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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment

TV tonight: backstage revelations with RuPaul’s UK drag queens on tour

Queens on tour … from left: Tia Kofi, Ellie Diamond, Ginny Lemon and Joe Black.
Queens on tour … from left: Tia Kofi, Ellie Diamond, Ginny Lemon and Joe Black. Photograph: World of Wonder/BBC

God Shave the Queens

10pm, BBC Three

There are no limits in the Runiverse, as this latest spin-off proves. The 12-part show follows the queens from the second series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as they go on tour. It’s no bad thing that you know exactly what you are in for – funny, warm, behind-the-scenes chats with our liberating queens. In the first episode, Cherry Valentine (who died in September) reflects on the documentary she made about growing up in the Traveller community. Hollie Richardson

A Royal Grand Design

9pm, ITV1

HM King Charles has always fancied himself as a bit of a Kevin McCloud. This show follows his ambitious plan to rescue Dumfries House, an 18th-century stately home in a part of Ayrshire left devastated by the death of the coal industry. The estate was bought in 2007 by a consortium led by the former Prince of Wales for £45m, to save it for the nation, and his ambition to regenerate the area has been a project more than 10 years in the planning. Hannah Verdier

Grand Designs: House of the Year

9pm, Channel 4

Delving into a realm suffused with mould-breaking architecture, tonight’s show celebrates houses that disregard the rulebook. Among the mock-Tudor terraces of south London suburbia, a white industrial-steel frame stands out defiantly. Among radical renovations, a 12m sq plot has been transformed into a four-storey family house. Danielle De Wolfe

Crime writer Denise Mina recalls growing up in a Glasgow housing scheme in The Ice Cream Wars, a documentary on a 1980s gang war that ended in one of Scotland’s biggest murder trials.
Crime writer Denise Mina recalls growing up in a Glasgow housing scheme in The Ice Cream Wars, a documentary on a 1980s gang war that ended in one of Scotland’s biggest murder trials. Photograph: Julian Schwanitz/Two Rivers Media/BBC Scotland

The Ice Cream Wars

9.10pm, BBC Two

In the weeks before a fire killed six members of his family, Andrew Doyle, an ice-cream van driver in Glasgow, was the target of threats and abuse. This second, concluding part of the documentary about the case picks up in 1984, when seven men were charged for the crime in one of the biggest trials in Scottish history. HR

Outsiders

10pm, Dave

More pointless challenges performed by reasonably funny people as we return to the forest in the company of David Mitchell and comic stooges including Maisie Adam and Phil Wang. Tonight’s tasks include an amusing attempt to improvise a woodland spa with self-devised therapies that turn faintly sinister. Phil Harrison

Avenue 5

10pm, Sky Comedy

Armando Iannucci’s space comedy fronted by Hugh Laurie is back for a second series of comic intergalactic mishaps. Will Captain Ryan tell guests that they are stuck onboard for nearly a decade with limited food? One thing is certain: no one will out-act Rebecca Front, whose turn as a harrowed passenger responsible for throwing the ship off-course is spellbinding. Alexi Duggins

Film choice

The Elephant Man, Wednesday, 11.50pm, BBC Two

Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt in The Elephant Man
Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves and John Hurt as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, directed by David Lynch. Photograph: Brooksfilm\studiocanal/Allstar

Cited as the one David Lynch film that even Lynch objectionists can get behind, The Elephant Man (1980) is a profoundly beautiful work. As John Merrick, whose physical disfigurement has caused him to be pushed to the fringes of society, John Hurt offered a career-best performance. For all its black-and-white formality and stiff period detail, this is a film of almost unbearable humanity. Although the “I am not an animal!” scene became notorious, the real gutpunch is the ending. Stuart Heritage

Live Sport

Mosconi Cup Pool, Wed, 7pm, Sky Sports Main Event

Live coverage of day one in Las Vegas, where teams from the US and Europe face each other in the nine-ball variation of the game.

Test Cricket Pakistan v England, Wed, 4.30am, Sky Sports Main Event

Day one of the first Test in the three-match series, at Rawalpindi cricket stadium.


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