The Great British Bake Off
8pm, BBC1
The tension is rising like the cakes and the viewing figures as eight bakers remain in the competition. This week there’s a twist on the usual challenge, as contestants are asked to use alternatives to the normal ingredients in their bakes. Hang on, that’s like challenging the pun-loving Mel and Sue to go one week without cracking out the innuendos. Paul demands gluten-free pittas while Mary orders a sugar-free cake, and the ever-tricky showstopper involves dairy-free ice-cream rolls. Hannah Verdier
Kolkata With Sue Perkins
9pm, BBC1
The GBBO presenter proved herself an affable and inquisitive tourist while sailing up the Mekong on BBC2 last year. In this one-off special, she immerses herself in the West Bengal state capital. A crammed megacity of more than 14 million souls, it’s a place where unspeakable poverty co-exists with a new wave of rapacious development. Perkins embeds with a street-kid outreach, meets Kolkata’s emerging young elite at a supercar club and bravely descends into the city’s clogged colonial-era sewer system. Graeme Virtue
The Ascent Of Woman
9pm, BBC2
At the beginning of her four-part series on the history of women in society, Dr Amanda Foreman acknowledges this will be no linear narrative. Instead, this opener traces the treatment women received in the earliest civilisations, from equality to total subjugation. While Foreman navigates what must be an often nebulous history with clarity, it’s frustrating she never settles on the reasons why one half of the human race has been so willing and able to control the other for such a long period of time. Rachel Aroesti
The Nick
9pm, ITV
As cameras follow Brighton’s police force, no time is wasted getting to know the cops. Instead, we’re straight into drug busts and the hunt for a man who is sexually assaulting women in their homes. They are serious operations with, in the case of one raid on a dealer’s flat, great potential peril for officers – but, gradually, the curse of the lightweight obs-doc takes hold, and we end up watching the detectives joshing over cups of tea and ringing home to apologise for missing dinner. Nothing to see here. Jack Seale
Backstrom
9pm, FOX
This misbegotten police drama/comedy makes its UK debut a few months after Fox’s American overlords axed it after one season. Backstrom, based on a series of Swedish crime novels, was clearly intended as a vehicle for Rainn Wilson, who excelled as paranoid martinet Dwight Schrute in the American version of The Office. Among the many reasons for its failure are that his character here – a bitter, sarcastic detective – is essentially Schrute stripped of his slight redeeming decency. Avoid. Andrew Mueller
Hannibal
10pm, Sky Living
And lo, it’s farewell to Bryan Fuller’s painterly interpretation of Thomas Harris’s improbably named cannibal, NBC having declined to renew it for a fourth run. Will Richard Armitage’s Red Dragon exact his revenge on Will’s new family? Will Hannibal (an icy Mads Mikkelsen) escape or languish interminably in the clink? Will two characters finally communicate in something other than portentous aphorisms? A shame to see it go – though veering dangerously close to its own fundament on occasion, it’s been an icky, handsome ride. Luke Holland
Katie Piper’s Extraordinary Births
10pm, Channel 4
Katie Piper meets women whose birth plans are far from conventional in this documentary. Among the mothers-to-be featured are those who shun the idea of feeding their bumps cake in favour of a strict fruitarian diet and women who plan to give birth in the ocean with dolphins. Then there’s a woman hoping for the Duchess of Cambridge’s “post-birth glow”. It’s not just gawping, as Katie investigates the pros and cons and whether the births went to plan. HV
Film choice
Pitch Black (David Twohy, 2000) 10pm, ITV2
A meteor storm paired with a spaceship crash-landing on an unknown planet – it’s been done many times, but rarely with such edgy menace. Pitch Black is as much about the shifting allegiances of the survivors (who include a Ripley-style Radha Mitchell and charismatic convict Vin Diesel) as the sci-fi thrills – until darkness falls, and the predatory creatures of the night come out to play. Paul Howlett
Open Water (Chris Kentis, 2003) 1am, 5*
Married couple Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis, while de-stressing on a scuba holiday in the Bahamas, are left stranded in shark-infested seas. It’s shot on digital video, so has all the veracity of a low-budget documentary, but two bobbing heads in the water are surprisingly, intensely gripping. PH
Today’s best live sport
US Open Tennis Coverage of session one of the third day of the final grand slam event of the season, featuring first and second-round men’s and women’s singles matches at Flushing Meadows in New York. 4pm, Sky Sports 1
Elite League Speedway Coverage of another top-flight encounter. 7.30pm, Sky Sports 2
Greyhound Racing The Betfred Steel City Cup All the action from this evening’s meeting at the Owlerton Stadium in Sheffield. 7pm, Sky Sports 3
