TV guide: 12 of the best new shows to watch, beginning tonight

The Real Spies Among Friends

Sunday, ITV, 8pm

As the drama series A Spy Among Friends, starring Guy Pearce and Damian Lewis, comes to its conclusion, ITV is airing this 2022 documentary about the real-life Cambridge Five, a group of double agents embedded in the British intelligence services, led by Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known to the world as Kim Philby. They were the most notorious spy ring in British espionage history, and this programme, narrated by Roger Allam, delves into the story of how Philby and his fellow traitors fed high-level secrets to the Soviets during the second World War and during the early stages of the cold war, and how they were eventually unmasked in 1963.

Made in Chelsea: Corsica

Sunday, E4, 9pm

Made in Chelsea goes off on its holliers again, and this time it’s to the French island of Corsica, but following events at the end of series 25 last May, some of the MiC party will not be in much of a holiday mood. There was that showdown between Temps and Imogen, not to mention the break-up between Liv and Tristan and the imminent split between Reza and Bella. How will all the participants fare in their luxury villas? As new recruit Imogen revealed: “Sh*t is about to hit the fan!”

In the Name of Gerry Conlon

Monday, RTÉ, 9.35pm

In 1974, Gerry Conlon and three others were falsely convicted for an IRA bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Guildford Four were finally released in 1989, and in this documentary directed by Lorenzo Moscia, Conlon recounts his life story, including his 15 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, the making of the biopic In the Name of the Father, starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Conlon, and how he coped with the aftermath of his imprisonment and found his calling as an advocate for victims of miscarriages of justice. Moscia met Conlon just months before Conlon’s death aged 60, and this interview is both an intimate conversation and an extraordinary testimony.

Long Lost Family: False Identities Special

Monday, ITV, 9pm

This series of Long Lost Family finishes with the story of two men born in Ireland to unmarried mothers, who discovered that their birth records had been falsified, and that the people who they thought were their real parents were not their parents at all. When Arthur Fitzharris and Bernard McGrath separately set out to find out about their birth parents, they find that foster parents had been falsely recorded as their biological parents, so they enlist the help of Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell to find out the truth about their identities – a seemingly impossible task when information has been deliberately withheld by the church.

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Emergency

Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm

Over two consecutive nights, Channel 4 will be following London’s medical and rescue services as they attend to various life-threatening incidents, including 49-year-old Paiwand, who has become trapped under a lorry; 13-year-old Alicia, who has crashed her electric scooter and whose injuries threaten her future sporting career; 84-year-old Ralph, who has fallen at home and broken his femur, but who has heart and lung conditions that put him at a higher risk during surgery; and 33-year-old Zoltan, who has been hit by a van, and has had to have his leg amputated below the knee.

Henpocalypse!

Tuesday, BBC Two, 10pm

Hen weekends are usually raucous affairs, and they can easily go wrong, but when Zara and her best mates head to a remote Welsh cottage for a mad hen party, they are faced with a very unexpected turn of events: the end of the world. Now they find themselves inadequately prepared for Armageddon and having to survive on little more than their (half) wits and some novelty chocolate penises. Luckily, they’ve captured a male stripper named Drew, who may well be the only surviving man on the entire planet. So, that’s the future of human civilisation sorted, then.

At Home with the Furys

Wednesday, Netflix

How does a restless world-champion boxer settle into his retirement? This new reality series follows Tyson Fury as he finds himself at home with his wife, Paris, and six kids – “all frigging crazy” – and coming up with all sorts of mad wheezes to keep busy, including camping trips, lavish weekends away and a tour to meet his fans. But Fury’s not enjoying being out of the limelight and is yearning to get back in the ring. “I’ve gone from topping the bill at Wembley to picking up dogs**t on a run,” he moans. Will he resist the temptation to put the gloves back on? Or will his family life finally tip him over the edge? We’ve got a ringside seat for this one.

Kate Garraway’s Life Stories

Wednesday, ITV, 9pm

In this short series detailing long lives, Kate Garraway has chatted to Strictly judge Anton du Beke and comedian and presenter Ruby Wax. In the final episode, she meets British-Iranian comedian, actor and writer Omid Djalili, who recounts his chaotic childhood growing up in a cramped flat in London, with constant traffic of visitors from Iran coming to London for private medical treatment. He also talks about his patchy school life and how he forged his A-level results after taking them six times.

FBI

Thursday, Sky Witness & Now, 9pm

The popular crime series makes a hero’s return with three separate series all running in parallel and guaranteeing a constant fix of FBI action. It all kicks off with just plain old FBI, in which the team has to retrieve a bomb which has fallen into the wrong hands. That’s followed by FBI: International (10pm), in which the Fly Team join up with Europol to investigate the murder of a US detective in Paris. And finally, FBI: Most Wanted (Friday, 10pm) finds the Fugitive Task Force in Georgia investigating the murder of a family of four from New York. It’s all busy busy in the bureau by the looks of it.

Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland

Thursday, RTÉ One, 10.10pm

The fifth and final episode of this groundbreaking documentary series brings us up to the mid-1990s, when savagery reaches appalling levels, and ordinary people are getting sick and tired of the constant cycle of tit-for-tat violence. But when US president Bill Clinton sets up a meeting with Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, families of victims of IRA violence are enraged. Amid the initial peace talks which will eventually lead to the Belfast Agreement – also known as the Good Friday agreement – an IRA bomb kills 10 people and the bomber in a fish shop in Belfast’s Shankill Road, and loyalist gunmen assassinate 13 people in retaliation. Adding to the anger is the planned early release of paramilitary prisoners as part of the agreement.

John Torode’s Ireland

Friday, RTÉ One, 7.35pm

The MasterChef judge wraps up his culinary trip to Ireland with a visit to Inis Mór off the Galway coast, where he samples the award-winning cheese made by a local fisherman-turned-goat farmer, and bakes his own cheese tart at the island’s cafe. He also goes foraging for seaweed on the island’s shores, has a three-course dinner in Galway city that doubles as an Irish history lesson on a plate, and finishes up in Dublin where he has just one more vital skill to learn: how to pull a pint of Guinness.

Great Continental Railway Journeys

Friday, RTÉ2, 8.30pm

Michael Portillo presents the sixth series of his locomotive travel show, and in this first episode he embarks on a journey through a country which has changed beyond all recognition over the past two years. Ukraine was part of the Russian empire 100 years ago, and now Russian president Vladimir Putin is waging war on the country to bring it back under Russian rule. Four years before his invasion, Portillo takes the train from Kyiv on the grasslands of the Steppe to Odesa on the shores of the Black Sea. Along the way he encounters (friendly) Cossacks, discovers Ukrainian cuisine and has a mucky time in a mud spa.