Meanwhile, when it comes to reality series, brand-new formats such as The Inheritance and Stranded on Honeymoon Island are on the way, in the same week that mega-hit The Great British Bake Off returns for its 16th season.
Documentary series Educating Yorkshire is also coming back to Channel 4, more than 10 years after it first aired, while new dramas this week include I Fought the Law on ITV1 and The Guest on BBC One.
Hit Netflix fantasy series Wednesday is also returning for the second half of its second season this week, while last but by no means least, it’s a big moment for EastEnders, as Kat and Zoe are finally set to reunite.
Here, you’ll find our top picks for this week – read on for our full choice of what to watch.
Educating Yorkshire
Mr Burton, staff and students in Educating Yorkshire. Channel 4 / Tom Martin
Release date: Sunday 31st August, 8pm, Channel 4
Anyone who feels broadcasters are short of new ideas could point to this reboot. But they’ll welcome it anyway, because – who wouldn’t? The Educating docu-strand was the prom queen of 2010s TV, a critical and ratings hit that got its best grades for the series set at Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Four million viewers enjoyed the relatable snapshots of school life then choked back tears in the episode where stammering teenager Musharaf gave a speech at his end-of-year assembly.
The teacher who helped him, Mr Burton, is now the head at Thornhill. As Channel 4 again wire his corridors and classrooms with fixed cameras and radio mics, the staff face a new set of challenges, from an attendance crisis to rising pupil anxiety. Meanwhile, 12-year-old Amy must navigate school life – having recently been diagnosed with Tourette’s.
David Butcher
I Fought the Law
Sheridan Smith as Ann Ming in I Fought the Law. Hera Pictures
Release date: Sunday 31st August, 9pm, ITV1
Sheridan Smith is one of those rare actors who never loses the empathy of audiences, no matter how successful she becomes or how closely the press scrutinises her private life. Whatever the project she takes on, viewers resolutely want to be by her side, and there’s no reason to believe that the four-part true-crime drama I Fought the Law will in any way break that bond.
The subject matter does, of course, naturally engender a great deal of compassion, concerning as it does a mother’s battle to overturn the double jeopardy law after the murder of her 22-year-old daughter.
But there’s also no denying that Smith, in the central role of Ann Ming, is a powerhouse of a performer. This first episode sees her go on a traumatic journey of concern, anger, numbness, misery and ultimately horror in the period following the disappearance in 1989 of Ann’s daughter Julie from a working-class neighbourhood in Billingham, County Durham.
Tomorrow at 9pm, feet start to be held to the fire in the aftermath of a grim discovery.
David Brown
The Inheritance
Elizabeth Hurley as The Deceased and Rob Rinder as The Executor. Simon Webb/Channel 4
Release date: Sunday 31st August, 9pm, Channel 4
“I’m dead,” Elizabeth Hurley purrs in her opening gambit for this competitive reality series. She’s playing “the Deceased”, a woman who has left her fortune at the mercy of 12 strangers. The overarching premise of the show is hardly explained, but it barely matters – it’s the usual drill. Contestants stab one another in the back, form alliances and complete tasks to win prize money. Overseeing it all is “the Executor”, aka Robert Rinder, who hams it up, albeit somewhat sheepishly.
It’s hard to care as the 12 players face their first task, with shades of The Apprentice: bottling up, labelling and delivering wine in order to unlock money from the inheritance.
Frances Taylor
EastEnders
Kat and Zoe in EastEnders BBC
Release date: Monday 1st September, 7:30pm, BBC One
An eventful week kicks off with the much-anticipated reunion of Kat and Zoe, not seen on screen together for 20 years. Kat’s estranged daughter was glimpsed back in June, laying low at Stacey’s rented flat while she hid from unseen enemies for unknown reasons. Tommy has tracked his sister down and brought her home, though Zoe’s previous insistence she didn’t want to see her mother means we shouldn’t expect a tearful Long Lost Family moment with Davina McCall hovering with tissues.
Elsewhere, it’s Patrick and Yolande’s wedding day, and panicked Oscar tells his Uncle Jack he’s found a gun. As Chekhov (almost) said, you don’t see a gun in Monday’s EastEnders and not expect it to go off by Thursday…
Jonathan Hughes
The Guest
Gabrielle Creevy as and Eve Myles as Fran in The Guest. BBC/Quay Street Productions/Simon Ridgeway
Release date: Monday 1st September, 9pm, BBC One
The lives of Ria (Gabrielle Creevy) and Fran (Eve Myles) couldn’t be more different. Cleaner Ria lives with her out-of-work boyfriend barely making ends meet. Fran is a charismatic businesswoman with all the other lavish trappings that go with success. So when Fran offers Ria a well-paid job and some friendly advice – “Don’t just be grateful for the crumbs, eat the whole f**king loaf!” – Ria jumps at the opportunity to improve her lot.
It’s obvious right from the start of this four-part Welsh thriller that something’s off. Fran is too chatty and supportive while Ria possibly has a secret in her past. However, it’s when Ria takes Fran’s advice too far that something goes horribly wrong.
