The Great British Bake Off
8pm, BBC1
Mel and Sue open up their tent flaps for another series of the innuendo-laden baking contest. The 12 bakers are broken in gently, making a basic madeira to impress Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, before facing a more tricky frosted walnut cake. There’s an entertaining spread of contestants, including Mat the firefighter, who laces his madeira with seven shots of gin, trainee anaesthetist Tamal, who uses a syringe to moisten his cake, and an amiable Paul Hollywood lookalike, also called Paul. Hannah Verdier
The Trouble With Space Junk
8pm, BBC2
We have been launching things into the heavens for nearly 60 years now. This Horizon documentary demonstrates that quite a lot of what has gone up has never come down, and that Earth’s immense orbiting rubbish tip is becoming a genuine menace – in 2014, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid a catastrophic collision with debris travelling at 17,000 miles an hour. This film outlines the scale of the problem, and the imaginative – if expensive – ideas for cleaning it up. Andrew Mueller
Earth’s Natural Wonders: Living on the Edge
9pm, BBC1
It’s one thing to visit a natural wonder of the world or have it as your screensaver. It’s quite another to live in, say, the Amazon jungle and attempt to build your life there. This two-part series explores that meeting of beauty/peril/employment a little more fully, beginning with Everest. Here, an eight-man team of “icefall doctors” do crucial and dangerous work in order that the tally of 250 people already killed on the mountain does not rise further. John Robinson
The Buddha: Genius of the Ancient World
9pm, BBC4
In partnership with the Open University, Bettany Hughes presents a guide to three top thinkers of the sixth and fifth centuries BC. To India first, for a carefully paced introduction to each stage of the Buddha’s journey towards a new perspective on human existence. It’s Buddhism for beginners, with the simplicity of the material enlivened by the fact that many of the key locations are to some extent intact, and the beliefs and customs to which Buddhism was an alternative have also survived. Jack Seale
Witnesses
10pm, Channel 4
Why is killer Kaz Gorbier targeting Paul Maisonneuve? As yet more exhumed corpses turn up in a show home and Sandra Winckler leaves hospital to attend the scene, she remains deeply suspicious of her co-investigator, and does some digging in the archives. This yields revealing information. Indeed, as the French drama hits midway point, there’s more generally a sense of light shining into the shadows as we also catch glimpses of what occurred eight years ago during Winckler’s training. A thoroughly absorbing police procedural. Jonathan Wright
Kama Sutra: BalletBoyz
9pm, Sky Arts
A chance to poke at the nuts and bolts of choreography. Reality-show jeopardy means the BalletBoyz company have one month, about a third of the normal time, to conceive and rehearse an interpretation of the Kama Sutra. While the subject matter intensifies the dancers’ delicate compromise between physicality and carnality, what’s more interesting is the laying bare of the process: the shaping and sifting of movements into a cohesive whole. Did they do it? There’s a full performance at the end for you to judge. JS
Veep
9pm, Sky Atlantic
Selina welcomes a US journalist returning from captivity in Tehran, back into the US bosom, neglecting to mention that his release was put back to mesh with her schedule. Meanwhile, Amy’s jaw virtually fuses mid-grimace when Potus introduces a new expert to the gang. Let’s stand back and appreciate the wit and artistry of Veep for a minute. Just because they all make it look so effortless, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be genuflecting at the lot of them like grateful serfs. Julia Raeside
Today’s best live sport
One Day Cricket: Warwickshire v Hampshire
The Group B 50-overs-a-side clash from Edgbaston. 1.55pm, Sky Sports Ashes
Swimming: World Championships
Including the finals of the men’s 200m butterfly, 50m breaststroke and 800m freestyle, and women’s 200m freestyle and 4x100m mixed medley. 4pm, BBC2
International Champions Cup Football: Chelsea v Fiorentina
Pre-season action from Stamford Bridge as Chelsea take on the Serie A side. 7.30pm, Sky Sports 1
Film Choice
Mary Reilly
(Stephen Frears, 1996)
1.10am, Sony Movie Channel
As Jekyll and Hyde, the quicksilver John Malkovich hardly needs to act, but the attempt to link his transformations with wan maid Mary Reilly’s childhood trauma proves difficult to pull off. Julia Roberts suffers gamely in the title role, Glenn Close is an imposing madam, and the Victorian London fog swirls atmospherically in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the Valerie Martin novel.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
(Tim Burton, 2007)
1.30am, Film4
More gothic chills, although the songs surprised many cinemagoers, since the trailers had artfully disguised the fact that this was a musical. But Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as Sweeney Todd and his pie-making Mrs Lovett, rip into Sondheim as impressively as Todd’s razor rips the throats of his customers, a tale of bloody revenge in a benighted London.
