TV tonight – will the pastry or the contestants flake in Bake Off: The Professionals?

Bake Off: The Professionals

8pm, Channel 4

With one team already bested by the fiendish combination of mini strawberry tarts and a deconstructed pineapple upside-down cake, the remaining five sets of pastry chefs are this week hoping to impress Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden with their takes on a classic millefeuille and a Paris-Brest. Blin and Finden’s standards are predictably exacting, though; with the added task of making their creations bird-themed, the teams soon start to flake apart in all the wrong ways. Ammar Kalia

Holby City 

8pm, BBC One

The medical soap returns after a six-week absence, with strong feelings coursing through its arteries. Not one but two illicit romances are on the cards, against the background of a controversial tendering process and ripples of grief for the departed Xavier. Essie, meanwhile, continues her chemotherapy. Jack Seale

The A Word

9pm, BBC One

Last-minute preparations are underway at the village hall for Ralph’s big day (soundtracked by indie disco classics, of course) and an unexpected visitor adds to the usual genial chaos of this family drama. In the confusion, Paul (Lee Ingleby) tries to impress Sarah (Gemma Paige North) with his liberal parenting. Ellen E Jones

A House Through Time

9pm, BBC Two

The historian David Olusoga continues his journey through the past lives of the house at No 10 Guinea Street in Bristol. After establishing its origins as part of Bristol’s slave-trading wealth last week, he takes us up to 1870 tonight. There is an ill-fated marriage and the fortunes of a local politician to contend with. AK

A Very British Hotel Chain: Inside Best Western

9pm, Channel 4

The final episode of this entertaining series follows an end-of-year push to meet CEO Rob’s ambitious targets by signing new hotels, while the Christmas advertising campaign gets underway at the luxury Mount Pleasant hotel in Doncaster, although the talent is making a mess ... AK

PEN15 

9pm, Sky Comedy

It is rare that a comedy balances acute self-awareness with genuine heart, but this Y2K high school saga manages exactly that. It concludes with that dramatic staple: the school dance. Maya and Anna have had a row. But as disappointment looms, might they be stuck with each other after all? Phil Harrison

Film choice

American Made (Doug Liman, 2017), 9pm, Film4
As airline-pilot-turned-CIA-sponsored-drug-smuggler Barry Seal, Tom Cruise is no Ethan Hunt or Jack Reacher, but sporting cool aviator shades he still effortlessly outwits Medellín cartel heavies and US customs agents in Doug Liman’s flighty crime thriller, based (very loosely) on a true story. Paul Howlett