For full TV listings for the week, see our comprehensive TV guide
Viewing guide, by Ben Dowell
The Gilded Age
Sky Atlantic/Now, 9pm
It’s the second series following the gloved and top-hatted shenanigans of late 19th-century New York as imagined by the Downton Abbey mastermind Julian Fellowes. However, if you didn’t catch the previous tales of class conflict, social one-upmanship, occasional bed-hopping and frequent hard-nosed business dealings, it’s probably wise to start from the beginning. A lot did happen in the first run, though it all built up to whether Carrie Coon’s newly moneyed socialite, Bertha Russell, would manage to persuade old New York society folk finally to accept her and come to her ball. No spoilers here on whether she was triumphantly unsnubbed, but as the action begins, with many of the characters heading to church in their finery, Bertha is still griping to her railroad tycoon husband, George (Morgan Spector), about the Astors and anyone else who regards her as a vulgar parvenu with no right to dine at the top table. Her plan of attack in this series has a distinctly musical bent and she is determined to bring an opera house to the city. That will show ’em. Meanwhile, various young people continue to pant beneath their corsets and starched collars, and there is even a chance that spinsterish Ada (Cynthia Nixon) will find love, if she can get her stern sister Agnes (Christine Baranski) to approve. As we found with the Crawley gang in Yorkshire, Fellowes’s dialogue may be constipated and his exposition sometimes clunky, but he knows how to make lavish comfort food for the eyes and has enough mastery of story structure to keep the above-and-below-stairs tales spinning nicely.
Prime Suspect: Who Took Madeleine McCann?
BBC1, 8pm
More than 16 years since the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from a Portuguese holiday resort, the German authorities are pursuing a theory that she was murdered by Christian Brueckner, a drifter with a history of sexual crimes. Here the reporter Richard Bilton, who has followed the case from the outset, travels across Portugal and Germany to find out more about Brueckner. What, Bilton asks, is the strength of the evidence against him?
The Detectives: Taking Down an OCG
BBC2, 9pm
This gritty peek inside the world of real-life police detectives is back with a special series investigating an organised crime group (OCG) in the northwest. When a group of tree surgeons attempt to intervene in a road-rage incident on a Rochdale estate, the dispute escalates and a man is attacked with an axe, his hand almost severed. Soon it emerges that the main suspects are members of a notorious local gang known as the “Adam”, and the case is passed to specialist officers.
Rhod Gilbert: A Pain in the Neck for SU2C
Channel 4, 9pm
In June 2022 the comedian Rhod Gilbert was diagnosed with head and neck cancer caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). With the use of video diaries this programme follows him through 18 months of dealing with the disease, from diagnosis to initial surgery to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, followed by an agonising wait to find out if the treatment has worked. He also undertakes a personal challenge to raise awareness of his condition and raise funds for the cancer hospital that treated him.
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Scary Tales of New York
Sky History/Now, 10pm
The Model and the Maniac is the first story in this series, recounted with a pulpy glee by a sleazy gumshoe type (hammily played by Colm Meaney), complete with melodramatic music, reconstructions and first-person testimony all drawn from the historical record. The “maniac” is the sculptor Robert Irwin, who killed three people in the spring of 1937 in the Beekman Hill area of New York City. One of his victims was Veronica Gedeon, a model who appeared in sexy magazine pictures, which meant that this story was a newspaper sensation. As was Irwin’s unusual approach to his own defence.
Catch-up TV
Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story
Disney+
After wall-to-wall press coverage, a play and a TV drama, you might have had your fill of the Wagatha story. But wait! Here’s Coleen Rooney, Wagatha herself, to tell you her side of the tale. Over three parts, the wife of the former Manchester United striker Wayne reveals how she exposed the fact that her fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy (the wife of Leicester City’s Jamie) was selling stories about her to the papers. Wayne and Piers Morgan are among those interviewed, revealing the online detective work that led to Rooney unmasking Vardy, alongside an account of how she went on to successfully defend herself in one of the UK’s most talked-about High Court libel cases of recent years. Joe Clay
Film choice
Waves (15, 2019)
BBC3, 10pm
A heartbreaking family melodrama wrapped inside a phosphorescent fever dream, this movie from Trey Edward Shults is extraordinary. The film is instantly beguiling and effortlessly authentic. From the opening shots of the teenage wrestling star Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr) hurtling down a Florida freeway, blissfully singing with his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie), you know that something horrible is going to happen. A full hour of high-tension home life passes before it does, and before the story audaciously shifts focus to Tyler’s younger sister, Emily (Taylor Russell). The film oozes cinematic style, while Shults’s screenplay tackles essential themes — parenting, forgiveness and the release of death. It’s beautiful work. (136min) Kevin Maher
Night of the Demon (PG, 1957)
Talking Pictures TV, 10.05pm
Jacques Tourneur’s gothic chiller was adapted by Charles Bennett, a regular Hitchcock collaborator, from MR James’s 1911 short story Casting the Runes, and rightly remains a cult classic and perfect viewing on the night before Halloween. A sceptical American professor (Dana Andrews, chosen as the lead by Tourneur in preference to Robert Taylor) visits England to investigate a satanic cult and is sucked into all manner of devilry involving Dr Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), a baleful sorcerer given to dressing as a clown. It paved the way for such horrors as Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man, and 66 years on the demon will still send chills through you. “It’s in the trees . . . it’s coming!” (91min). James Jackson
Radio choice, by Ben Dowell
Composer of the Week
Radio 3, noon
Well, it’s a big B for Donald Macleod who this week chooses five of Beethoven’s most celebrated works and uses them to track the composer’s life story. The first episode, entitled Birth of a Legend, examines the Piano Concerto No1 to explore young Beethoven’s relationship with Vienna, the city where he made his triumphant debut as a performer. We also hear about his encounters with two of the most famed maestros of the past — Mozart and Haydn — and learn of the death of his mother at the age of 40. Tomorrow takes the Eroica symphony as its inspiration.
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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.
Or consult our platform-specific guides to the best Netflix TV shows, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows, the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer plus the best shows to watch on Sky and Now.
Or how about discovering our critics’ favourite hidden gem TV shows to stream?