Thursday 19th March 2026 is a quietly packed evening. The tv guide serves up a new true crime series on ITV1, MasterChef in the Scottish Highlands, and a documentary on BBC Two about one of the most significant environmental disasters in British coastal history. There are finales (Alexander Armstrong wraps his India series), new launches (The Hotel Inspector, Celebrity Puzzling), and a four-star horror-comedy on Film4 for anyone who'd rather skip the seriousness. The tv listings below cover everything across Freeview, Sky and streaming. Check the tonight page to see what's on right now, or browse this freeview tv guide for the full evening.
What's On TV Tonight: Quick Picks
- Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster ⭐ -- BBC Two, 9:00pm -- Sobering 1996 oil spill documentary; 70,000 tonnes into the sea off Pembrokeshire; a cautionary tale about what happens when cost-cutting runs a tanker aground
- The Apprentice -- BBC One, 9:00pm -- Isle of Wight bargain hunt; someone thinks the Cutty Sark is Japanese; a paddleboard is confused for a fish
- A Woman of Substance -- Channel 4, 9:00pm -- New series; Emma starts a new life in Armley; Brenda Blethyn's older Emma confronts her eldest daughter Edwina
- Murderer Unmasked -- ITV1, 9:00pm -- New true crime series; 18-year-old Alex Davies; a dating app; 128 stab wounds; a quiet Lancashire village
- Ready or Not -- Film4, 9:00pm -- Four-star 2019 horror-comedy; Samara Weaving; a deadly wedding night game with the in-laws
TV Guide: Early Evening (7pm – 8pm)
The One Show -- BBC One, 7:00pm
The Thursday edition of the BBC's early evening magazine. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Great British Menu -- BBC Two, 7:00pm
Wales judging day. The Welsh regional chefs face the judges and find out whether their cooking was good enough. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Celebrity Puzzling -- Channel 5, 7:00pm (NEW)
Jeremy Vine hosts a new celebrity puzzle format. The premise is straightforward; whether Vine can make it entertaining is the open question the series will spend its run answering. Available on My5.
EastEnders -- BBC One, 7:30pm
EastEnders is on tonight at 7:30pm on BBC One. Denise and Kim come up with a plan to fix things, Max makes an effort with Linda, and Billy's approach causes upset in Walford. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Supermarket Prices: Does Loyalty Pay? -- ITV1, 7:30pm (Tonight)
Kate Quilton from Channel 4's Food Unwrapped takes on ITV1's Tonight strand to ask whether supermarket loyalty schemes actually benefit the customers who use them, or whether they're more about the data supermarkets collect in return. A genuinely useful question in an era when every major chain has its own card and its own pricing tier. Available on ITVX.
TV Tonight: Prime Time (8pm onwards)
MasterChef The Professionals -- BBC One, 8:00pm
Episode 18 of 21, and the semi-finals have arrived. Five chefs head to Mark Donald's Glenturret Lalique, the two-Michelin-star restaurant set in Scotland's oldest working distillery in Crieff -- not somewhere you go if you're a stickler for casual cooking. Donald is exacting, and the candidates must rise to the standard of a kitchen that has earned two stars under his watch. Two challenges stand between five chefs and finals week. The pressure is tangible even through a screen. Available on BBC iPlayer.
This Farming Life -- BBC Two, 8:00pm
TB testing throws a shadow over Lucy and Adam's plans to move north -- the kind of setback that comes without warning and takes the rug out from under months of planning. Elsewhere, Gayle's pregnancy is creating complications in the lambing shed, because farming doesn't pause for the inconvenient moments. Available on BBC iPlayer. (Not shown in Wales.)
George Clarke's Building Home -- Channel 4, 8:00pm
George Clarke visits families who are turning properties into homes. The Channel 4 staple continues. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Alexander Armstrong in India -- Channel 5, 8:00pm (LAST IN SERIES)
The series finale begins in Mumbai, where Armstrong faces his fear of spiders -- whose mating dance, he notes, is very Ibiza. He then heads to Bangalore, India's booming tech capital, where robots are teaching children in upmarket schools and where he settles Winston Churchill's bar bill at the Bangalore Club. The episode covers the sprawling, contradictory ambition of modern India in its final hour. Available on My5.
Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster -- BBC Two, 9:00pm ⭐
On 15th February 1996, a 274-metre oil tanker called the Sea Empress ran aground at the entrance to Milford Haven harbour -- one of the busiest ports on the British coastline. Over the days that followed, more than 70,000 tonnes of oil spilled into the sea, coating the Pembrokeshire coastline and killing thousands of seabirds. The documentary -- first broadcast in Wales last month and now available to the rest of the UK -- reconstructs the disaster through the accounts of local residents, journalists, environmental campaigners and politicians who lived through it.
What makes this more than a historical record is the argument it makes: that the Sea Empress disaster was not an accident in any meaningful sense, but the predictable consequence of short-term cost-cutting prioritised over safety. The Russian crew were operating a vessel whose maintenance and safety culture had been compromised. Gabriel Tate's Radio Times review calls it a cautionary tale, and that framing is right -- thirty years on, the lessons are not especially comforting. Available on BBC iPlayer. (Shown at 11pm in Northern Ireland.)
The Apprentice -- BBC One, 9:00pm
Episode 8 of 12, and the task this week is a bargain hunt on the Isle of Wight. The candidates are sent to secure nine items for the best price, and a last-minute dash to the finish sets up a close race in the boardroom. Before they even get to the sourcing, the candidates reveal their cultural knowledge: within the first ten minutes, someone identifies the Cutty Sark -- the famous Victorian clipper ship moored in Greenwich -- as "something to do with Japan." Someone else fails to distinguish between a paddleboard and a fish. Huw Fullerton's Radio Times review is generous enough to note that some of the items they're being asked to find are deliberately misleading, and that most of us would struggle under time pressure with a camera in our face. That is fair. It is also slightly beside the point, because watching them struggle is exactly what Thursday nights are for. The Apprentice: Unfinished Business follows on BBC Two at 10pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Murderer Unmasked: True Crime Presents -- ITV1, 9:00pm (NEW)
The opening episode of a new true crime series. In April 2019, Alex Davies -- 18 years old, gay, sociable, happy by all accounts -- arranged to meet Brian Healless, also 18, through a dating app. Days later, Davies was found dead in woodland near his home in Parbold, a quiet village in Lancashire. He had been stabbed 128 times.
The documentary traces the investigation that followed, which proved relatively straightforward: Healless was on the verge of attacking another victim when he was arrested. That swift resolution does not make the story easier to watch. The series is interested in who Alex Davies was as a person, and that choice gives the programme something that pure procedural true crime often lacks. Available on ITVX.
A Woman of Substance -- Channel 4, 9:00pm (NEW SERIES)
Episode 4 of 8 of Channel 4's adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's novel. Having left the Fairley household behind, Emma (Jessica Reynolds) starts a new life in Armley, piecing together a future from very little. The series then cuts to the 1970s, where the older Emma (Brenda Blethyn) confronts her eldest daughter Edwina -- a meeting whose emotional charge is rooted in everything that has happened in the decades between. The full series is available as a boxset on Channel 4 streaming.
The Hotel Inspector -- Channel 5, 9:00pm (NEW)
Alex Polizzi visits the Gatwick Turret, a family-run budget guest house near Gatwick Airport with 80 per cent occupancy -- which sounds healthy until you learn that it pays £25,000 a year in commission to online booking platforms and barely generates a profit. Owners Ram and Anj are working hard for very little return. The additional challenge is that the local competition includes large chain hotels that can absorb overheads a small family business cannot. Polizzi's task is to find a way for the business to work if Ram and Anj want to step back and let their son Raj take over. The online booking commission alone is the kind of number that makes you understand immediately why the finances aren't adding up. Available on My5.
Ready or Not -- Film4, 9:00pm
The 2019 horror-comedy from directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Radio Silence) that was good enough to land them the keys to the Scream franchise. Samara Weaving plays a newlywed who discovers, on her wedding night, that her new husband's family has a tradition: the new spouse draws a card, and whatever game is written on it must be played until sunrise. She draws Hide and Seek. The family plays it with crossbows. Four stars, and well deserved. The sequel -- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come -- is in cinemas on Friday, making tonight's broadcast on Film4 a well-timed warm-up. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Cabaret -- BBC Four, 9:00pm
Bob Fosse's 1972 musical set in 1930s Berlin, with Liza Minnelli as cabaret singer Sally Bowles and Michael York as the naive young Englishman drawn into the city's louche cafe society. One of the great film musicals.
