Motherland
Last year’s pilot clearly wasn’t a fluke: this sitcom, created by Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan, is an uproarious treat. Anna Maxwell Martin is Julia, a middle-class mother floundering through a suburban hell of caterpillar cakes, oversized kids’ parties and judgmental supermums. Diane “Philomena Cunk” Morgan offers support.
7 November, 10pm, BBC2
Grey’s Anatomy
Back to Grey Sloan Memorial for a 14th series. It’s surely the hardiest TV hospital this side of Holby but, as we return, it could do with some love after the fire that ravaged its wards last season. As is the way with Grey’s, expect plenty of new faces.
8 November, 9pm, Sky Living
Babylon Berlin
Foggy streets, stylish headwear and dangerously heavy smoking abound as we journey back to Berlin in febrile 1929. Against a backdrop of political turmoil, police inspector Gereon Rath is charged with investigating a porn ring. Which can surely only end badly …
5 November, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
MasterChef: The Professionals
If you’re missing Bake Off, why not sink your teeth into another competitive cookery staple? Monica, Gregg and Marcus return with their familiar brand of tough love as more check-trousered aspirants nervously offer up their tasty morsels for judgment.
7 November, 8pm, BBC2
Detectorists
Mackenzie Crook’s charming, lyrical sitcom returns with more meditations on ageing, the mixed blessings of domesticity and buried treasure.
8 November, 10pm, BBC4
Sick Note
It’s a slacker’s dream. A doctor’s misdiagnosis of terminal illness means you no longer have to go to work. Not only that, but your family and friends rally round to look after you. Do you wing it for a while or come clean? Black comedy starring Rupert Grint, Nick Frost and – oddly wandering into suburban England from mid-80s Miami – Don Johnson.
7 November, 10pm, Sky1
Passions: Richard Pryor by Romesh Ranganathan
A new series of this show in which artists explore the life and work of their inspirations. Romesh Ranganathan’s love of Richard Pryor extends to having a tattoo of the legendary comic on his arm. But what drew a lad growing up in leafy Sussex to the brilliant but tormented American funnyman?
7 November, 9pm, Sky Arts
Lady Dynamite
Maria Bamford assembled something funny, smart and affecting for the first season of this show. Out of her own experiences of mental illness, she crafted a unique meta-comedy with its own dreamy internal logic. Will season two maintain these standards?
Available from 10 November, Netflix
Gunpowder
We trust it won’t be too much of a spoiler to reveal that Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby’s attempt to blow up parliament culminates in failure in this finale. But still, this has been a juicily watchable tabloid-baiter of a miniseries, full of fine performances, anti-establishment sentiment and, of course, the strikingly gory violence which seems to have offended certain moral arbiters so much. Admirable bonfire night fare.
4 November, 9.10pm, BBC1
Sheridan
ITV’s latest celebrity song-and-dance extravaganza features Sheridan Smith, evidently now famous enough that her forename alone is sufficient.
5 November, 9pm, ITV
