Performance Live: Kate Tempest
10pm, BBC2
As part of Two’s new “dedication to arts” on Saturday nights (that’s told those BBC4 upstarts!), tonight’s poetry-themed programming kicks off with celebrated spoken-word artist Kate Tempest performing stories from her second album, Let Them Eat Chaos. Other offerings include another chance to see Rick Stein on Betjeman, Railway Nation (see preview, right) and archive gems from Artsnight: Poets at the BBC. Ali Catterall
Strictly Come Dancing
6.20pm, BBC1
Things get serious tonight, as the 15 celebrities and their partners perform their first dance for survival. As ever, the early days of hoofing see a wide range of abilities, from a lumbering Ed Balls to Daisy Lowe’s graceful sashay. It’s in the middle where the real fun happens, though, with Anastacia and EastEnders’ Tameka Empson bringing charisma and charm. Voting will open after the show, with the results revealed tomorrow. Hannah Verdier
Go For It
7pm, ITV
Last in the current series of the public derring-do compendium hosted by ITV’s light-entertainment Swiss Army knife Stephen Mulhern, as a final phalanx of contestants show off their unusual talents in the hope of winning £1,000. However, surely the most amazing stunt of all has already been achieved: despite being little more than a hash of 90s Saturday night show You Bet!, Go For It has already been given a second series. A truly astonishing feat. Mark Gibbings-Jones
Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse
9pm, BBC2
Six poets – Liz Berry, Sabrina Mahfouz, Imtiaz Dharker, Michael Symmons Roberts, Sean O’Brien and Andrew McMillan – are dispatched to ride the rails, and muse upon the experience, much in the manner of Auden and Britten as they created the 1930s classic Night Mail. One’s receptiveness to this paean to the joys of train travel is likely to be conditioned by recent experience, so this may be best avoided by regular commuters. Andrew Mueller
Beck: End Of The Road
9pm, BBC4
An ex-policeman is executed in his unfeasibly stylish home, along with his wife and child. Beck and his team soon discover that he may have been mixed up in some murky business while working the organised crime beat, a suspicion that’s compounded when they find a cache of automatic weapons in his panic room. Disappointingly, if you take out the Swedish language and the nice grading, this is held together with the same tired old cop show cliches. Ben Arnold
Steve Coogan: the Man Who Thinks He’s It
11pm, Gold
In middle age, Coogan’s character work has homed in on the two he does most naturally: Alan Partridge and “Steve Coogan”. So it’s initially bewildering to revisit this live show, recorded in 1998 when the comic had a broader approach in terms of the number of alter egos and their level of sophistication. Tony Ferrino, Duncan Thickett, Paul and Pauline Calf and, of course, a young Partridge are present, in an exhilarating cavalcade. Jack Seale
Bryan Ferry Plays Baloise Session
9pm, Sky Arts
Ferry has famed poise, his career encompassing albums of Dylan covers and excursions to the dancefloor as well as Roxy Music’s modernist rock‘n’roll. This Swiss session from 2014 is duly enjoyable but does seem uncharacteristically fraught, as if he’s anxious that we experience every element of his CV. Even so, Ferry is in fine, tremulous voice, his band tight, his hair magnificent – and his evening jacket quite beyond words. John Robinson
Film choice
Berlin Express
(Jacques Tourneur, 1948) 8.05am, BBC2
Set amid the wreckage of postwar Germany, Tourneur’s tense little drama has representatives of the four occupying powers fighting to save German democrat Paul Lukas from a gang of Nazis. Merle Oberon is the very chic Frenchie of the quartet and Robert Ryan is reliable as ever as the American – but more gripping is the grim portrait of a devastated nation. Paul Howlett
Transcendence
(Wally Pfister, 2014) 10pm, Channel 4
That knotty problem of the potential sentience of machines (see Ex Machina, Her) raises its head in Pfister’s somewhat scorned but impressively ambitious sci-fi drama. Johnny Depp is a hi-tech Frankenstein whose creation of a self-aware computer attracts violent retribution, leading to the uploading of his own consciousness that reduces him to a mere pixellated presence. Meanwhile, Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany fly the flag for humanity. PH
The Walker
(Paul Schrader, 2007) 2am, BBC2
Schrader’s elegantly crafted, low-budget thriller stars Woody Harrelson as the gay son of a Virginia governor, whose work as a “walker” – a social escort for the wives of busy politicians and businessmen, which has shades of Richard Gere in American Gigolo – leads him into the seamy underside of Washington DC. An intelligent, engrossing tale of murder and political pragmatism. PH
Today’s Best Live Sport
Premier League Football: Swansea v Liverpool 11.30am, Sky Sports 2. Action from today’s opening top-flight English encounter.
Ryder Cup Golf 12.30pm, Sky Sports 1. Day two of the competition gets under way at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Minnesota.
Premiership Rugby Union: Gloucester v Bath 2.30pm, BT Sport 2. Oval ball antics from Kingsholm.