TV Guide UK: Late Night
Question Time -- BBC One, 10:40pm
Fiona Bruce chairs the weekly political debate programme with a panel of politicians and public figures. Available on BBC iPlayer.
The Apprentice: Unfinished Business -- BBC Two, 10:00pm
The companion show dissects the Isle of Wight task in more detail, with additional footage and analysis of where both teams went wrong and whether it was as catastrophic as it looked. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- ITV1, 10:45pm
Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in the 1989 Spielberg adventure -- widely regarded as the best of the Indiana Jones sequels, helped enormously by Connery's presence as Jones Senior. The father-son dynamic is the film's real engine; the Holy Grail is almost incidental. Late-night comfort television.
Sport
Europa League -- TNT Sports 1, from 7:30pm (kick-off 8:00pm). Aston Villa host Lille in the round-of-16 second leg. A proper European night at Villa Park -- the kind of match that justifies the entire format of the competition. Other UEL fixtures on TNT Sports 2 and 3 simultaneously.
Darts: Premier League -- Sky Sports Main Event, 7:00pm. Live from Dublin.
Tennis: Miami Open -- Sky Sports Main Event, from 3:00pm. Day three at Hard Rock Stadium.
See our full sport on TV guide for kick-off times and channels across every fixture tonight.
Tonight's TV Listings: Full Schedule
Here are the complete TV listings for Thursday 19th March 2026 across all major Freeview, Sky and streaming channels.
| Time | Channel | Programme |
|---|---|---|
| 7:00pm | BBC One | The One Show |
| 7:00pm | BBC Two | Great British Menu (Wales judging day) |
| 7:00pm | Channel 5 | Celebrity Puzzling (NEW -- Jeremy Vine hosts) |
| 7:00pm | Sky Sports Main Event | Darts: Premier League (Dublin) |
| 7:30pm | BBC One | EastEnders (Denise and Kim scheme; Billy causes upset) |
| 7:30pm | ITV1 | Supermarket Prices: Does Loyalty Pay? Tonight (Kate Quilton) |
| 7:30pm | TNT Sports 1 | UEFA Europa League: Aston Villa v Lille (k/o 8pm) |
| 8:00pm | BBC One | MasterChef: The Professionals (Ep 18/21 -- Scottish Highlands semi-finals) |
| 8:00pm | BBC Two | This Farming Life (TB testing; Gayle's pregnancy) |
| 8:00pm | ITV1 | Emmerdale |
| 8:00pm | Channel 4 | George Clarke's Building Home |
| 8:00pm | Channel 5 | Alexander Armstrong in India (LAST IN SERIES -- Mumbai and Bangalore finale) |
| 8:00pm | Sky Arts | Discovering Roy Scheider |
| 8:30pm | ITV1 | Coronation Street (Megan's lie exposed; Adam's reputation in jeopardy) |
| 9:00pm | BBC One | The Apprentice (Ep 8/12 -- Isle of Wight bargain hunt) |
| 9:00pm | BBC Two | Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster (1996 oil spill documentary) |
| 9:00pm | ITV1 | Murderer Unmasked: True Crime Presents (NEW -- Alex Davies; dating app murder) |
| 9:00pm | Channel 4 | A Woman of Substance (Ep 4/8 -- Emma starts new life in Armley; Brenda Blethyn confronts Edwina) |
| 9:00pm | Channel 5 | The Hotel Inspector (NEW -- Gatwick Turret; Alex Polizzi) |
| 9:00pm | Film4 | Ready or Not (2019, 4 stars -- Samara Weaving; deadly wedding night) |
| 9:00pm | BBC Four | Cabaret (1972 film -- Bob Fosse) |
| 10:00pm | BBC Two | The Apprentice: Unfinished Business |
| 10:00pm | ITV2 | Family Guy (S23 -- Peter tries to make Joe laugh; Lois chaperones a school trip) |
| 10:00pm | Channel 4 | 24 Hours in A&E |
| 10:00pm | Channel 5 | Manhunt: The Child Snatcher 2 |
| 10:40pm | BBC One | Question Time (Fiona Bruce) |
| 10:45pm | ITV1 | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989 film) |
Freeview TV Guide: What's On Streaming
Can't watch live? This freeview tv guide covers streaming options too. Use our now and next guide to see what's on right now, or browse the full channels list for every available station.
