Pick of The DAY

LOVE YOUR GARDEN 8PM, ITV1

★★★

Firefighter Rebecca has a small back garden, which needs to accommodate her young twins’ play area, her own gym equipment, space to entertain and even a vegetable patch. Alan Titchmarsh and his team come to the rescue with an ingenious design that splits the plot into a series of rooms, each with its own dedicated function. If you want to see how that works on a much bigger scale, head over to Easton Lodge in Essex with Danny Clarke, who explores the ‘forgotten gardens’ designed by Harold Peto in 1902.

THE GREATEST AUCTION 8PM, CH4

★★★★

The rare, intriguing and valuable items going under the hammer here include a pinball machine once owned and signed by Elton John – if you’re too young to get the connection, Elton played the Pinball Wizard in the 1975 film of The Who’s rock opera Tommy – plus a 1940s fairground attraction used to train fighter pilots, a prototype mid-century chair and even a fork that was ‘liberated’ from Saddam Hussein’s palace. AJ Odudu (below) hosts as millionaires, private collectors and antique dealers take their places in the arena before serious bidding gets under way.

MASTERCHEF 9PM, BBC1 ★★★

The heats are over and 14 cooks remain for Knockout Week. Tonight and Thursday, they will be working in two groups of seven, to be whittled down to five each. Gregg Wallace is away, so chef Anna Haugh will be helping John Torode to decide who will be going on to cook in a professional kitchen and who will be going home.

FORENSICS: THE REAL CSI 9PM, BBC2

★★★★ A horrifying crime is under investigation in this second episode, and while DNA analysis has been crucial in bringing rapists to justice, another, more recent technological advance could provide vital evidence in this case: the video doorbell. After a young woman arrives at a police station to report being raped at a derelict house on a quiet street in the early hours, she agrees to undergo a forensic examination to collect traces that could identify the attacker, who was a stranger to her. But police are also scouring footage from CCTV cameras and doorbells to see if they can spot the perpetrator.

GRAND DESIGNS: THE STREETS 9PM, CH4 ★★★★

The first series of this Grand Designs spin-off followed a mass self-building project on a site once owned by the Ministry of Defence at Graven Hill, near Bicester in Oxfordshire.

The second saw the birth of a brand-new street in Glasgow. Since then, new selfconstructed communities have been springing up across Britain and in this new, third series, Kevin Mccloud and architect Natasha Huq visit these bold builders to see how their own grand designs are taking shape.

THE BIG STEAM ADVENTURE 9PM, CH5 ★★★★

This charming series concludes as John Sergeant, Peter Davison and Paul ‘Piglet’ Middleton are on the last leg of their journey, from Whitby to the Scottish border. Their first vehicle of the day is a 1937 steam lorry, which Piglet is desperate to drive – but it soon breaks down, forcing the friends to hitch a lift. A ride on the oldest railway line in the world – the Tanfield wagonway, which was built in 1725 – and a trip on the waterways aboard a steam launch take them nearer to their journey’s end. But with light fading, will our intrepid trio run out of steam before the finish line?