What’s on TV tonight and this week: Race Across the World returns, Last One Laughing ends, and more

From the return of John Simm's detective series Grace , to a moving drama about the struggle to conceive in Babies , plus Race Across the World is back, here's the rundown of what to look forward to and catch up on this week.

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What's on TV tonight?

Race Across the World
BBC One/iPlayer, 8pm 
Six seasons in (and several celebrity versions), we're familiar with the format: five competing pairs surrender their phones and bank cards before setting off on a mad, cash-only, no-flights dash around the globe. This time it's a journey that will take them 12,000 kilometres and the best part of two months to complete, on a route mirroring the ancient Silk Road that stretched from the southern tip of Europe to the wilds of outer Mongolia. Along the way, they'll have to negotiate eight different languages, cultures and landscapes while traversing an equal number of countries and, astonishingly, they'll have just £23 a day each to pay for everything they need, including accommodation and transport.

In tonight's opener, the teams – ranging from two delightfully fearless Scouse 19-year-olds to a 66-year-old retired architect and his sister-in-law (plus two cousins, a brother and sister and a father-daughter combo) gather in the Sicilian port city of Palermo. There, they learn the location of the first checkpoint destination – the fashionable fishing village of Fiskardo in Greece – and have to make their first big decisions: to splurge on expensive but fast passenger ferries, or to seek out slower, more economical overland routes.

Last One Laughing UK
Amazon Prime Video
The comedy show seen by many as the funniest thing on TV right now brings a successful second season to a close. Five of the 10 comedians who started are still in contention, their resilience now paper-thin in the face of constant provocation from their fellow pros. Jimmy Carr wields the red and yellow cards.

Diet: Can You Eat Yourself Happy? – Tonight
ITV1/ITVX, 7pm
Eating favourite foods like chocolate and ice cream can be a quick fix for boosting happiness, temporarily. But does comfort eating bypass the foodstuffs that could give us an even better boost? Lara Lewington reports.

Kegworth: Flight to Disaster
BBC Two/iPlayer, 9pm
An absorbing documentary recalling a near-forgotten air disaster that claimed 47 lives in January 1989, when a British Midland flight from London to Belfast crashed onto a motorway embankment in Leicestershire. Archive footage and retrospective analysis uncover the events that led to the disaster.

Click to Kill: The AI War Machine – Dispatches
Channel 4, 10pm
Advanced AI technology and cheap-to-make drones are changing war at both ends of the armaments spectrum, enabling superpowers to conduct "arms-length" wars and resistance movements to fight on with unconventional, asymmetric tactics. With access to Ukraine, the US Army and Israeli intelligence, this report charts how a new arms race is changing conflict.

Harry Clark Goes to Rome
BBC One/iPlayer, 10.40pm
A one-off film following Traitors winner Harry Clark, accompanied by his mother Georgia, on a trip to the Vatican. They're on a spiritual quest for answers about faith, identity and what it takes to be a "good" Catholic in the 21st century, travelling in unlikely-to-be-fulfilled hope of meeting the Pope. GO

What's on TV this week?

• Saturday

• Sunday

• Monday

• Tuesday

• Wednesday

• Friday

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Saturday 28 March

Big Night of Musicals 2026
BBC One/iPlayer, 7.45pm
The fifth outing of this enjoyable showcase of musical theatre was recorded at the AO Arena in Manchester in January, featuring an audience of National Lottery players to celebrate the £1.4 billion of Lottery funding that has helped support 29,000 theatre-related projects in the UK since it was launched in 1994. One of the organisations recognised at the ceremony for its community work is the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, whose historic 1878 home was reopened last year after extensive refurbishment helped by National Lottery funding.

