Friday 9pm, BBC Two The veteran actor is on top form as she trundles through Byron Bay on her mobility scooter. The coastal town in New South Wales is the country’s hippy capital – but Margolyes is not a fan of the lifestyle. “I always thought that indulging in all that freedom was rather selfish,” she opines.
The town also boasts a large number of influencers, one of them showing the presenter around the place as she tells him: “You’re leading a shallow, meaningless life.” Byron Bay’s underbelly is less Instagram-friendly, however, with a homeless population priced out in the wake of celebrities like Chris Hemsworth. From 8am, BBC One A remarkable 33 gold medals across 17 sports will be given out today.
Eight more athletics gold medals will be decided, including the heptathlon and 4x100m relays. Meanwhile, in cycling, the women’s madison and men’s sprint conclude, while the men’s football final takes place at the Parc des Princes. 8pm, BBC Two A Monty-free edition as Adam Frost gets on with a few timely tasks at home in his garden, and shares top tips on how to build a green roof on a log store.
Arit Anderson, meanwhile, travels to Hertfordshire to visit a nurseryman who’s been bucking the trend in the world of houseplants, and Joe Swift meets a garden designer in Derbyshire who has converted a derelict space into a test bed where she experiments with her various planting schemes. 8pm, BBC Four Recorded last Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall, superstar siblings Sheku and Braimah Kanneh-Mason, with Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes and the Fantasia Orchestra, perform an eclectic musical mix from Brahms to Bob Marley, including “I Say A Little Prayer”, “Redemption Song”, “The Girl From Ipanema”, and Brahms’s “Hungarian Dances”. 9pm, ITV1 This insightful sports docuseries about National Hunt jump racing continues with trainer Paul Nicholls and former assistant Dan Skelton going head-to-head in a series of big-money races at the iconic Cheltenham Festival, including the Gold Cup.
Can Irish horse Galopin Des Champs defend his crown as trainer Willie Mullins bids to win the showpiece event for the fourth time in six years, or will Nicholls exact revenge with Bravemansgame? 9pm, Channel 5 Another episode of this series is cunningly scheduled for the peak holiday season to extract maximum trepidation from holidaymakers nervous about flying. Tonight, it’s a January evening in 1989, and a routine commuter flight from Heathrow to Belfast is in crisis. 9pm, More4 The concluding half of this true-crime drama concerns a serial killer who struck in Perth, Western Australia, in the late 1990s.
And as police find DNA on a scrap of fingernail, they discover that the killer has struck before, but that his victims lived to tell the tale. Soon, a loving husband and stepfather is in the dock, accused of three murders in the longest and most expensive trial in Western Australian history. Saturday From 6.
45am, BBC One The men’s marathon means an early start on the penultimate day of competition, with Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge aiming to become the first person to win three successive Olympic titles over the distance. This evening features a busy programme of athletics with eight finals at the Stade de France, including the men’s 800m and high jump, and the women’s 100m hurdles and 1500m. 7pm, BBC Four No, the scandal-hit reality show hasn’t been demoted to BBC Four.
This is a 20-year-old episode from the very first series back in 2004, the one eventually won by Natasha Kaplinsky and Brendan Cole. Part of BBC Four’s ongoing celebration of the corporation’s light entertainment output, it is followed by a 1993 edition of Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game . 8pm, Channel 4 More snapshots from the circular coastal route in the far north of Scotland.
While members of the remote community in the village of Lochinver set out to revive the much-loved tradition of the Assynt Highland Games, Highland ranger Connaire gets busy restoring a flooded pathway beside the spectacular Loch Maree. 9pm, BBC Two A novel way of packaging the wealth of pop music in the BBC catalogue. TV forecasters Carol Kirkwood and Tomasz Schafernaker present a selection of performances of weather-related songs from the archives, including Bill Withers singing “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” and “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” by Travis .
You could probably name a few others. 9pm, Channel 5 In his final visit to the Royal Family’s Norfolk residence, Nigel Havers looks at how Elizabeth II prepared for her coronation in 1953, while Raksha Dave gets a glimpse into what life was like in Sandringham at that time thanks to the private diary of the man who designed the monarch’s dress for the occasion. JJ Chalmers, meanwhile, discovers what was involved in Elizabeth’s first Christmas at Sandringham.
9pm, Sky Documentaries A profile of the Hollywood actress told through more than 70 hours of newly unearthed audio tapes from the archive of Richard Meryman (the Life magazine editor best known for interviewing Marilyn Monroe in a piece published two days before her death). A lot is revealed about the complex inner life of the much-married star. 9.
45pm, ITV1 The young Alan Carr (Oliver Savell) gets closer to realising his sexuality as the second series of Carr’s coming-of-age comedy concludes. Meanwhile, he has to cope with drama teacher Miss Gideon (Cariad Lloyd) leaving to take up the twin roles of Gandhi and Mother Theresa in a musical. And while Northampton Town face their biggest game of the season, their manager (who is, of course, Alan’s father) finally realises the boy is being bullied.
Sunday 7pm, BBC One The opening ceremony certainly provided plenty of what are politely called “talking points” (less politely discussed on social media), so let’s see what the French organisers have up their sleeve for the closing jamboree. While Clare Balding revisits the standout stories and images from the last 16 days, there’s also a look ahead to the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. From 6.
50am, BBC One The final day in Paris begins with the women’s marathon before a busy morning of cycling. Later it’s the final sporting event of the Games: the women’s basketball. 6pm, BBC One A harbinger of normality returning to the schedules as the Olympics wind down, with Adam Henson and Charlotte Smith presenting from the Royal Welsh Show and looking back on the event’s 120-year history.
Henson helps to judge the Young Pig Handlers Competition, while Charlotte heads to the forestry section to discover the art of wood-chopping. 7pm, BBC Four Stephens heads to Pontypridd to bring all the highlights and stories from the National Eisteddfod of Wales – that long-running celebration of Welsh song, culture and national life. We also learn how this ancient festival is constantly evolving to remain a relevant cultural phenomenon.
It all kicks off with a new adaptation of the rock opera Nia Ben Aur . 8pm, Channel 4 A specially colourised film from 1921, shot on board sister ship Olympic , allows us to see how the Titanic would have looked on its fateful last morning. Meanwhile, survivors’ dramatic tales are brought to life through a newly restored film featuring their dramatic rescue on the ship Carpathia .
9pm, BBC Two “Damn you for coming into his life again,” Max Liebermann’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Clara (Luise von Finckh) tells an already guilt-ridden Oskar (Jürgen Maurer) after he accidentally shot Max (Matthew Beard) in the cellars of a grand Vienna casino. It’s a final, feature-length visit to the Austrian capital during 1909, providing the conclusion to a story about a traitor at the heart of the imperial establishment. 9pm, Sky Showcase From crime fiction to the true stuff – specifically a bizarre murder case from a sleepy former mining village in the Welsh Valleys.
It began with what seemed like a harmless prank involving a medical skeleton, turning into something more sinister and gruesome when the “skeleton” was actually found to be a dead body wrapped in 40 layers of plastic. 10.15pm, ITV1 A new docuseries about serial bigamist, fraudster and conman William Jordan, told through the words of former wife Mary Turner Thomson.
Mary, a single mother, meets William online – but a revelation about his job in the CIA causes unsavoury characters to threaten her..
