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Your complete guide to the week’s television, films and sport, across terrestrial and digital platforms
Monday November 8
The Tower
ITV, 9pm
This cop thriller opens with a bang. DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan, best known for portraying Karen Matthews in The Moorside) arrives at a crime scene to a shocking sight – the bodies of a police officer and a teenager splattered on the ground at the foot of a tower block. Up on the roof she finds a cop (Tahirah Sharif) and a young boy, badly shaken. Over the next three nights writer Patrick Harbinson – a scribe on ER, 24 and Homeland – unspools the story, adapted from a novel by ex-Metropolitan Police detective constable Kate London, by scrolling back and forth in time.
DS Collins and DC Steve Bradshaw (the reliable Jimmy Akingbola) investigate the deaths but are hindered by obstacles presented by a colleague, DI Kieran Shaw (Emmett J Scanlan), whose motives are unclear. Whelan gives a nuanced performance in her first TV lead after impressive supporting turns in Game of Thrones and Gentleman Jack – she conveys DS Collins’s rigid attention to detail at work that masks a sadness in her personal life, which seems to be represented by a signature anorak that is the colour of a dying autumn leaf. Harbinson is a first-rate storyteller and Collins a cop we’d like to see more of. It’s a quality piece that has legs. VP
Dexter: New Blood
Sky Atlantic, 3.05am and 10.05pm
Straight after the back-stabbing of Succession, there’s stabbing of the more literal sort in Dexter, resuscitated after eight years. Having eluded justice in Miami, serial killer Dexter (Michael C Hall) has relocated to upstate New York and quelled his homicidal urges – until his son turns up. New location, same old Dexter.
MasterChef: The Professionals
BBC One, 7.35pm; BBC Two Wales, 7.30pm
Thirty-two chefs prepare themselves for a flambéing by Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing, with jolly Gregg Wallace on hand to mitigate their acerbity. Tonight’s quartet wilt under the stress of skills tests, but bounce back with the signature dishes.
Gino’s Italian Family Adventure
ITV, 8pm; not UTV
In this toothy blend of travelogue and cookery show, Gino D’Acampo takes his wife and three children to...