But it's all about the music as local lad Jason Manford hosts the evening, which features a preview of forthcoming West End productions of Miss Saigon and Jesus Christ Superstar , with Eurovision runner-up Sam Ryder making his debut as Jesus in the latter show. Also appearing is Alexandra Burke, performing numbers from I'm Every Woman: The Chaka Khan Musical; there are hits from The Producers , Wicked , The Lion King , Oliver! , Sunny Afternoon and Paddington: The Musical , and a performance by La Voix – who is taking on the role of Miss Hannigan in the upcoming touring production of Annie . Manford, meanwhile, performs You're the Voice from The Choir of Man with the Infant Hercules community choir.

Gladiators
BBC One/iPlayer, 5.45pm
The entertaining series ends as Bradley and Barney Walsh welcome back four contenders to take on the Gladiators for the title of champion in the grand final.

Chernobyl: 48 Hours To Escape
Channel 4, 7.50pm Witnesses, scientists and workers at the nuclear plant recount what happened in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 explosion, including the evacuation of 50,000 people from the nearby city of Pripyat. A different disaster – and the battle to save a piece of our history in 1992 – is covered in The Windsor Castle Fire: Minute by Minuteon Channel 5 at 9.20pm.

Inside Britain's National Parks
BBC Two/iPlayer, 8.30pm
This four-part series celebrates one of Britain's finest innovations, beginning in the New Forest. It was once a hunting ground for William the Conqueror and is now home to a wide variety of wildlife. Pembrokeshire Coast, Dartmoor and Northumberland national parks follow.

Hidden Assets
BBC Four, 9pm & 9.50pm; all episodes will be available on iPlayer
Two episodes kick off the third series of the gritty Irish drama about the Criminal Assets Bureau and its international counterparts. The action moves between Dublin and Bilbao; when a Spanish reporter is murdered, DS Claire Wallace (Nora-Jane Noone) uncovers a link to a CAB raid in the Irish capital.

Saturday Night Live UK
Sky One/NOW, 10pm
After last week's patchy but promising launch , the undeniably bouncy British version of the American broadcast institution created by Lorne Michaels more than 50 years ago settles into its run, which has already been extended. The ensemble cast provides more topical and satirical comedy, while Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan is the guest host and music is provided by rockers Wolf Alice . VL

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Sunday 29 March

Grace
ITV/ITVX, 8pm
Peter James's glum but good-looking Brighton procedural returns for a sixth series, with the aftershocks still reverberating from the corruption case that has rocked both the East Sussex Police and its leading light: John Simm's DS Roy Grace is wrestling with understanding what happened to his wife while dealing with his son's resurfaced trauma. Early expectations that this may weave in and out of the case of the week are quickly dispelled, however, and things instead settle down to the sort of solid two-hour mystery that has long been an ITV Sunday night staple.

Tonight concerns the disappearance and possible kidnap of Eden (Tamla Kari), the wife of a property developer (Rishi Nair, in a smoothly sinister role light years from his Grantchester hero) whose compromised personal and professional lives obligingly serve up an array of plausible suspects: a local gangster running a protection racket, a neglected, jealous son and a browbeaten brother among them. Evidence suggests Eden's life is in danger, however, and proves triggering for one of Grace's team as a race against time gets underway. Simm gives good haunted as ever in a case that is marginally more straightforward than usual, but engaging enough.

Songs of Praise: Palm Sunday
BBC One/iPlayer, 1.15pm
The Reverend Kate Bottley travels to north Wales to explore the significance of The Last Supper through modern sculptures and photographic interpretations of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, with hymns including How Great Thou Art and Light of the World .

Figure Skating World Champs 2026
BBC Two/iPlayer, 2pm
The annual competition begins in Prague. Expect to see Brits including Kristen Spours and Edward Appleby, alongside the USA's "quad god" Ilia Malinin, on the redemption trail after his disappointing Games.

The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer
Channel 4, 7.40pm While we await the arrival of Nigella Lawson, Bake Off: the Professionals judge Cherish Finden continues to have a wonderful time standing in alongside Paul Hollywood as the next batch of celebrities bake up a storm for charity. Richard Herring, Babatunde Aléshé, Molly-Mae Hague and JoJo Siwa are the latest into the tent, with decorated traybakes, a tarte tatin and biscuits inspired by childhood playthings on the menu.

