Rose Ayling-Ellis: Signs for Change
9pm, BBC One
In 2021, the Strictly Come Dancing studio fell silent while its first deaf contestant, Rose Ayling-Ellis, danced with Giovanni Pernice – and a champion was born, in more ways than one. “Suddenly, the focus was on what I could do, not what I couldn’t do,” she says in this enlightening documentary that challenges perceptions of deafness. We see Ayling-Ellis’s journey to her first West End role in As You Like It and witness her speaking to, among others, Rosie Cooper MP, who led the campaign to get British Sign Language officially recognised in law, and her own mother, who still questions decisions she made in bringing up a deaf child. Hollie Richardson
Ben Elton: The Great Railway Disaster
8pm, Channel 4
It is more than 30 years since Ben Elton’s TV rant about the decline of British Rail – and he is here again to explore how much of a shambles railways across the UK are today. From travelling on the worst line in Britain (10 points if you guessed TransPennine Express) to visiting the £85m engineering feat that is the Ordsall Chord in Manchester, he learns how the country got into this dire situation. Hollie Richardson
Parole
9pm, BBC Two
In the last of a fascinating fly-on-the-wall series about the parole process, 35-year-old (failed) bank robber Ben may be denied release because his drug addiction is too out of control, while 30-year-old Jai has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. HR
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace
9pm, ITV1
It is the fifth series of this Bafta-winning show following people abandoned as babies, as they try to track down their families. This week, we meet people who were, variously, left in a south London phone box, deposited on a doorstep on Christmas Day and placed in an open-top Aston Martin. Their journeys are as tear-jerking as ever. Alexi Duggins
Photograph: HBO
The Righteous Gemstones
9pm, Sky Comedy
If Danny McBride’s comedy is Succession for televangelists, then brother-in-law Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) is its Tom Wambsgans. The former child-star gets another shot at the spotlight in this episode, reinventing himself as a gameshow host, while the Gemstones are busy hosting a cousins’ night for Karl and Chuck. Ellen E Jones
We Hunt Together
10.40pm, BBC One
Promising new drama: a psycho-thriller take on the mismatched-cop genre, in which DS Lola Franks (Eve Myles) and DI Jackson Mendy (Babou Ceesay) investigate a murder by a hideously damaged killer couple – a latent psychopath and a former child soldier. Expect lashings of dark desire, emotional manipulation and steamy folie à deux. Ali Catterall
