Rob Brydon hosts new reality show Destination X, Pray for Our Sinners looks at the impact of the Catholic Church on Navan, US drama Fire County returns, and there's the season finale of Mark Gatiss’ Bookish . . .
Pick of the Day
Destination X, 9.00pm, BBC One
Lots of hype in the UK about this blowing The Traitors out of the water in terms of reality show addiction – but the premise sounds pretty sketchy to me.
Rob Brydon is the show’s presenter, so there is hope.
He hosts as 13 contestants are taken to undisclosed locations across Europe on a coach with blacked-out windows and have to guess where they are.
Big deal? Well, the devil is in the detail.
Apparently, lots of tricks are applied to fool the contestants (eg: actors playing fellow tourists or airport staff, sets of twins playing the same person in different places).
In each location the contestants will face challenges designed to offer clues to their whereabouts and the person who guesses the furthest away from their actual location will leave the competition.
It’s basically The Traitors meets Race Across the World.
New or Returning Shows
Pray for Our Sinners, 9.35pm, RTÉ One
Streaming on RTÉ Player
Sinéad O'Shea's return to her hometown, Navan, to explore the impact the Catholic Church had on the community in decades past.
Through first-hand testimonies, the film reveals the plight of unmarried mothers, the horrors of mother and baby homes and the prevalence of violence against children in Catholic schools.
A handful of extraordinary figures chose to resist the pervasive power of the church.
They include a woman who refused to give her baby up for adoption, a nine-year-old boy who dared to speak out against his teachers’ physical abuse - and a couple who established a family planning service and campaigned for the abolition of corporal punishment.
Fire County, 8.00pm, Sky Witness
Streaming on NOW
Max Thieriot returns as Bode Leone, a young convict seeking a shortened prison sentence by joining a prison release firefighting program in Northern California, where he and other inmates are partnered with elite firefighters to extinguish massive, unpredictable wildfires across the region.
Now in its third season, it’s a pivotal moment in the series as Bode walks as a free man as he continues his journey toward redemption in his small hometown with Cal Fire.
We rejoin Bode in the midst of Gabriela and Diego's wedding where a helicopter crash ignites chaos, with the team immediately jumping into action to stop the fires and help victims.
The Moors Murderers: A Search for Justice, 9.00pm, BBC Two
This is a two-part investigation of an horrific crime that still resonates in the UK.
In 1966, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (above) were sentenced to life for murdering three children, but they actually killed five children and one victim's body was never found - 12-year-old Keith Bennett.
This analysis of the Moors Murders case draws on new evidence in rediscovered files, which have been investigated by a team including Duncan Staff, former murder detective Martin Slevin and forensic archaeologist Professor John Hunter.
Japan’s Master of Restoration, 9.00pm, BBC Four
Like The Repair Shop? Here’s a Japanese equivalent.
It follows Koji Mayuyama, an antique restorer known as The God Hand, who is the go-to man for museums and collectors all over Japan.
In this opening episode, a museum in Osaka asks the Mayuyamas for help with artefacts currently hidden away in their archive.
An 800-year-old celadon vase from China and a 16th-century Totoya Chawan tea bowl both require their expert attention to be brought back to life.
New to Stream
Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes, Netflix
One of the greatest manhunts in New York City history comes to life in this gripping three-part series.
Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes takes viewers inside the NYPD’s desperate race to catch the infamous .44-caliber killer - and into the disturbing mind of David Berkowitz himself.
Newly unearthed recordings offer rare insight into his twisted psyche, revealing what was going through his mind as he unleashed a reign of terror in the late 1970s.
Alongside firsthand accounts from cops, journalists, and survivors, the series unpacks how fear spread through the streets, fueled by cryptic letters, a frenzied press, and a killer who seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.
From Emmy-winning and Academy Award nominated director Joe Berlinger, this chilling new chapter of Conversations with a Killer delves into one of the most infamous cases in American history.
Don’t Miss
Threads, 11.15pm, BBC Four
Harrowing drama from director Mick Jackson (below) about the consequences of nuclear war, focusing on two Sheffield families in the days leading up to - and the years following - a direct hit on the city.
First shown in 1984, the award-winning film pulls no punches in its depiction of the fallout. Reece Dinsdale and Karen Meagher star.
It’s preceded at 10.55pm by Mick Jackson Remembers – Threads, where the director and producer looks back on the drama, sharing the story behind its creation.
Taking Sheffield as the focal point for the aftermath, the film was highly praised for its examination of the social, economic and environmental damage that such a war would bring.
The Repair Shop, 8.00pm, BBC One
This week, experts restore a pair of original seats from Arsenal's former home of Highbury stadium, as well as a broken locket from the Second World War.
For what should be of interest to Irish eyes, there’s a shop ledger from 1909 that charts daily life through our journey to independence.
And there’s also a chapel from a hand-built model village that was once nestled in a Somerset garden.
Ending Today
Bookish, 9.00pm, U&Alibi
Mark Gatiss’ 1940s-set whodunit comes to a conclusion with another double-bill.
When an army captain drinks a poisoned cocktail, there are multiple suspects - including Trottie! But two exiled princesses believe he wasn't the intended victim
As tension builds, the staff at the Walsingham Hotel rebel. Meanwhile, Book discovers something quite curious in Captain Victor Orr's little black boo.
Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text, 9.00pm, Channel 4
Sixty days since the authorities first broke into the criminals' messages, it's approaching the beginning of the end of the EncroChat hack, as the owners become suspicious that they've been compromised.
But as each batch of messages that have been given to the UK authorities are analysed, more and more criminality is exposed.
Analysts reveal that it's the first time that they've ever come across exportation of drugs from the UK, as they discover half a tonne of ecstasy is bound for Australia.