The Other Bennet Sister
BBC One/iPlayer, 8pm
This lovely, cleverly cast adaptation of Janice Hadlow's book has demonstrated the remarkable capacity for reimagination of Jane Austen's worlds. Mary's (Ella Bruccoleri) growing confidence is first dented by an encounter with Caroline Bingley (Tanya Reynolds) and then by bad news about her mother (Ruth Jones).

The Emergency Ward
More4, 9pm
A sixth visit to the Royal Melbourne Hospital begins with a man with epilepsy who is suffering seizures after a fall, a potentially career-ending injury for a surfer and a vet with a worrying x-ray of their own. GT

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Monday 30 March

Babies 
BBC One, 9pm; all episodes will be available on iPlayer
Bafta-winning writer Stefan Golaszewski is a byword for thoughtful, exquisitely cast, contemporary TV drama. He's best known for Mum, his acclaimed laughing-on-the-inside comedy starring Leslie Manville as a widowed older woman, although it was his debut comedy Him & Her, with Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani, that won him the Bafta. His last series, Marriage , in 2022, was a first venture into completely straight drama, with Sean Bean and Nicola Walker achieving such a pitch of bleak emotional intensity as a splintering married couple that viewers complained of finding the pressure-cooker atmosphere off-putting.

This time, the intensity is sky-high again but laced here and there with humour as he takes on the emotionally freighted subject of a couple's longing to have a child. Paapa Essiedu and Siobhán Cullen play the couple in question, Stephen and Lisa, who we gradually learn have already been through one loss in pregnancy and are now ready to try again – despite the potential for more pain and disappointment. It's a drama of silences, quiet moments, social awkwardnesses and deep yearnings, with Cullen and Essiedu hugely sympathetic in their portrayal of the intense ups and downs in otherwise ordinary lives.

Rory McIlroy: The Masters Wait
Amazon Prime Video
An exceptional documentary about the elusive nature of sporting greatness and what it takes to shake off demons. A must-watch for golf fans, but the inspiring story of McIlroy's 15-year wait to finally complete one of golf's rarest achievements has wide appeal.

Live Snooker: Tour Championship
Channel 5, 12.30pm & 6.30pm
Not snooker's richest tournament, but one of the most hotly contested, featuring the 12 best players of the year. Today's live coverage of the first day's action at Manchester Central follows the opening eight frames of two first-round matches. Katie Shanahan presents.

Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China
BBC Two/iPlayer, 9pm
Geopolitical tensions in the Pacific may be overshadowed currently by conflict in the Middle East, but the dangers remain ever-present. This absorbing two-parter concludes with a look at how recent US administrations have handled the political powder-keg that is Taiwan, and how Donald Trump's second term has thrown diplomatic relations with China into disarray.

Hunting the Silver Killer
ITV1/ITVX, 9pm
Murder-suicide pacts are rare; even more so among elderly couples in small, close-knit rural communities. In a shocking film, forensic scientist Angela Gallop and pathologist Dick Shephard re-examine two cases that occurred within three years in Cheshire in the 1990s, with a view to uncovering evidence that they might actually have been murders.

The Teacher
Channel 5. 9pm
The school-based thriller series returns for another four-part run (airing nightly through to Thursday) and, as before, it's all-change with a new cast, setting and storyline. This time, Victoria Hamilton leads as an outspoken Head of Drama at an elite private school, threatened with cancellation for dismissing a student's concerns over Shakespeare's outmoded attitudes. GO

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Tuesday 31 March

Spymasters: The Great Spy Writers
Sky Arts/NOW, 2am/9pm
"The biggest gap in British history," says Professor Christopher Andrew, the former official historian of MI5, "is the history of intelligence." Adequate historical records do not exist for obvious reasons. Yet spy fiction, this documentary argues, does grant some access to a hidden world. The four-part series explores how the great spy authors – and by extension, film franchises such as James Bond – interact with reality.

