The Handmaid’s Tale
9pm, Channel 4
In the opening few minutes of this second season of the dystopian fiction, you will realise a couple of things. Firstly, that the van picking Offred up at the end of season one wasn’t taking her for a well-deserved holiday. And secondly, that This Woman’s Work by Kate Bush will never sound quite the same again. Soon, more ethical dilemmas arise for Offred and there’s more backstory about the origins of Gilead. Still remarkable, pertinent and hyper-intense drama, with the caveat that the sheer horror may eventually dilute the overall effect. Phil Harrison
Midsomer Murders
8pm, ITV
If the Grammys sometimes seem an unseemly ruckus, they’ve nothing on the Thassingham classical music festival. Barnaby and Winter are dispatched to the scene when the winner is left fatally incapable of defending his title. Could the organiser of the community event be to blame? Last in the series. Mark Gibbings-Jones
A Very English Scandal
9pm, BBC One
Russell T Davies scripts the true story of Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe and his toxic burden of an ex-lover, Norman Scott. It’s mainly jovial camp, but the perfect cast – Hugh Grant as the deceptively charming MP, Ben Whishaw as the rube with a heart of twisted steel – smartly pivot into menace and tragedy. Jack Seale
Top of the Box 1985
9pm, Channel 5
Matthew Kelly hosts a new series looking back at yesteryear’s top-rated telly. First, 1985, during which we watched Live Aid, Acorn Antiques’ TV debut, Spitting Image viciously lampooning Alastair Burnet’s unctuousness when he met Charles and Di, and – proving that not everything dates well – ’Allo ’Allo! Jonathan Wright
Patrick Melrose
9pm, Sky Atlantic
Tonight’s episode draws on Edward St Aubyn’s novel Never Mind. It focuses in flashback on Patrick’s late father David (Hugo Weaving), a hideous ogre who terrifies all around him and relishes doing so, as we see in an encounter with one of his servants. He also harbours a dreadful secret. David Stubbs
Imagine: Rupert Everett
10.30pm, BBC One
Rupert Everett’s love for Oscar Wilde is documented over five years, as he attempts to get funding for a passion project. The Happy Prince is his film about the years after Wilde was released from prison for gross indecency, when the writer was “obsessed by ruin and destruction”. Ben Arnold
TV films
The Second Mother, 1.10am, Film4
Brazilian director Anna Muylaert’s searching, class-conscious drama concerns Val (Regina Casé), live-in housekeeper-nanny to a wealthy São Paulo family. She is almost, but not quite, one of this family, as becomes clear when her daughter Jéssica (Camila Márdila) comes to stay, flouting the house rules. Paul Howlett
Live sport
IPL Cricket: Delhi Daredevils v Mumbai Indians From Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. 11am, Sky Sports Main Event
Cycling: Giro d’Italia Coverage of stage 15, 176km from Tolmezzo to Sappada. 12noon, Eurosport 1
Super League Rugby: Wakefield Trinity v Huddersfield Giants The sport’s Magic Weekend continues in Newcastle upon Tyne. 3pm, Sky Sports Main Event