BBC iPlayer: The Apprentice, MasterChef: The Professionals, Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster, This Farming Life, Great British Menu, EastEnders, The One Show, Question Time, The Apprentice: Unfinished Business
ITVX: Murderer Unmasked, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Supermarket Prices: Does Loyalty Pay?, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Channel 4 streaming: A Woman of Substance (new series), 24 Hours in A&E, Ready or Not (Film4)
My5: Alexander Armstrong in India (series finale), The Hotel Inspector, Celebrity Puzzling, Manhunt: The Child Snatcher 2
Now: Discovering Roy Scheider (Sky Arts)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is EastEnders on TV tonight, Thursday 19th March 2026?
Yes, EastEnders is on BBC One tonight at 7:30pm. Denise and Kim come up with a plan to fix things, Max makes an effort with Linda, and Billy's approach causes upset in Walford. The episode is available on BBC iPlayer after broadcast.
What time is Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster on BBC Two?
Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster airs on BBC Two at 9:00pm tonight (11pm in Northern Ireland). The documentary covers the 1996 oil tanker disaster at Milford Haven, which spilled over 70,000 tonnes of oil and devastated the Pembrokeshire coastline. It's already available on BBC iPlayer.
What time is The Apprentice on BBC One tonight?
The Apprentice is on BBC One at 9:00pm tonight. Episode 8 of 12 sends the candidates on a bargain hunt on the Isle of Wight. The companion show, The Apprentice: Unfinished Business, follows on BBC Two at 10pm. Both available on BBC iPlayer.
What time is A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 tonight?
A Woman of Substance continues on Channel 4 at 9:00pm tonight. Episode 4 of 8 sees Emma (Jessica Reynolds) starting a new life in Armley after leaving the Fairley household, while the 1970s storyline features the older Emma (Brenda Blethyn) confronting her eldest daughter Edwina. The full series is on Channel 4 streaming.
What time is Murderer Unmasked on ITV1 tonight?
Murderer Unmasked: True Crime Presents launches on ITV1 at 9:00pm tonight. The opening episode covers the 2019 murder of Alex Davies in Parbold, Lancashire, who had arranged to meet Brian Healless through a dating app. Available on ITVX.
What's the best thing to watch on TV tonight?
Black Waters: The Sea Empress Disaster on BBC Two at 9pm is the documentary pick -- a properly rigorous account of a 1996 disaster that killed thousands of seabirds and coated the Pembrokeshire coast in oil, and the cost-cutting culture that made it happen. The Apprentice on BBC One at the same time is the entertainment pick, and Ready or Not on Film4 is the film of the night. Four stars of horror-comedy with Samara Weaving, and the sequel is in cinemas tomorrow, so it's well-timed.
TV Guide UK: Final Verdict
Thursday 19th March has something for most tastes. If you want serious television, Black Waters on BBC Two at 9pm is the clear recommendation -- a documentary about the Sea Empress disaster that treats its subject with the rigour it deserves, and makes a persuasive argument about what happens when accountability is sacrificed for short-term cost savings.
If you want entertainment, The Apprentice delivers the Isle of Wight task in its usual reliable format: confident people discovering, under pressure, the limits of their knowledge. Someone thinks the Cutty Sark is Japanese. You will watch regardless.
And if you've had enough of both, Ready or Not on Film4 at 9pm is the quietly excellent choice -- a four-star horror-comedy from the team who later rebooted Scream, doing exactly what a good late-Thursday film should do. The sequel is in cinemas on Friday. Consider tonight's broadcast your preparation.
Browse the full channels list or check what's on now to follow the evening as it unfolds.