Satellite choice
SENTIMENTAL MOVIE Collateral Beauty, 12.35pm, 8pm, Sky Premiere
DESPITE the A-list cast, this whimsical drama bombed. Will Smith stars as a man incapacitated by grief, just when the ad company he works for needs him most. Their solution is maddening — hire a bunch of actors (including Helen Mirren, and Keira Knightley) to play the roles of ‘love’, ‘time’ and ‘death’.
DARTS Players Championship Finals, 12.45pm, 7pm, ITV4
THE Butlin’s Minehead resort in Somerset is the venue as the top 64 players from the 2017 Players Championship Order of Merit compete in the finals. The current world number one, Michael van Gerwen, starts as the favourite.
FOOTBALL West Ham United v Leicester City, 7pm, Sky Sports Premier League & Main Event
WITH his side languishing in the relegation zone and with Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal to come in December, this is a crucial fixture for new West Ham manager David Moyes. Can the Irons pick up their first Premier League win since September.
KIWI CRIME The Brokenwood Mysteries, 8pm, Drama
A NEW series of this New Zealand detective drama, which delivers its cases with a deadpan humour that feels quite British. To start, a skydiver makes a fatal landing at Detective Shepherd’s (Neill Rea) birthday, and he turns out to be an ex of Shepherd’s partner, Sims (Fern Sutherland, pictured below with Nic Sampson and Rea).
NEW YORK COP The Mysteries Of Laura, 9pm, 5 USA
WILL & GRACE’S Debra Messing plays the mum of twins who’s also a homicide detective working under her estranged husband. Messing adds a lot of comic charm as the investigator with a complex life in this first of a repeat from the start.
FREEVIEW FILM Rush, 9pm, More4
THRILLING Formula One drama from Ron Howard, a master tension-builder (think Apollo 13). Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl (pictured) star as track rivals and world champions James Hunt and Niki Lauda, whose contrasting styles and personalities went bumper to bumper over the 1976 season.
KINGS OF THE CROON Gregory Porter’s Popular Voices, 10pm, BBC4
IN PART two, the velvet-voiced Gregory Porter focuses on singers who like to get ‘up close and personal’ — i.e. crooners such as Bing Crosby, whose daughter Porter speaks to. Their style of singing only really became possible after the advent of the microphone.
CHAT SHOW CLIPS The Interviews, 10pm, Yesterday
PETER SELLERS is tonight’s subject in this briskly edited series. Among the stories he tells is of his time in the RAF and how he used to impersonate his superiors to sneak into officers’ clubs. He could have been court-martialled for that . . .
COLD WAR TECH Astrospies, 10.55pm, PBS America
IN 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson announced the development of a manned orbiting lab to advance science — but it was a lie, a cover for a spy station to snoop on the Soviets. This mesmerising film about the ‘shadow space race’ tells us that and more.