TV tonight: Gemma Arterton is back in Nick Hornby’s Funny Woman | Television
Funny Woman
9pm, Sky Max Gemma Arterton is back for a second season as the 60s sitcom star Sophie Straw in this charming ode to British comedy, written by Morwenna Banks and based on Nick Hornby’s hit 2014 novel Funny Girl. Now that her breakthrough show, Barbara & Jim, has been cancelled, she is going it alone with Just Barbara. Will she reunite with the old writing gang to ensure its success? The bigger question for fans, though, is: can she and Dennis (Arsher Ali) finally be together? Hollie Richardson
Our Lives: The Journey to Scotland’s Remotest Pub
7.35pm, BBC One Enjoy an idyllic slice of rural life in this short film that pays a visit to the Knoydart peninsula on the west coast of Scotland. It follows two friends as they attempt a rugged three-day hike to the pub and introduces a few of the locals who bought the land and keep it running. Prepare to hanker after a move. Phil Harrison
Mancini, Bacharach and Friends at the Proms
8pm, BBC Four An evening of finger-clickin’, lounge-suited, mid-century cool pays tribute to Henry Mancini, the composer of Moon River and the Pink Panther theme. The BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Edwin Outwater, also plays tunes by those aligned with Mancini’s slinky style, including Burt Bacharach. Jack Seale
Michael Palin in Nigeria
9pm, Channel 5 A challenging journey across west Africa for the comic turned traveller. Palin begins with a visit to Makoko, generally regarded as Africa’s biggest floating slum. But this opening part of his trip also includes a look at an emergent new Nigeria: ambitious, materialistic and upwardly mobile. PH
The Golden Cobra
10pm, BBC Three If you have ever considered riding a saddle-less bicycle while naked, let this short dose of crude comedy for ever keep you far, far away from the idea. Rhys hops on an abandoned broken bike to escape the bully Connor, but although his getaway is swift, Rhys soon suffers a spine-tingling injury that he will never forget. Nicole Vassell
Guy Garvey: From the Vaults
10pm, Sky Arts For those lamenting the apparent lack of modern protest songs (if your remit is rock and pop). Guy dusts off performances from the Special AKA and Hugh Masekela on The Tube, and examines how Dusty Springfield refused to play for segregated audiences in 60s South Africa. Ali Catterall
Film choices
Friendship’s Death(Peter Wollen, 1987), 6.05am, 2.10pm, Sky Cinema Greats The arch film theorist Peter Wollen’s only solo feature as director isn’t the forbidding avant garde work some of his writing might suggest. Tilda Swinton, in one of her earliest screen appearances, plays a robot peace envoy from outer space who accidentally lands in Jordan in 1970 amid the country’s war with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Given shelter by Bill Paterson’s journalist in a hotel, she engages him in debates about death, fear, sex – what it is to be human. It’s a drama of talking heads, mostly set in one or two rooms, but the cool, collected Swinton is a magnetic presence. Simon Wardell
RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven,1987),11.30pm, Sky Cinema Greats Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi crime drama is a sharp satire on the commodification of society. It’s also a rip-roaring, comic action flick that hasn’t dated as badly as some of its futuristic contemporaries. In a dystopian near-bankrupt Detroit, a police officer, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller), is killed in the line of duty. Resurrected by Omni Consumer Products – which runs law enforcement in the city – as a cyborg cop with no memory, he becomes an indestructible hero, but intimations of his former life start to trickle back. SW