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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Hollie Richardson, Henry Wong, Graeme Virtue and Simon Wardell

TV tonight: Joe Cole is the new Michael Caine in spy thriller The Ipcress File

Joe Cole as Harry Palmer in ITV’s adaptation of The Ipcress File.
Joe Cole as Harry Palmer in ITV’s adaptation of The Ipcress File. Photograph: Ben Blackall (uk) Nikola Predovic (croatia)/ITV

The Ipcress File

9pm, ITV

Based on the 1965 film starring Michael Caine and the book of the same name by Len Deighton, here’s a timely adaptation of the spy thriller set during the cold war. Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders, Gangs of London) confidently steps into the suave shoes of army corporal Harry Palmer, who is enlisted as a spy to help straight-talking Jean (Lucy Boynton) track down a kidnapped nuclear scientist. With a starry ensemble cast, it fully leans into the stylish and snappy espionage genre. Hollie Richardson


Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

7.15pm, BBC Two

“I’m going to warn you, if you’re on a low-carb diet – beware!” Next up on Tucci’s saucy food tour: Rome. He promises a lot of pasta (“And I mean a lot of it”), a sweet Roman breakfast with a 2,000-year history and a chef who can do “amazing things” with chicken innards. HR


Peaky Blinders

9pm, BBC One

“We’re going to keep going until this Boston business is done … then we Peaky Blinders fucking rest.” Don’t count on that happening too soon, Tommy, who tonight starts another risky power play with the fascists. We’re also reintroduced to a couple of returning guest stars, and Tommy meets Diana Mitford (who once described herself as a “famous awful person”). HR


Lights Up: Rough Girls

9pm, BBC Four

Best known as “Mammy!” in Derry Girls, Tara Lynne O’Neill debuted her play about Northern Ireland’s “suffragettes of soccer” last summer. It celebrates the “rough girls” who played footy in front of fans while the men were at war. The FA banned women’s football in 1921, but 100 hundred years later, NI’s women’s football team qualified for Euro 2022. HR

Death on the Beach

9pm, Sky Crime

Thailand’s Koh Tao is backpacker catnip: clear water, white sand and cheap drinks. But in 2015, Christina Annesley died while holidaying on the remote island. Was it a tragic accident or something more sinister? This intriguing three-part documentary explores the darker side of paradise, including a string of brutal tourist murders. Henry Wong

The Curse

10pm, Channel 4

The 80s-set heist comedy that combines high stakes and low farce reaches its penultimate episode. After getting away with their record-breaking robbery, our inept East End gang are supposed to be lying low. But for lovable lunk Mick (Tom Davis) that is apparently the perfect time to open a Soho club called Gold Rush. Graeme Virtue

Film choices

The World to Come, 12.20pm, 8pm Sky Cinema Premiere

Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston in The World to Come.
Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston in The World to Come. Photograph: Bleecker Street Media/Vlad Cioplea/Allstar

Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby perfectly balance delicate sensibility and submerged passion in this tale of the friendship and love between two farmers’ wives in mid 19th-century New York state. The death of their daughter has left Abigail (Waterston) emotionally closed off from her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck), but vivacious newcomer Tallie (Kirby) sparks something unexpected in her. Director Mona Fastvold tethers their lives to the unforgiving swing of the seasons as their affair slowly overwhelms them. Simon Wardell


Misbehaviour, 9pm, BBC Two

Philippa Lowthorpe’s drama – about the 1970 Miss World contest being disrupted by the women’s liberation movement – could have just been a righteous tale of feminist activists putting the boot in to a sexist event. And we do follow Keira Knightley and Jessie Buckley in their plot against the patriarchy – epitomised by Greg Kinnear’s smarmy host Bob Hope. But we’re also privy to the lives of the female contestants, particularly Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Miss Grenada, for whom the “cattle market” is a rare opportunity for her as a Black woman to realise her dreams. SW

Live sport


Women’s Super League: Arsenal v Birmingham 11.45am, BBC Two.
The league table’s top and tail teams go head to head at Meadow Park.
Premier League Football: Man City v Man United 4pm, Sky Sports Main Event.
Second Manchester derby of the season from Etihad Stadium.


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