For full TV listings for the week, see our comprehensive TV guide
Viewing guide, by James Jackson
The Enfield Poltergeist
Apple TV+
It’s not quite Halloween, but close enough for some truly bone-chilling viewing. You may well know about the Enfield ghost, a media sensation in 1977. Remember the photos of two terrified young sisters in their bedroom in north London, one of them mid-air, apparently being thrown off her bed? Some may wonder if there is anything left to say about this case — in recent years it has been depicted in a TV chiller (The Enfield Haunting, starring Timothy Spall, in 2015) and on the big screen (The Conjuring 2 in 2016). Yet this deep-dive four-part documentary series really does feel like the definitive account of what went on at 284 Green Street. As ever, we’re immersed in a period feel of brown decor, flared suits, posters of Purdey from The New Avengers and Starsky and Hutch on the girls’ walls. But the series feels revelatory in the way it draws on the audio recordings of Maurice Grosse, who investigated the events at the house between 1977 and 1978, done in a novel style: actors lip-syncing the recordings in dramatised scenes. That means we get the feel of a horror movie but with a documentary’s sense of authenticity. So, are you ready for the spookiness? “It all started in the back bedroom,” the girls’ mother says. “I could hear this light rustling sound . . .” Pretty soon we’re hearing eyewitness recollections (including those of the girls themselves) of loud bangings and objects flying violently, inexplicably, around the living room. We hear real recordings of horrifying unearthly voices during a seance, of Grosse trying to communicate with the dead. By the end you’re left with one question: is this an enduring adolescent hoax or the most definitive proof yet of the supernatural?
London Kills
BBC1, 1.45pm
Daytime drama may seem an endangered species but BBC1 still offers options that succeed through straightforward storytelling — no flashback/flashforward narratives or multilayered ambiguities — of which London Kills (a buy-in from America’s Acorn TV) is a decent example. Now in its fourth series, it continues to follow an elite London murder investigation squad led by DI Bradford (Hugo Speer) and DI Cole (Sharon Small). It’s possible to join things without having seen it before, even if you may wonder why heroic cop Rob Brady is suspected of killing a girl. The vibe is solemn, the plot oddly addictive.
Unreported World
Channel 4, 7.30pm
Channel 4’s answer to Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent continues to spotlight shocking and fascinating stories from distant shores. Tonight Anja Popp goes inside Mexico’s illicit exotic pet trade, investigating how owning a lion or tiger has gone from being the indulgence of drug lords to a mainstream obsession. She meets a person who built a house around his young tigers Simba and Nala, but as they grew up found they became riskier to manage. Popp also hears about how some owners are turning to extreme medical practices to make their pets less dangerous. Remember — a tiger is not just for Christmas.
Ghosts
BBC1, 8.30pm
The ghosts of Button House are bored, so much so that they have resorted to enacting an episode of Blankety Blank (Bullseye is suggested, but how would they pick up the darts?). Anything to stave off the existential despair of facing each other’s eternal company in the same place. This is a fine episode of the popular comedy that swings from goofy hilarity to moving back story as we find out just why the grunting caveman ghost Robin (Laurence Rickard) has an unexpected flair for the French language. Two more episodes (and a Christmas special) left after this one, and its fans are already in mourning.
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Paul Weller night
BBC4, from 9pm
A night of Paul Weller repeats (for no apparent reason), the best of the crop being the opening, Weller at the BBC, first shown in 2012. This is the usual round-up of clips, starting with the young Woking mod barking The Eton Rifles on the pop show Something Else in 1979. More Jam performances follow, then Style Council ones before we get to a more refined Weller duetting with Amy Winehouse at the Electric Proms. There’s also a nice acoustic rendition of That’s Entertainment with Noel Gallagher. After that it’s Live at the Barbican (10pm) alongside an orchestra and special guests, then more live cuts in a BBC4 Session (11.30pm).
Catch-up TV, by Joe Clay
The Fall of the House of Usher
Netflix
The latest macabre series from Mike Flanagan, Netflix’s horror auteur of choice (his CV includes The Haunting of Hill House, 2018) is loosely based on the short story of the same name (and other works, including The Raven) by Edgar Allan Poe. Twins Roderick and Madeline Usher (Bruce Greenwood and Mary McDonnell) are the CEOs of a dodgy pharmaceutical company who face a reckoning when the obnoxious heirs to their dynasty start dying in brutal ways. Flanagan’s many fans include William “The Exorcist” Friedkin, and the cast features Henry Thomas (Elliott in ET) as Roderick’s eldest son and Mark Hamill as Arthur Pym, a character from Poe’s only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
Film choice, by Ed Potton
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (15, 1979)
BBC2, 11.05pm
Francis Ford Coppola has repeatedly rejigged his legendary Vietnam War-set opus, based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, since its release in 1979. After various bootlegs and the supposedly definitive Redux version in 2001 came this Final Cut in 2019. It runs about 20 minutes shorter than the Redux, but retains the added scenes in which Martin Sheen’s Willard and his men see a show by Playboy bunnies and visit a French plantation. Both still feel inessential, but an undoubted improvement are the remastered visuals and sound. They do full justice to the atmosphere of hallucinatory horror, particularly in the body-strewn temple lair of Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in the climactic scenes. It’s a masterpiece, whichever way you slice it. (170min)
The Deep (15, 1977)
Talking Pictures TV, 11.25pm
According to Peter Yates’s son, the director contributed two things to American culture: the car chase and the wet T-shirt. The former came in Bullitt (1968), while the wet T-shirt was memorably worn by Jacqueline Bisset in this undersea thriller. It was one of Yates’s biggest commercial successes, grossing nearly $50 million in the US and again showcasing his technical flair with brilliantly staged underwater sequences. It was clearly intended to cash in on the success of Jaws, which was also based on a Peter Benchley novel, with Bisset and Nick Nolte playing a scuba-diving couple who discover sunken loot and a secret drug stash off the coast of Bermuda, attracting interest from local criminals. The Jaws veteran Robert Shaw co-stars. (123min) Joe Clay
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
The Invention of Turkey
Radio 4, 11am
Misha Glenny and Miles Warde’s How to Invent a Country series is a hidden gem in the BBC archive. This three-part series focuses on Turkey and begins with Mehmed the Conqueror’s arrival in Constantinople in 1453, renaming the city and setting about expanding its borders. The next 100 years presented many threats to the Christian west from other mighty sultans, including the fabulously named Selim the Grim. But as modern Turkey prepares to celebrate 100 years without the Ottomans, how is this period remembered under the government of President Erdogan?
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Looking for something else to watch? Try our critics’ round-up of the latest best shows to stream in the UK.
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Or how about discovering our critics’ favourite hidden gem TV shows to stream?