BBC1, 9.30pm
TV seems now to be alive to the need for blokes to explore their feelings. And there will probably be fewer better examples in 2026 than this thoughtful drama by Dennis Kelly, adapted from Andy West’s memoir, The Life Inside. It follows Josh Finan’s Dan, a nervous but enormously likeable philosopher who, like West in real life, takes a prison teaching job. Chewy classroom debates over philosophical concerns shape the action inside and outside the prison walls. For Dan that includes his blossoming relationship with his girlfriend, delicate discussions about becoming parents and his family history. Let’s just say that his brother — and new dad — Lee (Stephen Wight), uncle Frank (Phil Daniels) and violent estranged father (Gerard Kearns) have all had their own prison experiences. Ben Dowell
Bowie: The Final Act
Channel 4, 10pm
Even the most ardent Bowie fan would grudgingly admit that the 1990s were not the Starman’s greatest decade. Critics savaged him, promoters struggled to sell tickets, and one review called him “a disgrace”. His nadir was perhaps his slightly cringeworthy rendition of the Lord’s Prayer at the Freddie Mercury tribute in 1992. Arriving ten years after Bowie’s death, Jonathan Stiasny’s film charts his glorious comeback — from conquering Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage to producing the album Blackstar during intensive chemotherapy. The story is told by a range of insightful talking heads who knew the man, from the producer Tony Visconti to Goldie and Hanif Kureishi. The Bowie that emerges is as captivating and complex as you would expect — wily, vulnerable, funny and totally dedicated to his craft. BD
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Rentaghost
BBC4, 7.15pm
Have you ever come across a programme title more mouthwatering than this? A chance to remember that classic pantomimic children’s show from the 1970s and 1980s featuring spooks and ghouls and freaks and fools … and the occasional visit to the cellar. Perhaps best known for Michael Staniforth’s jester Timothy Claypole, it also starred Christopher Biggins as the handyman Adam Painting and the great man’s reminiscences at 7pm tee up a repeat of an episode from series seven. BD
Space Shuttle Challenger: Days That Shocked the World
Channel 4, 8pm
Hopes for the Challenger mission were high when it took off on January 28, 1986. Four of the seven-strong crew were space debutants and they included the likeable teacher Christa McAuliffe. But the craft disintegrated 73 seconds into the flight. This documentary explores the tragedy through the testimony of the crew’s families and colleagues, and the engineers working behind the scenes. BD
What to watch on streamingStreaming choiceDaddy Issues
BBC iPlayer
Thanks to Sex Education and The White Lotus, it comes as no surprise that Aimee Lou Wood was made for sitcoms. The big surprise here is how wonderful David Morrissey is playing opposite her. Wood is Gemma, a pregnant Stockport hairdresser, who is forced to share her flat with her recently divorced deadbeat dad (Morrissey). The “sit” might be contrived and the “com” a little clichéd, but from the third episode onwards this transforms into a crudely charming and moving comedy that exhibits real intelligence behind the daft pratfalls and bum gags. Andrew Male
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Film choiceThe Eagle Has Landed (15, 1976)
BBC2, 3.20pm
As decent a Second World War movie as they come, this one features Michael Caine as a disgraced Nazi officer on an undercover mission to snatch Winston Churchill from sleepy East Anglia. There is also Donald Sutherland, wandering about as a charming Irish patriot spying for the Germans. Based on Jack Higgins’s novel, it is hardly plausible, but it’s fun to see so many acting favourites (also included in the cast are Robert Duvall, Larry Hagman, Jenny Agutter and Donald Pleasence as Himmler) among the watermills and blooms of Norfolk. (131min) James Jackson
Escape to Athena (PG, 1978)
BBC4, 10.20pm
During the peak of Roger Moore’s James Bond commitments he played a suave, art-loving Austrian camp commandant on a Nazi-occupied Greek island in George P Cosmatos’s kitsch Second World War prison-break movie. Telly Savalas, Elliott Gould, David Niven and Richard Roundtree star as the inmates who hatch a plan to break out of captivity and pull off an audacious art robbery. The loot is hidden in a monastery at the top of the island’s mountain. Moore’s German accent is one of the many tongue-in-cheek elements of the film, which is best enjoyed if you don’t take it too seriously. (114min) Joe Clay
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Radio choiceWorld Book Club
BBC World Service, noon
Harriett Gilbert welcomes the bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni into the studio to discuss her internationally acclaimed 2008 novel, The Palace of Illusions, a reimagining of the Sanskrit epic The Mahabharata. It traces the life of Princess Panchaali (aka Draupadi) from her miraculous birth in fire to her destiny as the wife of five brothers cheated of their father’s kingdom. Clair Woodward
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The 14 new contestants get ready to take part in the latest series of Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins
PETE DADDS/CHANNEL 4/PA
SundayCritics’ choiceCelebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins
Channel 4, 9pm
