Michael Moore in Trumpland
11pm, Channel 4
Polemicist Moore recently staged the movie equivalent of a surprise album drop by creating and releasing this election-themed project in just 11 days. Filmed over two nights in Ohio, it’s an endorsement for Hillary Clinton delivered in the form of a one-man stage show in one of Trump’s heartlands. If proof were needed of the film’s box-freshness, Moore even suggests potential US protest voters should learn from the UK’s Brexit fallout. Graeme Virtue
How to Build s Human
9pm, Channel 4
To coincide with the arrival of the second series of Humans, Gemma Chan – who plays the android Mia in the sci-fi drama – meets the folk from around the world making leaps and bounds in artificial intelligence. She visits a project that is attempting to create a computer more powerful than the human brain, and embarks on an experiment to create a robotic version of herself, before testing out its ability to create “human” responses. Ben Arnold
Artsnight: 2016 – The Year Of King Lear
9pm, BBC2
Written, it is reckoned, 410 years ago, Shakespeare’s play about the waning judgment of a once-great king is not going unnoticed this year. A major RSC production starring Anthony Sher is on the point of transferring to London, while Glenda Jackson has been hitting the heath at the Old Vic. This programme profiles a further three productions, and features comment from Sher, Diana Rigg, director Nicholas Hytner and more. John Robinson
The Code
9pm, BBC4
It says much for this Aussie cyber-thriller that, at the end of tonight’s double bill, you’re really not clear where the plot may be heading. As to how we got to this point of uncertainty, it’s via a fragile alliance between Jesse and the increasingly scary Roth, Ned teaming up with photojournalist Meg Flynn, and the situation in West Papua growing more dangerous. Underpinning the drama, there’s righteous anger directed at Australian immigration policy. Jonathan Wright
Imagine: The Seven Killings of Marlon James
9.30pm, BBC2
“Whether in a plane or a coffin, I knew I had to get out of Jamaica…” Alan Yentob meets Man Booker prize-winner Marlon James, whose works are steeped in Jamaica’s violent past, in the “murky corners of Kingston’s underworld”, and in his own personal turmoil, having grown up in a viciously homophobic country (he once went to church to try to “pray away the gay”). A poignant, charismatic portrait. Ali Catterall
The American Dream Today
10pm, PBS America
Comedian John Fugelsang adds his voice to the discord underpinning the US election with this fascinating road trip. Fugelsang follows the route travelled by Alexis de Tocqueville as he first itemised the American Dream. And, everywhere, he finds dysfunction: from stalled social mobility to the monetising of prison, the US feels like a rigged game. He finds hope in Detroit; maybe once the US bottoms out, it might rise again? Phil Harrison
Tony Robinson: Down Under
9pm, More4
Robinson spent so much time digging on Time Team it was probably inevitable that one day he would find himself in Australia. In this instalment of his engaging Oz travelogue, he unearths the stories of some of the continent’s earliest, if most reluctant, settlers: the scores of supposed criminals shipped from the UK. The trail leads him to Tasmanian penal colony Port Arthur for an unsettling spell of simulated solitary confinement. Graeme Virtue
Film choice
The Harder They Come
(Perry Henzell, 1973) Saturday, 10.30pm, BBC2
Reggae star Jimmy Cliff leads this cult Jamaican movie about a callow country boy (although he’s good with a knife, so not that callow) arriving in Kingston with a sure-fire hit in his bag: the song of the title. But he falls victim to the corrupt music business and is soon making a precarious living in the ganja trade, becoming infamous as a villain, rather than famous as a musician. Fast, funny and brutal, it paints an unsentimental picture of shantytown life, with a pumping reggae soundtrack from Cliff, Desmond Dekker and the Slickers. Paul Howlett
Interview With The Vampire
(Neil Jordan, 1994), 9pm, TCM
There is plenty of horror about with Halloween approaching, including this seductive adaptation of Anne Rice’s first chronicle, which has a vampire offering a San Francisco tabloid hack a bite-and-tell scoop to die for: an account of 200 years of bloodsucking. With Brad Pitt as the undead profilee, toothsome Tom Cruise as Lestat, the count who initiated him all those years ago, and Kirsten Dunst as the thirstiest sucker of all, it’s not short on charm. Paul Howlett
The American
(Anton Corbijn, 2010), 12.05am, Channel 4
This hitman tale is not the usual action movie. Yes, there is a lethal opening, a car chase and a gunfight among crowds, but otherwise it’s about the assassin as existentialist hero. George Clooney’s Jack moves enigmatically across a beautiful Italian countryside, pondering the nature of his business and committing to one last job. It’s quietly gripping. Paul Howlett
Witchfinder General
(Michael Reeves, 1968), 1.10am, BBC2
A minor masterpiece of horror featuring Vincent Price in his greatest incarnation of evil: Matthew Hopkins, the infamous witchfinder in a civil war-torn England of 1645. Ian Ogilvy is a trooper trying to save girlfriend Hilary Dwyer from his clutches. Filmed on location in Suffolk, it brilliantly evokes a period of chaos and violence, and was the third and final of Reeves’s films; he died of a drug overdose, aged 25. Paul Howlett
Today’s best live sport
Test Cricket: Bangladesh v England 4.45am, Sky Sports 2 The second day of the second Test match in Mirpur.
Premier League Football: Sunderland v Arsenal, 11.30am, Sky Sports 1 Arsenal head north to take on David Moyes’s strugglers.
Premiership Rugby Union: Saracens v Leicester Tigers 2.30pm, BT Sport 2 Coverage of the game at Allianz Park.
