The (mostly) true story of Black Panther leader’s escape to Cuba
TONIGHT
THE BIG CIGAR
Apple TV+
Like 2013’s surprise best film Oscar winner Argo, this sixpart, fact-based miniseries is based on a Playboy article by Joshuah Bearman and is similarly flexible regarding fidelity to the facts.
André Holland stars as charismatic Black Panther leader Huey P Newton in a true-ish account of his attempt to escape the reach of the FBI by fleeing to Cuba in 1974 using the fake production of a movie as a cover. Alessandro Nivola plays real-life film producer Bert Schneider (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show), who Newton asked for help. First two episodes today.
SUGAR
Apple TV+
The sheer oddness of this series with Colin Farrell as – look away now if you don’t know the big secret – an alien posing as a private eye in Los Angeles has made it impossible not to stick with it until this final episode. A shocking realisation points Sugar towards a discovery that changes everything.
FRANKLIN
Apple TV+
It’s also finale time for this talky but absorbing miniseries with Michael Douglas in utterly commanding form as Benjamin Franklin, who’s on the verge of cementing an agreement between France and the US.
99
Prime Video
Dazzling three-part series about Manchester United’s historic Treble in 1999. It’s overflowing with terrific footage and interviews with Alex Ferguson and all but one member (you can probably guess who) of that very special side.
UNREPORTED WORLD
Channel 4, 7.30pm
Amelia Jenne joins conservationists risking their lives to protect the virgin forests of Romania, which continue to be chopped down by a “timber mafia” of illegal loggers, despite legal action by the EU. The Romanian government lets them do it.
THE YOUNG OFFENDERS
BBC1, 9.30pm
Episode two of the new season is even more of a hoot than last week’s opener. Conor (Alex Murphy) bets smarmy nemesis Gavin (Daniel Power) that he can pass his Leaving Cert with just a few weeks’ study.
TOMORROW
DOCTOR WHO
BBC1, 6.50pm
Onetime showrunner Steven Moffat, who wrote some of the most memorable Who episodes, notably ‘Blink’ and ‘The Empty Child’, is back at the keyboard for this week’s, which sees the Doctor (Ncuit Gatwa) rooted to the spot after stepping on a landmine in the middle of an alien war.
REBUS BBC1, 9.25pm
It’s generally felt that the two earlier series featuring novelist Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh detective, the first starring a badly miscast John Hannah, the second featuring a slightly better Ken Stott, failed to capture the character’s moral ambiguity.
This new series, something of a reboot starring Richard Rankin (no relation) as a younger version of Rebus, is apparently truer to the books, even though the scripts are originals.
AN AMERICAN BOMBING: THE ROAD TO APRIL 19TH
Sky Documentaries, 9pm
In 1995, in America’s worst act of domestic terrorism, Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. This two-hour documentary focuses on the bombing, the people who investigated it and its links to the rise of the militia movement, which remains a threat to US democracy.
SPY/MASTER
BBC4, 9pm & 10pm
Concluding double bill of the densely-plotted Romanian Cold War thriller, which has been full of twists, turns and truly terrible moustaches.
LATER... WITH JOOLS HOLLAND
BBC2, 9.50pm
The new season of the old favourite kicks off with a line-up that includes Elbow, Indles and actress Samantha Morton, billed here as Sam Morton, performing tracks from an album she’s made with record label boss Richard Russell.
MBAPPÉ
BBC1, 10.35pm
Profile of footballer Kylian Mbappé, who went from playing street football in a tough Paris suburb as a boy to the pinnacle of a World Cup winner’s medal in 2018. Some, however, might see spending seven years at Qatari sportswashing project PSG in a mediocre domestic league as a waste of one of the game’s greatest ever talents.
SUNDAY
THE RESPONDER
BBC1, 9pm
Another reason for watching this intense drama with Martin Freeman in careerbest form as cop on the edge Chris is the chance to catch the final screen work of the great Bernard Hill, who died on May 5.
His appearance in this episode as Chris’s appalling father is brief, yet tells us an awful lot about why Chris is such a mess.
THE PIANO
Channel 4, 9pm
The music of Billy Joel, Franz Liszt and Philip Glass gets a workout from the assorted ivory-ticklers, all with a personal story to tell, at London’s Victoria Station.
ROB AND RYLAN’S GRAND TOUR
BBC2, 9pm
Rob Rinder and Rylan Clark make appealing travellers in this mixture of cultural odyssey and celebrity banter. In the second of three episodes, the pair enjoy a sojourn in Florence with a climb up the dome of the city’s cathedral.
MATCH OF THE DAY
BBC1, 10.30pm
Those who can afford it may be drowning in live football, but the last MOTD of the season, featuring action from all of the day’s Premier League matches, remains a tradition for some of us. Will there be a climactic surprise at the top of the table?
‘The new Rebus, something of a reboot, is apparently truer to the books’