Boy George’s 1970s: Save Me From Suburbia
9.30pm, BBC2
Part of the My Generation season, this sees George return to his old punk and new romantic haunts in London, many now bulldozed. He meets ageing but still flamboyant comrades such as Marilyn and Martin Degville, and they reminisce about moribund and desperate yet – in strange ways – better times. Best of all are scenes on the sofa with his mum, who says she had “no idea” George was gay, a concept barely understood in the 1970s. David Stubbs
The X Factor
8pm, ITV
The live finals begin, and for the first couple of weeks at least it’ll be Da Honey G Show: the well-spoken Harrow rapper is this year’s novelty contestant. You hope she’s sufficiently in on the ironic hate-watch joke not to be damaged by the experience. As for the singers, Simon Cowell’s girls have two big contenders in Sam Lavery and Emily Middlemas, but the boys’ mentor, Nicole Scherzinger, probably holds the trump card: the bookies fancy hot but vulnerable Matt Terry. Jack Seale
Walking Through Time
8pm, Channel 4
At first glance, Devon and Dorset might seem an unusual location for a dinosaur metropolis. After all, palaeontologists have yet to uncover a particular craving among velociraptors for clotted cream teas. This final episode of Dr Tori Herridge’s geological biography of Britain explores how these south-western outposts are packed with fossils, showing how the cliffs of Kimmeridge and Budleigh Salterton provided a mecca for prehistoric life. Mark Gibbings-Jones
Artsnight: Michael Palin Meets Jan Morris
9pm, BBC2
One indefatigable voyager meets another. Palin visits Morris in north Wales, ahead of the travel writer’s 90th birthday. Palin modestly sets the interview up as a “fan and hero situation”, and it’s his enthusiasm that brings the encounter to life. Palin serves as a gently prying prompt to Morris’s bottomless reservoir of stories, from her participation in Edmund Hillary’s Everest expedition to becoming a reluctant role model for transgender people. Andrew Mueller
Newzoids
10pm, ITV
Final episode of the news-based puppet show, during a year that has often felt like some sprawling, utterly directionless black comedy, penned by satirists who’ve lost the will to live. It’s probably safe to assume the self-parodying Trump will get an airing again, but, as usual, tonight’s sketches are being written right up to the wire, the Newzoids team frantically chasing relevancies that seem to blur into an ambient wash with every second that passes. Ali Catterall
Bridget & Eamon
11pm, Gold
New to Gold, this 80s-set sitcom finds Jennifer Zamparelli – oddly enough, once a contestant on The Apprentice, fired in series four – and Bernard O’Shea as husband and wife Bridget and Eamon, characters who first appeared on Irish sketch show Republic Of Telly. Eamon is grumpy and feckless, but chain-smoking, big-haired social climber Bridget is more enterprising, launching a black-market condom business. Chew through it if you must, but it’s woefully thin on laughs. Ben Arnold
Carole King: Tapestry Live From Hyde Park
9pm, Sky Arts
Carole King’s Tapestry is a classic of the 1970s confessional singer-songwriter idiom, and this open-air show filmed in London earlier this summer finds her in fine voice. Trouble is, there’s only 45 minutes of that material, and important as her countless other 1960s compositions are, they’re of a different stripe to the later work. It’s all enjoyable, but the counter-chronological structure of the show means that things start to tail off a bit. John Robinson
Film choice
Marnie
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1964) Saturday, 12.30am, BBC2
Marnie now looks as jaundiced a portrait of “romance” as anything the master made (maybe the result of Hitchcock’s obsession with his heroine). Tippi Hedren, fresh from The Birds, plays the kleptomaniac Marnie, travelling from job to job and leaving abruptly each time with a purseful of cash. Sean Connery is handsome businessman Mark Rutland, one of her dupes who blackmails her into marriage and discovers a mass of psychosexual fears (and is not above taking sadistic advantage of them). It’s suspenseful, disturbing, mesmerising stuff. Paul Howlett
Contraband
(Baltasar Kormákur, 2012) 9pm, E4
Baltasar Kormákur remakes his Icelandic thriller for an American audience. Mark Wahlberg plays retired smuggler Chris, whose cosy life with wife Kate Beckinsale and kids is wrecked when he has to rescue her troublesome brother by taking on one last job. It involves strokes of luck beyond comprehension, but Wahlberg is good at this sort of thing. PH
Iron Man 3
(Shane Black, 2013) 10.50pm, BBC1
Emulating Iron Man’s hi-tech armour, these films grow stronger with each new upgrade and this is the alpha-male of the Marvel mob. Here, the superhero tackles two villains: Guy Pearce’s science whiz Killian and Ben Kingsley’s astonishing Middle Eastern terrorist The Mandarin. It’s a spectacular contest but, again, Robert Downey Jr’s wise-cracking Tony Stark is more fun without the iron mask. PH
Good Morning Vietnam
(Barry Levinson, 1987) 12midnight, Channel 4
Robin Williams’s supercharged performance as a US army radio DJ in ’Nam is as hot as a burning forest; the broadcast routines are brilliant, stream-of-consciousness patter that rile the authorities and cheer the GIs. Away from the mic, though, it’s mainly a sentimental wallow about his attachment to a young Vietnamese woman and her family, happily set to a great 60s soundtrack. PH
Today’s best live sport
Premiership Rugby Union: Harlequins v Northampton Saints 2.30pm, BT Sport 1. Coverage of the top-flight match at the Stoop (kick-off 3pm).
Football World Cup Qualifier: England v Malta 4.30pm, ITV. Kick-off 5pm. Scotland take on Lithuania on Sky Sports 2 at 7pm.
Rugby Super League Grand Final: Warrington Wolves v Wigan Warriors 5pm, Sky Sports 1. Coverage of the season’s big finish from Old Trafford.
