Monday’s best TV: Meet the Lords; The Nightly Show with David Walliams (original) (raw)
Game of Clones
7.30pm, E4
Twentysomething Charlotte wants to meet a mixed-race chap with geeky glasses. How to find such a fellow? By getting E4 to generate a computer-based image, of course, and then gathering eight lads who meet her specifications. Yes, this is a dating series, but it’s strangely compelling, especially when Charlotte ponders dumping the boy she likes least. “I am sending home my own creation,” she says, calling to mind, for a befuddling moment, Victor Frankenstein. Jonathan Wright
Mary Berry Everyday
8.30pm, BBC2
M-Bez rides again with a new series devoted to everyday cooking, which, she insists, needn’t be boring. Here, she’s off to Scotland to relive recipes from her childhood – her bacon and eggs on rosti looks delicious. Berry also picks langoustine fresh from the net and joins Tom Kitchin for a venison barbecue, where she adds her whisky cream to his recipes. She’s the least Scottish person imaginable, but the food looks tasty. Hannah Verdier
Meet the Lords
9pm, BBC2
They’re unelected and have no inherent rights, other than, as Conservative peer Lord Dobbs says, “Putting our hands up to the government and saying: ‘Please, think again.’” They are the lords, profiled here in a TV first: the cameras having been granted exclusive access to the House and its characters, such as Black Rod and, memorably, Big Issue founder John (now Baron) Bird, whose maiden speech begins: “I got here by lying, cheating and stealing.” Ali Catterall
Broadchurch
9pm, ITV
It’s all about the familiar faces in Broadchurch. As the final season opens, we find detectives Ellie (Olivia Colman) and Alec (David Tennant) meeting Trish, who says she has been raped, around which incident the plot quickly thickens. This being a tight-knit community in which everyone is a suspect, a lot of the tension comes from the continuity with previous series. Meantime, a sinister pall is allowed to develop around some newcomers: Trish’s friends Cath and Jim. John Robinson
The Nightly Show with David Walliams
10pm, ITV
This new daily entertainment show, which features comedy, video clips and studio guests, has been preceded by a trailer of absurdly exaggerated camp starring opening host David Walliams. This snippet – which climaxes in Walliams being served champagne by a buff, half-naked waiter on rollerblades – probably sets the tone for a show that’s unlikely to be understated. Future hosts include John Bishop and Gordon Ramsay. Phil Harrison
The 2,000,000 Calorie Buffet
10pm, Channel 4
Johnny Vegas narrates this one-off ode to pile ’em high dining, the point of which isn’t made entirely clear. As well as following buffet proprietors and enthusiasts from around the country, much is made of the tangential craze for competitive eating. Vegas opens the show by taking a pop at the clean-eating craze, but with eating challenges as dangerous and extreme as this, he fails to provide a more appetising alternative. Hannah J Davies
Real Time With Bill Maher
11.10pm, Sky Atlantic
Well, he’s getting us talking. Maher’s chatshow was the one on which Piers Morgan was told to do one, prompting Morgan’s Scrappy-Doo v Terminator spat with JK Rowling. Maher followed this with a disastrous display of naivety, giving a platform to vicious troll Milo Yiannopoulos. It’s hard to see how this week’s guests – Seth MacFarlane, Fran Lebowitz, Asra Nomani, a couple of senators – can keep Real Time so high in the news. Jack Seale
Film choice
Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967) 10am, Horror Channel
A chilling sign-off to the vintage Quatermass series, 10 years on from the original films. Nigel Kneale’s script, inspired by his TV series, has Prof Q (Andrew Keir) digging up traces of aliens who tried to inhabit Earth 5m years earlier. But the excavations act as an alarm clock for a long-dormant force. Shot for about a sixpence, it’s a Hammer horror to savour.
Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996) 8pm, E4
Highly efficient first outing for the big-budget, big-screen rerun of the vintage TV series, with plenty of impeccably staged action scenes as Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt traces the CIA villains who sacrificed his elite missions team in a Prague massacre. Suspended hazardously above the touch-sensitive floor with one droplet of sweat likely to ruin everything, Hunt is a cool customer. Paul Howlett
Live sport
Premier League football: Leicester City v Liverpool The reigning champions look to get their disastrous season back on track at home to Klopp’s side. 7pm, Sky Sports 1
WTA tennis: Acapulco Tennis’s top female players look to go loco in day one of the tournament. 10pm, BT Sport 2
NBA basketball: Boston Celtics v Atlanta Hawks The Celtics host the Hawks at TD Garden. 12.30am, BT Sport 1