The Great British Bake Off
8pm, BBC1
Enable cookies! The theme for week two of the genteel baking joust is biscuits, though Sue actually abandons the tent of dreams for the entire episode, nominally to find out about the history of dunking. Mel guides the remaining contestants through their biscuit-based challenges, including a high-stakes showstopper that might have viewers of a nervous disposition reaching for a different kind of bourbon. Graeme Virtue
Skies Above Britain
8pm, BBC2
At any time, the British sky is populated not just by commercial aircraft but also enthusiastic amateur fliers, adventurers and oddballs, aerial traffic monitored using worryingly basic equipment by a small ground control team. Tonight, we meet some of these eccentrics with an aversion to terra firma, including solar balloonist Pete and skydiver Julia, as well as planespotter Marius, enraptured by incoming flights: “How is that not ballet?” David Stubbs
An Hour to Save Your Life
9pm, BBC2
This close-up look at the work of paramedics is inevitably gripping, if likely to prompt a measure of existential ennui among viewers whose own work does not involve life-and-death choices in difficult circumstances under remorseless pressure. The decisions made in the 60 minutes following a major trauma are self-evidently crucial; among tonight’s cases, a mysterious collapse in London, a stabbing in Newcastle and a cyclist hit by a bus in Durham. Andrew Mueller
DCI Banks
9pm, ITV
Stephen Tompkinson’s screw-faced DCI Banks returns for some more grumpy northern policing. Here, he investigates the murder of a drug dealer, lured and then beaten to death at the foot of a make-shift shrine in local woodland, the place where a troubled young girl hanged herself months earlier. A grieving dad and an enforcer for a local “legitimate businessman” find themselves in the frame for the crime in part one of a fairly rote procedural. Ben Arnold
Sex, Lies and Cyber Attacks
10pm, Channel 4
A documentary kicking up the settled dust of last August’s Ashley Madison scandal: more than 30 million users of a site founded to facilitate adultery had their personal details hacked and published, with the ensuing shouting match about online privacy subsequently complicated by the hackers targeting the company’s CEO. Havana Marking’s film promises a story coloured by pornography and prostitution as well as mere infidelity. Jack Seale
Barbarians Rising
10pm, History
A new series of docudramas about enemies of the Romans begins with Hannibal. The story of how the Punic commander took elephants across the Alps is broadly familiar, but the wider narrative – Hannibal’s background, the privations he endured in the mountains, his tactical genius – probably far less so to most of us. Production values are high, the talking heads are learned, and the charisma of Nicholas Pinnock (Marcella, Fortitude) as Hannibal impresses. Jonathan Wright
Sean Conway: On The Edge
10pm, Discovery
Five years ago, Sean Conway was in a rut. Escaping via a lifestyle of extreme physical activity, he cycled, ran and swam the length of Britain. Now, he has a new challenge: a triathlon taking in the entire circumference of mainland Britain. While his original tasks took five years, the target time for this is 10 weeks. First leg: cycling from Dorset to Scarborough via Wales and Scotland. Puts Olympic all-nighters into perspective. Mark Gibbings-Jones
Live sport
Test Cricket: South Africa v New Zealand 8.55am, Sky Sports 1. The final day from Centurion.
Cycling: Vuelta a España 2pm, Eurosport 2. The road race continues, from Colunga to Peña Cabarga.
Tennis: The US Open 3.30pm, Eurosport 1. The third day’s action from Flushing Meadows, New York.
International football: Germany v Finland 7.15pm, BT Sport 2. A friendly at Borussia-Park.
Film choice
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) 3pm, TCM
Bogart snapped up the Sam Spade role after George Raft decided he didn’t want to work with the then-inexperienced Huston. The result is a sublime film noir, with Spade on the trail of his partner’s killer and the eponymous antique, confronting the great screen villain, Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper Gutman. Huston wisely stayed close to Dashiell Hammett’s splendid novel: “The stuff that dreams are made of,” as Spade puts it.
