The best TV to watch this week from Great Expectations to Succession and The Power

It’s the return that fans of prestige TV have been waiting for as the fourth (and, sadly, final) season of Succession gets underway.

Plus Great Expectations gets a gritty makeover thanks to Steven (Peaky Blinders) Knight, while Jason Watkins and his partner Clara Francis open up about the loss of their daughter in their new, achingly tragic, documentary.

Here's our pick of the best telly to watch over the next seven days.

Sunday, 26 March, 9.00pm: Great Expectations | BBC One

It seems that we’re destined to get a new version of Dickens’s classic tale Great Expectations every ten years, but this fresh adaptation by Steven (Peaky Blinders) Knight is bolder than some that have come before.

Read more: Is Great Expectations worth watching?

For starters, there’s a definite post-watershed feel to proceedings, with bad language and violence punctuating the action on the Kent marshes in episode one. And Olivia Colman (appearing in just the last few scenes of the opening hour) offers a novel, off-kilter take on Miss Havisham, the cast-aside bride who alters the course of social climbing Pip (Fionn Whitehead).

Also on BBC iPlayer: Bleak House

Monday, 27 March, 9.00pm: Blue Lights | BBC One

Police dramas are ten-a-penny but a relative rarity are procedurals about rookie officers. This six-parter offers a convincing look at life for a batch of inexperienced probationers whose job it is to patrol the often-dangerous streets of Belfast.

The brains behind the series are Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, who earned acclaim for their true crime hit The Salisbury Poisonings. And here there’s a similar sense of us eavesdropping on the way things really work in law enforcement this time when it comes to those who work in police response. Sian Brooke and Richard Dormer star.

Monday, 27 March, 2.00am/9.00pm: Succession | Sky Atlantic

This is a bittersweet return for the Roy family, as while devotees will be heartened to see them back, they’ll soon be having to say goodbye again. This time for good, as creator Jesse Armstrong has already made it clear that season four is to be the award-winning drama’s valedictory offering.

Read more: Everything you need to know about Succession S4

The first episode will be simulcast with the HBO broadcast, hence that initial 2.00am screening. So fans can stay up late in the UK to witness the sale of Waystar Royco to tech visionary Lukas Matsson move ever closer. Expect existential angst and familial division as the series regulars take stock.

Tuesday, 28 March, 8.00pm: Bear Grylls Meets President Zelensky | Channel 4 (available on All4 from Saturday, 25 March)

The survivalist receives a personal invite from Ukraine’s president and so takes a three-day journey deep into the country in order to meet its commander in chief in Kyiv.

During the trip, Grylls encounters those who are trying to endure and survive the war and attempts to understand what daily life is like for them. And when he comes face to face with Volodymyr Zelensky himself, the mission is to discover all about the man behind the public face of the presidency and learn how Ukraine is surviving a winter of oppression.

Thursday, 30 March, 9.00pm: Jason and Clara: In Memory of Maudie | ITV1

A deeply personal project from the acclaimed actor (who appeared most recently in Channel 5’s The Catch) and his fashion designer wife Clara Francis sees them tell the story of their daughter Maudie, who died on New Year’s Day 2011 from sepsis aged just two and a half.

Read more: The early sepsis signs and symptoms to look out for

Now, as the pair prepare to move out of the flat where Maudie was born and tragically died, they open up about their grief and talk to other parents to have lost children as they make an attempt to break the taboo of parents’ bereavement.

Thursday, 30 March: Six Four | ITVX

Our destination for this mystery thriller is a police department in Glasgow, where the lives of central couple Detective Constable Chris O’Neill (Grey’s Anatomy’s Kevin McKidd) and his partner Michelle (Vinette Robinson) take a disturbing turn when their teenage daughter Olivia vanishes.

Adapted from the novel by Hideo Yokoyama, this four-part mystery sees the pair react to the disappearance in contrasting ways, with Michelle heading to London and her previous life as an undercover police officer with the Met, while Chris finds himself caught up in a historic case involving the Scottish police. But might this investigation end up endangering Chris as well as the rest of his family?

Friday, 31 March: The Power – episodes 1 to 3 | Prime Video

Naomi Alderman’s award-winning novel comes to TV, with its first three episodes dropping on 31 March. As in the book upon which it’s based, the series concerns a twist of nature that sees teenage girls suddenly and without warning develop the power to electrocute people at will.

But what begins as a tingle in the collarbone soon becomes something very different as the power balance in the world is reversed. Among the cast are such stellar actors as Toni Collette (in the role of Mayor Margot Cleary-Lopez) and John Leguizamo (playing Rob Lopez).

Watch a clip from The Power