There are any number of suspicious goings-on, veiled warnings (“Get out while you can” should send Ria running for the hills but doesn’t) and hints of all-is-not-what-it-seems. But, intriguingly, it’s impossible to know if one of the women is playing the other or whether this is about something else altogether.
Jane Rackham
The Great British Bake Off season 16 
The Great British Bake Off season 16 presenters. Channel 4
Release date: Tuesday 2nd September, 8pm, Channel 4
We’ll get to know them better as the series progresses but for now it’s a bit of a blur as a fresh batch of 12 home bakers enter the tent for the first time. There are people from Ukraine, Wales, Scotland and Hong Kong, fans of jujitsu, software engineers and hairdressers all hoping to impress Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.
Their first challenge is to make a patterned Swiss roll, which is hard enough but then those sadistic programme-makers have added a twist to the gingham-shrouded technical challenge: the contestants are given additional ingredients to confuse them further. “I’ve had a ‘mare,” says one baker, with a weak smile.
One has a disaster in the landscape showstopper round when his cake slides off the stand while another’s looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa … which is not what he was depicting. With so many cakes to judge, the critiques are (mercifully) short although blunt.
Our previews never include the result, but I wouldn’t like to bet on which baker will leave the tent beaten rather than aerated. There’s an Extra Slice on Friday.
Jane Rackham
Wednesday season 2 part 2
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in Wednesday season 2 Jonathan Hession/Netflix
Release date: Wednesday 3rd September, Netflix
After several past antagonists were seen making a comeback in the opening episodes of season two, we ought to have predicted that actor Gwendoline Christie would also somehow retrace her route to Nevermore Academy. Only, with Principal Weems having been one of the casualties of Wednesday Addams’s first macabre year at the school, she’s not able to return in corporeal form.
Rather, Weems is appearing as a spirit guide to our saturnine sleuth who, as you might have guessed, has survived her recent stand-off with the murderous Tyler. But with the former barista now on the loose in his monstrous Hyde form, the threat level remains high, and the worry is that someone close to Wednesday will be paying the price for Tyler having escaped.
David Brown
Stranded on Honeymoon Island
Stranded on Honeymoon Island. BBC
Release date: Wednesday 3rd September, 9pm, BBC One
Here’s another reality show to stick in the pile marked “addictive trash”. From the makers of Married At First Sight comes an equally gimmicky series, inexplicably airing on BBC One, where strangers get married. As that’s par for the course on TV these days, the format tweak is that they must then spend three weeks on a deserted island, Survivor-style, with no phones, electricity or Instagram (perish the thought!) with only each other for company.
The 12 singles, introduced by blink-and-you-miss presenter Davina McCall, are a cohort of 20-and-30-somethings with a penchant for phrases like “I think she’s got a vibe for life” or “buckle up buttercup, I’m an over-sharer”.
Viewers who make it through the first ten minutes will see as the matched couples wed on a jetty, board a catamaran and then, literally, take the plunge by jumping into the sea wearing their full wedding attire in scenes that echo Ronnie Mitchell’s EastEnders exit.
Thankfully, everyone swims to shore unscathed where the honeymoon of their dreams – or nightmares – is about to begin.
Frances Taylor
The Paper
Sabrina Impacciatore as Esmeralda, Oscar Nunez as Oscar, Domhnall Gleeson as Ned and Gbemisola Ikumelo as Adelola in The Paper. Aaron Epstein/PEACOCK
Release date: Friday 5th September, 9pm, Sky Max
In 2001, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant changed TV forever with The Office, introducing the world to Gervais’s “boss from hell” David Brent and popularising a trend in “cringe comedy” that continues to this day. A US version, starring Steve Carell as Michael Scott, proved to be even more successful, spawning nine season.
Now, 12 years after the American version ended, its creator, Greg Daniels, is dipping his toe back into mockumentary waters with this eagerly anticipated spin-off, starring Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson as an idealistic editor hoping to resurrect a dying newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. Based on its first four episodes, airing back-to-back tonight, it’s a sweeter, gentler beast than its parent series, but still has some great gags — as well as a familiar face in Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez), the tightly-wound accountant from The Office, who is horrified to see the documentary crew again.
Huw Fullerton
Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping
David Mitchell and Robert Webb in Mitchell and Webb are Not Helping. Channel 4
Release date: Friday 5th September, 10pm, Channel 4
Who said sketch comedy was dead? Some 15 years after their previous sketch collaboration That Mitchell and Webb Look concluded on BBC Two, David Mitchell and Robert Webb are back caking themselves in make-up and donning silly wigs, this time on Channel 4 and accompanied by a gaggle of younger comedians and co-writers who puncture their egos in scripted “behind-the-scenes” segments.
Fans will find plenty to enjoy here. A typical criticism of sketch comedy is that’s it’s hit or miss, but perhaps it’s better to think of it like comedy tapas — even if one dish isn’t to your liking, you can be confident one that is will be along in a minute.
Tasty standouts in this opening episode include a wearily accurate takedown of aggressive airport security staff, a media-savvy riff on the recent spate of Prince Andrew dramas featuring three different versions of Emily Maitlis, and a tongue-in-cheek reappraisal of therapists. It’s a solid start for the duo’s return to familiar ground.
Huw Fullerton
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on tonight. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.