Billy Connolly’s Tracks Across America
9pm, ITV
A gorgeous three-parter concludes. The final leg kicks off with Friday night lights in Texas, as Billy chows down on hotdogs with the moms in a college football crowd. Then he visits the grave of Hank Williams in Louisiana and hears about the anti-segregation child crusaders of Alabama, before a final stop-off in Baltimore. It’s fairly standard celebrity travelogue fare, though lit up by Connolly’s undimmed comic sparkle and counter-cultural fire. Jack Seale
Inside Buckingham Palace: The Queen’s Worst Year
9pm, Channel 5
An almost impressively impudent contribution to the Queen’s birthday celebrations, focusing on 1992, the year she famously referred to as her “annus horribilis”. While there are many in this world more deserving of sympathy, it was as rough a 12 months as might be experienced by someone who doesn’t have to open their own doors: most of Her Majesty’s children endured undignified marital sunderings, one of her castles caught fire, and she received her first income tax bill. Andrew Mueller
The Five
9pm, Sky1
Sky1’s British crime drama arrives with an impressive pedigree, delivered as it is by Harlan Coben, the US’ biggest-selling crime writer. It follows a group of friends forced to revisit a moment from their collective past, following an unexpected discovery at a crime scene. Events soon outpace any attempt to keep those particular demons under control. Despite suspicions that this is just another puzzler offering a slow-drop of answers, tonight’s two episodes fizz along at a fascinatingly compelling pace. Mark Gibbings-Jones
The Graham Norton Show
10.35pm, BBC1
No doubt who is the biggest star on Graham’s sofa tonight, as three-time Oscar-winner Meryl Streep visits the studio to discuss playing Florence Foster Jenkins in Stephen Frears’s biopic of the tuneless opera singer. Streep’s co-star Hugh Grant also appears, as does Keeley Hawes, promoting The Durrells. Music arrives from Eurovision hopefuls Joe and Jake, performing You’re Not Alone, hopefully not a fateful choice of title given how many Eurovisions have ended with Britain’s acts looking very lonely indeed. Jonathan Wright
Jack Irish: Blind Faith
10pm, FOX
A part-time debt collector and sort-of private eye, Jack Irish (Guy Pearce) shuffles through Melbourne’s underworld in a sloppy cardigan like a scrawnier Lebowski. After three superb standalone TV movies based on Peter Temple’s crime novels, here’s a proper six-episode series, with Jack reluctantly taking on a missing-person case just as his girlfriend moves to Manila. Pearce is as bemused and dogged as ever, but it’s the roguish supporting cast of scallywags and ne’er-do-wells that make it such a moreish drama. GV
Film choice
Transsiberian (Brad Anderson, 2008) 11.05pm, BBC2
There’s a touch of Andrei Konchalovsky’s stupendous Runaway Train about this icy thriller: a locomotive powering across a limbo-like frozen waste, its passengers – in this case, Russian drug squad agent Ben Kingsley, American couple Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer – struggling for survival. There’s the odd shunt in logic but it’s a gripping, chilly tale.
The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005) 11.20pm, 5*
The first half is a claustrophobic, panicky story of six women climbers trying to scrabble a way out of a deep, dark cave in the Appalachians... then the mutant cannibals show up. The tension ratchets up almost unbearably, and there’s little of the black humour that Marshall brought to his werewolf fest Dog Soldiers; it’s really dark, nasty and frightening down there.
*Today’s best live sport
• Formula 1 The second practice session for the Chinese Grand Prix. 6.45am, Sky Sports F1
• IPL Cricket: Delhi Daredevils v Kings XI Punjab Coverage from the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. 3pm, Sky Sports 2
• Championship Football: Hull City v Wolverhampton Wanderers Promotion-chasing Hull host Wolves. 7pm, Sky Sports 1
• Premiership Rugby Union: Gloucester v Exeter Chiefs Coverage of the English top-flight clash at Kingsholm. 7pm, BT Sport 1
