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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Hollie Richardson, Alexi Duggins, Ellen E Jones and Ali Catterall

TV tonight: Rose Ayling-Ellis superbly challenges perceptions of deafness

Rose Ayling-Ellis and her mother, Donna, who features in the documentary with her daughter.
Rose Ayling-Ellis and her mother, Donna, who features in the documentary with her daughter. Photograph: Dan Hall/BBC/Rogan Productions

Rose Ayling-Ellis: Signs for Change

9pm, BBC One

In 2021, the Strictly Come Dancing studio fell silent while its first deaf contestant, Rose Ayling-Ellis, danced with Giovanni Pernice – and a champion was born, in more ways than one. “Suddenly, the focus was on what I could do, not what I couldn’t do,” she says in this enlightening documentary that challenges perceptions of deafness. We see Ayling-Ellis’s journey to her first West End role in As You Like It and witness her speaking to, among others, Rosie Cooper MP, who led the campaign to get British Sign Language officially recognised in law, and her own mother, who still questions decisions she made in bringing up a deaf child. Hollie Richardson

Ben Elton: The Great Railway Disaster

8pm, Channel 4

It is more than 30 years since Ben Elton’s TV rant about the decline of British Rail – and he is here again to explore how much of a shambles railways across the UK are today. From travelling on the worst line in Britain (10 points if you guessed TransPennine Express) to visiting the £85m engineering feat that is the Ordsall Chord in Manchester, he learns how the country got into this dire situation. Hollie Richardson

Parole

9pm, BBC Two

In the last of a fascinating fly-on-the-wall series about the parole process, 35-year-old (failed) bank robber Ben may be denied release because his drug addiction is too out of control, while 30-year-old Jai has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager. HR

Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace

9pm, ITV1

It is the fifth series of this Bafta-winning show following people abandoned as babies, as they try to track down their families. This week, we meet people who were, variously, left in a south London phone box, deposited on a doorstep on Christmas Day and placed in an open-top Aston Martin. Their journeys are as tear-jerking as ever. Alexi Duggins

Edi Patterson as Judy in the HBO comedy, The Righteous Gemstones.
Family matters … Edi Patterson as Judy in the HBO comedy, The Righteous Gemstones.
Photograph: HBO

The Righteous Gemstones

9pm, Sky Comedy

If Danny McBride’s comedy is Succession for televangelists, then brother-in-law Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) is its Tom Wambsgans. The former child-star gets another shot at the spotlight in this episode, reinventing himself as a gameshow host, while the Gemstones are busy hosting a cousins’ night for Karl and Chuck. Ellen E Jones

We Hunt Together

10.40pm, BBC One

Promising new drama: a psycho-thriller take on the mismatched-cop genre, in which DS Lola Franks (Eve Myles) and DI Jackson Mendy (Babou Ceesay) investigate a murder by a hideously damaged killer couple – a latent psychopath and a former child soldier. Expect lashings of dark desire, emotional manipulation and steamy folie à deux. Ali Catterall

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