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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Hollie Richardson, Phil Harrison, Micha Frazer-Carroll, Ellen E Jones, Graeme Virtue and Simon Wardell

TV tonight: could this teatime reality show be the next Come Dine With Me?

Jason, Lisa, Wyen and Exacè in Strangers on a Plane
And then there were four … Jason, Lisa, Wyen and Exacè in Strangers on a Plane. Photograph: Channel 4

Strangers on a Plane

5.30pm, Channel 4

Show singer Wyen doesn’t do two-star hotels. Jason knocks back shots in the morning. And Lisa is known as the Duchess of Doncaster. Sounds like a group you would want to go on holiday with, eh? In this new series, five people need to take charge of daily plans on a week-long holiday – and rate each other on how well they did. The show is running every day at teatime; think of it as the entertainment section in Come Dine With Me, but set in Benidorm. Hollie Richardson

Blue Lights

9pm, BBC One

This suffocatingly tense Belfast-set drama does a fine job of exploring the faultlines that, even post-Troubles, continue to haunt parts of the city. This week, a bad batch of drugs causes mayhem and Annie receives a terrifying lesson in trust – and what can happen when it breaks down. Phil Harrison

Secrets of the Chippendales Murders

9pm, BBC Two

This maximalist four-part documentary focuses on the triumphs and tragedies of the Playboy-inspired, Magic-Mike-style male strip show of the 80s. Episode one introduces us to the main players, Steve Banerjee and Nick De Noia, who try to create “the perfect girls’ night out” in Los Angeles, but also kick off a macabre spiral of events that will lead to arson and murder. Micha Frazer-Carroll

Unforgotten

9pm, ITV1

Martina Laird as Ebele Falade in Unforgotten
Dark past … Martina Laird as Ebele Falade in Unforgotten. Photograph: ITV

As it’s the series finale, the tangled threads of this 2016 murder plot are finally unravelling for DI Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and DCI James (Sinéad Keenan) – although not before a second body turns up. It’s a relatively recent crime for the cold-case crew, but the associated generational trauma runs decades, if not centuries, deep. Ellen E Jones

Succession

9pm, Sky Atlantic

While Kendall, Shiv and Roman are still giddy from gazumping their dad on the Pierce deal, Logan and his ambitious right hand, Kerry, decamp to the revamped ATN News. Amid the usual exquisitely corrosive symphony of backstabbing and belittling, there is also a rare chance to observe the Roy offspring in a bog-standard New York bar. Graeme Virtue

Rise and Fall

10pm, Channel 4

Whether it’s an extended metaphor for entrenched inequality, or simply a bunch of fairly unpleasant people being nasty to each other, there is no denying that this big-money reality show is guiltily entertaining. As Grafters and Rulers begin to swap places in the hierarchy, the dynamic becomes more interesting. PH

Film choice

Clare Dunne (left) as single mum Sandra in Herself
Sandra builds a dream house … Clare Dunne (left) as Sandra in Herself. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Herself (Phyllida Lloyd, 2020), 11.15pm, BBC Two
Phyllida Lloyd, the director of Iron Lady, picks another forthright female character in this empowering drama, co-written by and starring Clare Dunne. She plays Sandra, a mother in Dublin who is fleeing an abusive marriage and sees a solution to temporary accommodation in building her own house. Harriet Walter plays the well-off woman happy to donate her garden, while Conleth Hill grumps about as the builder slowly drawn in by Sandra’s desperate optimism. It’s a Loachian tale with some of the sharp edges sanded down, but it rarely loses sight of the social realities. Simon Wardell

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