We Have Been Watching
8pm, Gold
Here’s something: a Christmas special of a series not set to start until next year. Except it’s not even December, and the format feels familiar: sitcom duos settle on sofas to wax lyrical while watching classic comedy. Essentially Gogglebox with celebrities, much like – hey! – Celebrity Gogglebox. So, your favourite festive TV moments continuously curtailed by obvious observations. A dry run for your own family Christmas? Mark Gibbings-Jones
The Missing
9pm, BBC1
This bleak, complex and compulsive crime thriller draws to a close. As the loose ends from both timelines are tied together, the truth about “Alice” starts to emerge. But can Julien capture the abductor? Presumably we’ll all be glad of a prolonged pause for breath after all this tension but, even so, one assumes that the adaptable looseness of the anthology format, allied to the reliable magnetism of Tchéky Karyo’s Julien, makes a third season a formality. Phil Harrison
Black and British: A Forgotten History
9pm, BBC2
Historian David Olusoga concludes his examination of multicultural Britain, revisiting both the site of his childhood home in the north east, and the deplorable abuse that forced him and his family out of it. It’s an encompassing hour, ranging from the thwarting of Cecil Rhodes’s designs on Bechuanaland by the Tswana kings, to the rise – and scandalous fall – of cabaret star Leslie Hutchinson. It’s brilliant work. Ben Arnold
How Quizzing Got Cool: TV’s Brains of Britain
9pm, BBC4
“Cool” might be a bit of a stretch – Judith Keppel rarely appears on the cover of style mags – but this is an era where a particularly sharp fact cat is able to forge a career from TV quizzes. This documentary covers the battle between ITV’s avaricious US-influenced gameshows and the BBC’s improving brain-banquets, through to the rise of the celebrity quizzer, starting with 1980 Mastermind maestro Fred Housego. Mark Gibbings-Jones
Scream Queens
12midnight, E4
Season two of the slasher spoof continues, with bulbous serial killer the Green Meanie roaming the hallways of a soapy hospital while the equally ruthless Emma Roberts surrounds herself with expendable human shields. Ryan Murphy’s catty, blood-spattered comedy is an acquired taste, but even when the plotting is nonsensical, the game cast – including Jamie Lee Curtis, Glee’s Lea Michele and a deadpan Taylor Lautner – make it extremely watchable. Graeme Virtue
Carl Cox: Space is the Place
12.05am, Channel 4
Documentary following the DJ through a season’s work in Ibiza. On the White Island, Cox is most closely associated with Space, the club with a terrace where incoming airliners can see patrons in bikinis and shorts partying beneath them. Cox is a genial host, but there’s a bittersweet tone to this doc. Long owned by Pepe Rosello, an entertainment originator in Ibiza since 1963, Space is now changing hands – and Cox is saying his farewells. John Robinson
Film choice
Starter For 10 (Tom Vaughan, 2006) 10pm, BBC4
As the title suggests, the TV quiz University Challenge frames this enjoyable and soft-centred social comedy. Set in the mid-80s, it stars James McAvoy as a working-class student settling in at Bristol University, making his way on to the gameshow team and being attracted to both posh teammate Alice Eve and rebel-spirit Rebecca Hall. It’s the romance that wins through in this funny, charming, nostalgic tale.
The Way Back (Peter Weir, 2010) 1.45am, Channel 4
An epic story of seven men’s escape from a remote Russian wartime gulag and subsequent 4,000-mile trek across Siberia: a desperate march across wolf-haunted frozen forest, mountain and desert. Among the hunted are Jim Sturgess’s Polish officer, Ed Harris’s enigmatic American and Colin Farrell’s violent convict, and there’s an affecting turn by Saoirse Ronan as a village girl.
Live sport
Test Cricket India v England 6am, Sky Sports 2. The final day of the third Test from Mohali. Can England force their way back into the series?
Snooker UK Championship 1pm, BBC2. Coverage of the eighth day at the Barbican Centre in York.
League Cup Football Manchester United v West Ham United 7.30pm, Sky Sports 1. A quarter-final tie from Old Trafford.
