Autumnwatch 2016
8pm, BBC2
With the leaves turning red, it’s time for Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Martin Hughes-Games to return with the wildlife perennial. This time around, the trio are at the RSPB’s Arne reserve in Dorset. Here, they introduce footage of bickering sika deer, offer an update on the eagle chick featured in Springwatch, and report on the remarkable story of a conservationist who’s taken to the air with migrating Bewick’s swans. Continues tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. Jonathan Wright
Saving Africa’s Elephants: Hugh and the Ivory War
9pm, BBC1
There is a template for environmental consciousness-raising shows: elegiac footage of an endangered beast and a wistful voiceover pre-emptively mourning their extinction. This two-parter presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall doesn’t do that, instead pursuing the ivory trade that threatens the African elephant, from Mozambique to Kenya to Hong Kong – via the UK, where 182 seizures were made last year alone. Andrew Mueller
Cold Feet
9pm, ITV
How to conclude a revived comedy drama that’s nestled snugly back into primetime telly’s bosom? Prepping the next (now commissioned) series by rounding off some storylines and setting up a few new ones is the obvious answer, and the textbook method is to gather the characters at a bittersweet occasion. But what’s this? Tina’s surprise party for Adam leads to a life-or-death crisis? Surely there won’t be another shock exit to match poor Rachel’s 2003 car crash? Jack Seale
The Walking Dead
9pm, Fox
Even in an undead apocalypse, the biggest rotters are always human. That’s been the underlying theme of The Walking Dead for six increasingly successful seasons, and the seventh kicks off with newest baddie Negan – a biker warlord played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan – resolving a much-debated cliffhanger by bludgeoning a beloved character to death. Has Rick (This Life’s Andrew Lincoln, now a very hard-boiled Egg) finally met his match? Graeme Virtue
Supergirl
8pm, Sky1
A second season for comic-book adventurer Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist) as she flies back on to our screens, just in time to discover the contents of the mysterious pod that smashed into the outskirts of National City. Not that there’s time to dwell on that most extreme of Kinder Egg toys: an emergency family reunion is in the offing, when it takes a Supergirl-Superman tag-team to tackle a plummeting spacecraft set to slam into a luckless city below. Mark Gibbings-Jones
SAS: Who Dares Wins
9pm, Channel 4
It’s formulaic, but this special-forces reality challenge isn’t without interest. More striking than the physical challenges are the mental ones: the instructors are adept at testing psychological faultlines, and a couple of recruits face some soul-searching tonight. That said, the physical stuff is grim enough, particularly “The Sickener”, a sort of free-range, open-ended torture session that only ends when four challengers have dropped out. Phil Harrison
Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers: Andrew Marr’s Paperback Heroes
9pm, BBC4
This episode will console those who have endured the scorn of friends who have never seen Game Of Thrones but can nonetheless assure you of what puerile rubbish it is. Marr explores the fantasy genre from Tolkien to Ursula K Le Guin and explains how fantasy is not just a form of ventilation for the creative imagination but a mirror of our own reality, its power struggles, tragedies and moral quests. David Stubbs
Film choice
The Madness of King George, (Nicholas Hytner, 1994), 6.45pm, Film4
Alan Bennett’s accomplished reworking of his stage play is both a handsome historical drama of skulduggery at court and a moving study of the man inside the ermine. Nigel Hawthorne’s George III is magnificent, lurching from nobility through wild-eyed tantrums to wretchedness in a primitive psychiatric ward. Paul Howlett
Live sport
Test Cricket: Bangladesh v England 4.45am, Sky Sports 2 The fifth day of the first Test from Chittagong.
Cycling: Tour of Hainan 6.15am, Eurosport 1 Coverage of the third stage of the Chinese road race, a journey from Haikou to Chengmai.
League One Football: Bury v Bolton Wanderers 7.30pm, Sky Sports 1 Third-tier Greater Manchester derby action from Gigg Lane.