“Instagram can’t save you now,” Jason “Foxy” Fox warns the celebrities about to embark on this endurance show. The indomitable instructor is right. As this season’s punishing opening sequence proves, there’s no space for vanity in the Celebrity SAS backpack. There is room for a twist: the 14 contestants about to be broken down by the “staff” are drawn equally from Britain and Australia, adding an extra competitive edge. On the British side are Danny Dyer’s daughter Dani, the former cricketer Graeme Swann and the rugby player Ben Cohen, while their Antipodean adversaries include the Olympic swimmer Mack Horton and Ryan Moloney, the actor best known as Toadfish from Neighbours. Uniting them all, though, is the terror of “the dunk” — 30 seconds of breath-holding in a submerged fuselage. Victoria Segal
The Floor
ITV1, 8pm
Ronnie Corbett, Michael Caine, Tom Jones — Rob Brydon is famous for his impersonations. However, for this format the Would I Lie to You? master of comic ceremonies seamlessly assumes the mantle of a more conventionally smiling game show host. In keeping with The Wheel, Bridge of Lies and Impossible!, his quiz unfolds on a black-and-neon set reminiscent of a small-town disco. At its centre is a grid where the 81 contenders — each armed with a specialist subject — wait to challenge others to an elimination “duel” about rom-coms, airport codes or chocolate. The winner seizes their opponent’s “square” and the player with the most territory by the end will win the £50,000 prize. Brydon still allows himself a flash of outrage when somebody fails to identify Richard Burton, but this is a slick new product from the TV industrial game show complex. VS
The Night Manager
BBC1, 9pm
The classy espionage thriller with the Bond-esque title sequence returned with a bang on New Year’s Day. The British intelligence officer Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) has a new adversary, the Colombian gun runner Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), aka “Richard Roper’s true disciple”. After the explosive opener, Pine is on the run and using yet another new identity as he tries to infiltrate Dos Santos’s operation with the help of the glamorous businesswoman Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone). JC
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The Million Pound Shaman Scam
BBC2, 9pm
If this real-life tale, told in a two-part documentary, was a drama it would be dismissed for being too far-fetched. In 2008 the Sunday Times journalist Tim Rayment was tipped off about an elite London community that had become caught up in a dark web of “spiritual manipulation, South American shamanism and millions of pounds in sacrificial offerings”. At the centre of it all was a charming healer, a secretive woman and a man named “Papa Freddie”. The deeper Rayment digs, the weirder it gets. JC
Streaming choiceLittle Women
ITVX
In 2017, Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Civil War-era novel got the Call the Midwife treatment in a three-part adaptation from Heidi Thomas. Emma Watson plays Marmee to the four girls — Meg, Amy, Jo and Beth (Willa Fitzgerald, Kathryn Newton, Maya Hawke and Annes Elwy) — with Michael Gambon as the crotchety but kind Mr Laurence and Angela Lansbury as the crabby Aunt March. It is a faithful adaptation and one filled with joy, rather than gritty realism; everyone is handsome, the girls are pure and kind, the consumption is decorative. It is immensely watchable. Chris Bennion
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Film choiceBack to Black (15, 2024)
BBC2, 10pm
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic is close in spirit to Nowhere Boy, her first and best film and another that captures the first blush of genius but frames it in tragedy. Winehouse is played by Marisa Abela, the English actress best known as the ambitious City trader Yasmin in the BBC series Industry. It’s decent casting: Abela has sass and savvy in abundance and her voice and stage presence are more than decent. Her father, Mitch, is played by Eddie Marsan as a cuddly working-class patriarch, while Jack O’Connell lays on the Cockney charm as Blake Fielder-Civil, Winehouse’s future husband. (122min) Kevin Maher
North By Northwest (PG, 1959)
BBC4, 10.45pm
Cary Grant plays a Madison Avenue advertising executive who, in a twist of fate, is mistaken for a spy. And that’s just the start of his misfortune. Soon he’s on the run from secret agents and the cops, who think he’s a murderer, and he’s getting strafed by a cropduster plane. This film contains some of the most iconic moments Hitchcock committed to film: along with the cropduster sequence, there is a nail-biting climax at Mount Rushmore. The plotting is tightly wound and the thrills are executed with devilish panache. Grant’s co-stars include Eva Marie Saint, Martin Landau and James Mason. (133min) Wendy Ide
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Radio choiceDavid Bowie: Memo for Radio Show
6 Music, noon
The station marks the tenth anniversary of the musician’s death with a range of shows, including this one based on a note discovered in his archive with the same heading. It’s a bit of a Desert Island Discs thing, with the 15 songs on the list — including music from Charles Mingus, Jeff Beck and the Walker Brothers — linked by Bowie discussing the songs in archive interviews. It’s a wonderful reminder that Bowie was the most interesting and interested artist of our time. CW