Friday Night at the Proms: The Story of Swing
7.30pm, BBC4
A night of sax education at the Royal Albert Hall, exploring the roots of the swing era with two big bands led by old hands Guy Barker and Winston Rollins. The legacies of masters such as Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Benny Goodman are celebrated with the help of guest singers Clare Teal, Elaine Delmar and Jamie Davis. There’s also a rousing Cab Calloway turn by Clarke Peters, who was burning up West End stages long before he played The Wire’s fastidious Freamon. Graeme Virtue
Ripper Street
9pm, BBC1
Long Susan’s brazen balls hang lower by the episode, and tonight she fronts it out frontily while Inspector Reid lies unconscious in hospital. Will he wake up and remember she shot him? Sensing their chance, a gang of ruffians decide to launch an attack on the streets of Whitechapel – well, one of the local pubs and its unfortunate landlord. While Drake waits for Rose to call off her engagement, Jackson shows the first glimmers of real affection for Mimi as his friend hovers between life and death. Julia Raeside
Rick Stein: From Venice To Istanbul
9.30pm, BBC2
Stein pootles east, like Palin with a tapeworm. He’s in northern and western Greece now, sucking up veal stifado and kotopita as prepared by bemused locals, and cooking his own avgolemono. The chef’s now at an age where he’s happy to deliver a programme with rough edges left on, a boon counteracting the fact that, like most hour-long factual shows, this is 15 minutes too long. Tonight, Rick hairdryers a barbecue, and walks out of shot to get a coffee when he tires of Messolonghi’s fish shops. Jack Seale
Edinburgh Nights
11.05pm, BBC2
FFS. As acronyms go, Franz Ferdinand and Sparks couldn’t have chosen a more fitting or cheekier one for their new collaboration. (That said, thank goodness Tom Waits and Aphex Twin have no immediate plans for a joint venture.) Kirsty Wark hears their “new sound” and also talks to director Graham Eatough and cast members about adapting Alasdair Gray’s Kafkaesque debut novel Lanark, which is playing at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, for the stage – tricky but not entirely impossible. Ali Catterall
Bad Robots
11.05pm, Channel 4
A successful, only slightly low-rent comedy format returns. What happens is this: we, the public, attempt to have a passport photo taken, or use an interactive map at a zoo, or use an automated bureau de change. But the joke is on us! In a place where Isaac Asimov meets Candid Camera, the Bad Robots team have devised satirical machines that issue absurd or rude instructions, and then film our reactions. It can be funny, but also shows how guilelessly we fall in line with automated commands, however absurd. Julia Raeside
Duck Quacks Don’t Echo
8pm, Sky1
Lee Mack’s fact-checking panel show – a kind of GCSE version of QI – returns for a third series, continuing its ongoing quest to verify all manner of urban mythology. Tonight’s series opener invites Jerry Springer, Emma Bunton and Jason Byrne to the Duck pod, each armed with a pet fact to be tested to quacking point. After proving to the world that dog urine glows under ultraviolet light and that toilets tend to flush in E flat, it seems that no scientific theory is safe. Mark Gibbings-Jones
Sunny D
11.05pm, BBC3
Excitable comedy pilot that premiered on iPlayer earlier this year, written by stand-up Dane Baptiste. He plays “Dane”, a listless wage-slave pushing 30 but still living at home with his parents and belligerent twin sister. The idea of dreams crushed by soulless office life isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but Baptiste’s fourth-wall-breaking patter is enlivened by hyperkinetic editing, animated asides, fantasy cutaways and even some Sherlock-style onscreen text. John Thomson and the great Don Warrington round out the cast. Graeme Virtue
Film choice
The Book Of Life (Jorge R Gutiérrez, 2014) 12.15pm, 6.15pm, Sky Movies Premiere
Mexico’s Day Of The Dead festival seems an unlikely setting for a children’s animated adventure, but Gutiérrez’s story of a puppet love-triangle is a school-holiday treat. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, it’s a vivid tale of the rivalry between matador Manolo (voiced by Diego Luna) and warrior Joaquin (Channing Tatum) for the love of free-spirited Maria (Zoe Saldana). Paul Howlett
Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007) 11.35pm, BBC1
Ben Affleck does a fine job as director of this complex, downbeat drama, which stars his brother Casey as a private detective looking into the disappearance of a four-year-old girl in Boston. There’s strong support from Amy Ryan as the mother, Michelle Monaghan as his partner, and Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris as seen-it-all cops. Paul Howlett
Beasts Of The Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) 12.40am, Channel 4
Masterful magical realism, inspired by hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana in 2012. Deep in the bayou, a small community live in houses on poles, among them Wink (Dwight Henry) and his six-year-old daughter Hushpuppy (the luminous Quvenzhané Wallis), through whose eyes this extraordinary tale of dreams and reality unfolds. Paul Howlett
