Blue Peter: Epic Christmas Card Make!
5pm, CBBC
The festive season can truly begin when it’s time to make the legend that is your Blue Peter Christmas card. Gather the sticky back plastic, glitter and glue (or whatever the modern equivalents are) as Barney, Lindsey and Radzi demonstrate how to create this year’s card. Elsewhere in the children’s TV stalwart, Lindsey is off on a road trip with one of the viewers and it’s time to announce the annual Blue Peter book awards shortlist. Hannah Verdier
Who Do You Think You Are?
8pm, BBC1
TV presenter Amanda Holden is the latest celeb to go in search of her forebears. She begins by hunting for confirmation of a family French connection, which appears via one Collin Thomas, trainee cordwainer, jailbird and a man who headed for the continent to fight Bonaparte under Wellington. An episode that offers real emotional oomph when it turns its attention to a second world war maritime disaster. Jonathan Wright
The Sikhs of Smethwick
9pm, BBC4
Billy Dosanjh’s brisk, vibrant film effortlessly blends archive sources and present-day encounters to tell the story of 50 years in one community. England was promised to the people of Punjab as a kind of heaven. When its young men arrived to work in Midlands foundries, they learned otherwise. It offered unregulated employment, and natives so racist Malcolm X paid a visit. Stories of marriages in the community add warmth and depth to the tale. John Robinson
The Apprentice
9pm, BBC1
Perhaps remembering heady all-nighters playing Emlyn Hughes International Soccer on his Amstrad CPC, Lord Sugar tasks the eight remaining candidates with creating a virtual-reality video game. Never mind that even the most basic VR title requires hundreds of hours of development and coding: would-be cyberpunks Nebula and Titans have just a day to lock down their concepts before pitching them to gaming experts at a packed convention. Graeme Virtue
Close to the Enemy
9pm, BBC2
Episode four of Stephen Poliakoff’s drama set amid the shadows inhabited by post-second world war British secret services. Close To The Enemy has received perplexed reviews but is worth sticking with: tonight sees British spook Callum Ferguson ever more enmeshed in ethical swamps. It’s followed at 11.15pm by Know Your Enemy: Stephen Poliakoff In Conversation, in which the dramatist discusses the vexed relationship between history and fiction. Andrew Mueller
Film choices
Joe (David Gordon Green, 2013) 10.45pm, Film4
Director Green returns to his moody roots with this atmospheric slice of southern gothic. Nicolas Cage is Joe, a boozy, melancholic ex-con staying just about on the straight-and-narrow as leader of a dodgy deforestation team. When likable 15-year-old Gary (Tye Sheridan) turns up seeking work, the two quickly bond, but with Gary’s drunken, abusive father Wade (Gary Poulter) in tow, an air of latent menace grows ever thicker in this gritty, brutal and affecting drama.
The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947) 6am, Movies4Men
A scintillating combination of US box-office superstar Joan Bennett and the great (then refugee) French director Renoir produced this weird, wonderfully melodramatic film noir. Bennett plays Peggy, frustrated wife of famous artist Tod (Charles Bickford), whom she blinded in a domestic quarrel. The arrival of Robert Ryan’s hunky but traumatised naval officer creates a toxic mix of sex, passion and betrayal, with Bennett acting her socks off as an achingly human femme fatale.
Live sport
Snooker: UK Championship 1pm, BBC2 Coverage of the ninth day at the Barbican Centre in York as the fourth round concludes.
Championship Football: Queens Park Rangers v Wolverhampton Wanderers 7.30pm, Sky Sports 1 Two underachieving big-name clubs meet at Loftus Road.
NBA: Cleveland Cavaliers v Los Angeles Clippers 1am, BT Sport 1 Action from the Quicken Loans Arena.
