What’s on TV tonight: The Cleaner and Have I Got News For You return, and more

Friday 4 October

The Cleaner
BBC One, 9.30pm
The gentle sitcom about crime-scene cleaner Paul “Wicky” Wickstead (Greg Davies, who also writes) returns for a third series and, as ever, moves between broad comedy and pathos with ease. The opener concerns Wicky’s latest job, an accident scene involving a grand piano falling into the massive entrance hall of a millionaire’s mansion. Wicky is annoyed to discover that the millionaire is his old schoolfriend Justin (Ben Willbond from Ghosts), who now has the perfect life – wealth, property and an impossibly cute son – that makes him seethe with jealousy. Justin suggests that they get the old gang back together, played by Rosie Cavaliero, Naveed Khan and Vaun Earl Norman.

Wicky’s memories of their daredevil antics as teenagers – “They called me Risky Business at school” – don’t quite match those of his old friends and, keen to prove them all wrong, he embarks on a daft escapade that inevitably results in his girlfriend, police officer Ruth (Zita Sattar), becoming involved. A life lesson is subtly parlayed in each episode and here the denouement, which has a neat twist, packs a real emotional punch as we see that assessing life’s winners and losers isn’t always straightforward. VL

Auschwitz: The Inside Man
PBS America, 8.15pm
This film tells the remarkable story of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who infiltrated Auschwitz to smuggle information out to the Allies, vital in proving the Nazis were systemically killing Jews. VL

Have I Got News For You
BBC One, 9pm
Keir Starmer’s stormy first few months in office should give extra pep to the returning satirical news quiz – its 68th series – and plenty for Ian Hislop and Paul Merton to vent about. Kevin Bridges hosts, while the guests are comedian Chloe Petts and journalist Helen Lewis. VL

Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar
BBC Two, 9pm; Wales, 9.35pm
The second episode (of three) of this entertaining documentary series examines the actress’s romantic attachments; she married seven men, including Richard Burton (twice). “Her life was bigger than any film, more controversial, more drama, more love, more passion,” one contributor says. The film doesn’t shy away from examining the emotional cost of her impulsiveness – to her and those in her orbit. VL

Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country
BBC Three, 9pm
Charlie Cooper (brother of Daisy, and co-creator and star of This Country) is the latest celebrity to try his hand at presenting a travelogue series, and he’s an agreeable guide as he travels around the UK in his campervan. He’s investigating local myths and legends and, in this first episode of three, he starts in East Anglia – home, apparently, to 26 of the UK’s 100 mythical beasts – on the trail of “demon dog” Black Shuck. VL

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon: The Book of Carol
Sky Max, 9pm
Yet another expansion of the undying Walking Dead universe with this chapter about the friendship between the grizzled Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and the even more grizzled Carol Peletier (Melissa McBride). The new six-part series begins where The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon left off; Daryl has washed up in France and Carol sets out to find him. VL

Guy Garvey: From the Vaults
Sky Arts, 10pm
Elbow frontman Garvey wraps up this series of his “magical mystery tour” of TV music archives with a look at 1988, when an eclectic mix of teen pop and indie bands hit the charts. Among those he chooses are tracks from The Primitives, The Fall, Pop Will Eat Itself and All About Eve. VL

Film of the week: Joker (2019) ★★★
ITV1, 9pm 
Wallow in the neon murk of Todd Phillips’s radical rethinking of the Batman villain. Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a narcissistic loner who lives with his elderly mother (Frances Conroy) in a version of Gotham City that is to all intents and purposes Manhattan in the early 1980s. Even Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), billionaire father of Bruce, is reimagined as a puffed-up, Trump-like plutocrat. Arthur works as a party clown, but dreams of making it as a stand-up. Phoenix uses his pipe-cleaner physique (he reportedly lost more than three stone for the role) to draw out the character’s inherent foolishness; his improvised soft-shoe-shuffle dances are carried off with Chaplin-esque elegance. Yet if Arthur is essentially written as a Scorsese crossover between Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin (The King of Comedy), the film also draws from the real-life tale of Bernhard Goetz – New York’s so-called “Subway Vigilante”. After a fatal confrontation with some obnoxious Wall Street traders, Arthur becomes Gotham’s own Goetz and a terrifying symbol of underclass resistance. The sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux starring Lady Gaga, is in cinemas from today.

Challengers (2024) ★★★★★
Amazon Prime Video  
Luca Guadagnino gives a tennis love-triangle with full-fat racquet-twanging steaminess. Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist star as Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson, two former doubles partners and best friends who find themselves vying for the affections of Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan, a lissom goddess of the American youth circuit. The alchemical mix puts in motion a professional and personal rollercoaster that is a sheer joy to watch.

The Color Purple (2023) ★★★★
Sky Cinema Premiere, 8pm
This deeply moving musical film of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel – adapted in turn for the screen from the 2005 musical stage show – isn’t subtle, but it works a treat – sequins, comedy, uproarious choreography, R&B numbers and all. American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino brings impressively egoless wallop to the central role of Celie, living a hardscrabble life in early 20th-century Georgia. Colman Domingo co-stars.

Bridesmaids (2011) ★★★★
ITV2, 9pm  
This film about female friendship is gleefully crude (Paul Feig directs; Judd Apatow is an executive producer). But don’t let that put you off – it’s painfully funny with it, as well as sharply written, developing into a surprisingly poignant evocation of self-scuppering loneliness. Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) are inseparable lifelong friends, but perfect Helen (Rose Byrne) seems intent on being Lillian’s maid of honour.

Ghost Stories (2017) ★★★
BBC Two, 11.05pm  
Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s so-so anthology horror, based on their 2010 stage play of the same name, features three main stories: that of Alex Lawther’s edgy, stranded driver; Paul Whitehouse’s depressive nightwatchman; and Martin Freeman’s shotgun-toting toff who is terrorised by a nursery poltergeist. Though not short of ambition and possessing a fantastic cast, it still falls disappointingly short.

Television previewers

Stephen Kelly (SK), Veronica Lee (VL), Gerard O’Donovan (GO), Poppie Platt (PP) and Gabriel Tate (GT)