Consider the notorious British spy Kim Philby, who in 1963 was revealed to be a double agent working for the Soviet Union. The affair inspired John le Carré's masterpiece Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . Yet Philby, whose real name was Harold, also shared an ironic connection to the origins of spy literature. He was nicknamed "Kim" by his father after the title character of Rudyard Kipling's 1901 espionage novel, Kim , which popularised the idea of "the Great Game".

Much of tonight's opening episode is dedicated to the ethics of spycraft. Le Carré described spies as "people who play Cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives". But knowing your enemy, argues Andrew, reduces the likelihood of war by error: "A world in which the world powers do not have intelligence is far more dangerous than one that does."

If It's Tuesday, It's Murder
Disney+
Well, it is Tuesday! This playful murder mystery follows an eclectic group of Spanish tourists whose week-long holiday in Lisbon is derailed by the discovery of a body. Cue a quartet of amateur tourist detectives, who investigate whether the killer could have been travelling with them all along.

Untold: The Death & Life of Lamar Odom
Netflix
In 2015, former Los Angeles Lakers player Lamar Odom was found unresponsive at the Love Ranch brothel outside Las Vegas. Having narrowly survived, this candid documentary gives the introspective basketball star a chance to tell the drug-fuelled story of how his life fell apart.

Sort Your Life Out with Stacey Solomon
BBC One/iPlayer, 8pm
Stacey Solomon and her crack team of declutterers are in Milton Keynes this week, where stressed-out parents Bianca and Ollie require help to free up space for their five children. The problem is not messiness but storage. Their family has outgrown their cramped home.

Vicky Pattison: Maybe, Baby?
E4, 9pm
This breezy two-part documentary follows reality TV star Vicky Pattison and her husband Ercan Ramadan as they try to decide whether or not to have children. In tonight's opening episode, Pattison looks after a friend's young daughter to test out what life with a child might be like.

Three Dads and a Baby: Storyville
BBC Four/iPlayer, 10pm
Norwegian transgender man Kris is pregnant with a baby that he has decided to raise alongside his two boyfriends, Sindre and David. This intimate documentary follows the polyamorous family's unconventional parenting journey, against the backdrop of a Norwegian law which required trans people to be sterilised until 2016. SK

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Wednesday 1 April

The' Burbs
Sky One, 9pm; all episodes will be available on Sky/NOW
Back in 1989, The 'Burbs found Tom Hanks edging away from silly comedies and into the darker roles that would define his career; could Jack Whitehall be hoping for something similar? While Joe Dante's cult comedy didn't quite find a tone or an audience, this Seth MacFarlane-produced reboot dials down the horror in favour of a cosier Only Murders in the Building -influenced mystery, with Whitehall's Rob Fisher bringing his wife Samira (Keke Palmer) and their infant son back to the picket-fenced cul-de-sac where he was brought up. "It's giving Get Out ," she remarks, unnerved.

That discomfort mounts over this opening double bill when the derelict and potentially haunted Victorian pile opposite is bought by Gary (Justin Kirk), a taciturn oddball whose penchant for privacy further raises suspicions. After all, those rumours of a teenage girl being murdered there years earlier aren't going anywhere. Joined by a phalanx of eccentric, borderline-intrusive neighbours, Samira makes the most of maternity leave and gets to work while Rob attempts to divert the attention of several childhood acquaintances he would rather never have seen again. Palmer in particular excels, while the prodding of suburban claustrophobia is familiar but fun.

Hal and Harper
ITVX
Building its portfolio of oddball comedy-dramas, ITVX's latest import, this time from indie darling Cooper Raiff, takes a while to establish itself with its elliptically structured narrative, but gradually acquires a real warmth and emotional heft as siblings Hal (Raiff) and Harper (Lili Reinhart) and their dad (Mark Ruffalo) grapple with personal loss, codependency and arrested development.

