The White Queen BBC1, 9pm

After weeks of trailers, this epic, 10-par t drama based on Philippa Gregor y’s bestselling, fact-based novel about three women’s quest for power in 15th-centur y England – Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret Beaufor t and Anne Neville. It begins with Elizabeth down on her luck, having been widowed when her husband was killed fighting for the deposed Lancastrian King Henry VI. Now destitute, her only hope of suppor ting her two young sons, is to use her beauty to capture the hear t of her family’s greatest enemy, young York King Edward IV.

Rebecca Ferguson