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DRAMA The Night Manager 9.05pm BBC One Catch up via iPlayer “I am the man who will not explode,” Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) says to his MI6 psychiatrist in a reassuring tone of voice, yet the nails digging into the flesh of his hand tell a different story. For despite many years having passed since Pine infiltrated the coterie of arms dealer Richard Roper, he’s still scarred by that undercover mission. Hence his current low-risk role overseeing a night-time surveillance team in London. Only, a quiet job with unsociable hours does not a spy drama make, and it isn’t long before a chance glimpse of a former Roper collaborator is upending Pine’s life of seclusion. What ensues makes for, on the basis of this opening episode at least, an engaging enough espionage…

DRAMA Waiting for the Out 9.30pm BBC One Full series available today on iPlayer NEW SERIES There is layer upon layer of satisfying dramatic sophistication in this new series by the playwright Dennis Kelly, whose eclectic TV CV consists of the Sharon Horgan sitcom Pulling, startling conspiracy thriller Utopia and Jude Law-led folk horror The Third Day. This is much more what you’d expect from a writer known mostly for theatre, since it includes long, talky scenes set in the prison philosophy classes led by Dan (Josh Finan), a clever but nervous young man whose troubled background has left him with obsessive behaviours and a limited capacity to cope with adulthood. As Dan’s class of prisoners challenge his attempts to school them on Locke, Descartes and the rest — either because…

ENTERTAINMENT New Year’s Eve 2025  from 10.30pm BBC TV Catch up via iPlayer Let’s ring in the year 2000! I mean… 2026! You’d be forgiven for thinking the BBC had stepped back in time tonight, with Ronan Keating at the helm on BBC One at 11.30pm (with a 15-minute midnight interval for the fireworks) to perform some of his turn-of-themillennium hits including When You Say Nothing at All and Life Is a Rollercoaster. He’ll also be singing covers of tracks from George Michael and Van Morrison, and special guests are also billed to join him. The setlist over at the Hootenanny on BBC Two (11.30pm) is also pleasingly retro, with Jools Holland welcoming Ronnie Wood, Lulu, Craig David, Heather Small and the Kooks to ring in the new year alongside comparatively…

DRAMA Grantchester 9.00pm ITV1 Full series available on ITVX Due to its improbably high turnover of vicars who’ve all had a sideline in sleuthing, it’s been easy to make jokes at the expense of Grantchester over the years. But as a new series (its penultimate, sob) gets under way, it feels apt to note its subtler aspects. This first episode, for instance (there’s another at 9.00pm tomorrow), opens on a scene of Easter celebration in the parish, where home-made bonnets are being judged while eggs are raced upon spoons. But beneath the surface cheer is a degree of melancholy, with Alphy (Rishi Nair) clearly lonely despite a string of first dates, and Leonard (Al Weaver) obviously worried that partner Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale) will be exposing himself to trauma should he try to…

DOCUMENTARY Inside the Factory 8.00pm BBC One Catch up via iPlayer “I’m like a kid in a sweet shop… well, a biscuit factory,” says an excited Paddy McGuinness as he steps inside the building in Cwmbran, South Wales that’s been manufacturing bikkies since 1939. He’s following the production of Jammie Dodgers (so it’s perhaps inevitable that we hear Bob Marley’s Jamming at one point) although he can’t resist taking a nostalgic detour to another production line to see Wagon Wheels being rolled out, too. There’s the usual conveyor belt of statistics, jolly chat with workers and shots of industrial machinery churning out dough/jam/filling (delete as applicable), while Cherry Healey enjoys herself holding a scientific dunking test to see which biscuit is best for this very British habit, as well as learning about…

DRAMA The Night Manager 9.05pm BBC One Catch up via iPlayer “I am the man who will not explode,” Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) says to his MI6 psychiatrist in a reassuring tone of voice, yet the nails digging into the flesh of his hand tell a different story. For despite many years having passed since Pine infiltrated the coterie of arms dealer Richard Roper, he’s still scarred by that undercover mission. Hence his current low-risk role overseeing a night-time surveillance team in London. Only, a quiet job with unsociable hours does not a spy drama make, and it isn’t long before a chance glimpse of a former Roper collaborator is upending Pine’s life of seclusion. What ensues makes for, on the basis of this opening episode at least, an engaging enough espionage…