Secrets of the Bees
Nat Geo Wild, 7pm
Bertie Gregory is our guide to the amazing world of bees for two genuinely fascinating hours that reveal these creatures' intelligence and ingenuity, as well as how central they are to our survival and what more we can do to help them.

Warship: Life in the Royal Navy
Channel 5, 8pm While JJ Chalmers follows Royal Marine Commando training and Dwayne Fields digs into the history, Kate Humble takes to the seas with the HMS Iron Duke – and is on hand when the ship is ordered to intercept a stranded Russian submarine amid a fearsome storm: the sort of real-life drama that makes for gripping television.

Chauvet: Humanity's First Great Masterpiece
BBC Four/iPlayer, 9pm
This sedate, absorbing French documentary tells the story of the Chauvet Cave in south-east France, discovered in 1994, with its palaeolithic cave paintings kept safe for thousands of years by a landslide. Who created them and how can they be preserved?

Hatton Garden: The Great Diamond Heist
Channel 4, 10pm
Marking the, er, 11th anniversary of the notorious robbery, this documentary hears from insiders, including one of the robbers, as they recount a heist that captured the nation's attention; but will they reveal the whereabouts of the missing millions? GT

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Friday 3 April

Your Friends & Neighbours
Apple TV
In the first series of this slick crime caper, mild-mannered hedge fund manager Andrew "Coop" Cooper ( Mad Men 's Jon Hamm) breaks bad after being screwed over by his boss and fired. Drowning in debt, reeling from divorce, Coop hits upon an audacious way to fund his family's lavish lifestyle: burgling the homes of his rich friends and neighbours and stealing the kind of small, high-value trinkets that they won't miss. Take the Etoile de Montblanc Joaillerie Fountain Pen, worth $165,000. His high-powered neighbour uses one each time he signs a big business deal and tosses it in a drawer, never to be used again.

A story about a middle-aged businessman deciding to become a thief is compelling. A story about a thief continuing to be a thief, like in today's opening episode of series two, is less so. The stakes are raised, however, by the arrival of James Marsden's charismatic billionaire Owen, a Gatsby-esque figure who buys the neighbourhood's grandest mansion and throws an extravagant party to match. The ageing Coop, played by Hamm as an affable echo of Don Draper, spots an opportunity for his biggest score yet. But the dangerous Owen is no suburban fool. He could be Coop's match.

Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey
BBC One/iPlayer, 7.30pm
After losing her husband in her fifties, Eddie dedicated herself to becoming the oldest British woman to complete an Ironman triathlon – earning her the title "Iron Gran" at the age of 72. This week, Bill Bailey employs the talents of realist painter Caroline Pool to immortalise Eddie in all her glory.

Beyond Paradise
BBC One/iPlayer, 8pm The rattled June (Raquel Cassidy) is shocked to find her home ransacked by an apparent burglar. But by the time Humphrey ( Kris Marshall ) and Esther (Zahra Ahmadi) arrive, the house has been mysteriously tidied up and restored. Has June imagined it? Or is someone trying to gaslight her?

Have I Got News For You
BBC One/iPlayer, 9pm 
Comedian Roy Wood Jr, who hosts the US edition of the topical panel show, crosses the pond to open a new UK series. Comic writer Armando Iannucci and journalist Anushka Asthana also join him as guest panellists in a month with far too much news.

The Young Offenders
BBC One, 9.30pm; all episodes will be available on iPlayer 
Cork delinquents Conor (Alex Murphy) and Jock (Chris Walley), the stars of this anarchic Irish comedy, have made the big move from BBC Three to BBC One for this fifth series. Tonight, they find themselves on the run from the law after Jock makes an unlikely escape from a Colombian prison.

The Claudia Winkleman Show
BBC One/iPlayer, 10.30pm
Claudia Winkleman's struggling chat show continues with Scottish actor James McAvoy, director of the new film California Schemin' , headlining an eclectic couch. He is joined by actor Rita Wilson, The Morning Show star Gugu Mbatha-Raw and comedian Russell Howard. SK

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