standards, this is a desperate episode of Unreported World.
Friday Night Dinner
Channel 4, 10pm
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This is the best — and, sadly, the last — episode of a series that just kept getting funnier and funnier. As the elder brother walks into the house, preparations are under way for what appears to be some kind of royal visit. Dad is in a suit. The table has been laid with the posh bowls. There are flowers on the sideboard. Wine (“a good bottle”) has been opened. The house has been turned into the Hampton Court of suburbia because A Female (Tuppence Middleton) has been invited over for the benefit of the elder brother, much to the malevolent delight of his younger sibling. The evening starts badly and gets progressively worse, and just when you think it couldn’t become any more excruciating the neighbour (Mark Heap and Lassie) rings the doorbell. It is magnificent.
Later with Jools Holland
BBC Two, 11.50pm
It’s not often that Liam Gallagher finds himself standing in anyone’s shadow, but as his post-Oasis five-piece Beady Eye make their Later debut, they are sharing a stage with The Tallest Man on Earth. OK, so the Swedish folkie Kristian Matsson isn’t actually the tallest bloke on the planet (that’s just the name of his band), but Gallagher Jr will still be playing second fiddle, because Elbow are also performing. The undisputed darlings of the nation, with the release of their fifth album, Build a Rocket Boys!, the Bury lads are enjoying the kind of attention (and sales) once enjoyed by Oasis. You can bet Gallagher and co will try to wrestle the crown from Guy Garvey’s head with an incendiary run through a few songs from their debut, Different Gear, Still Speeding. Joe Clay