What's on TV tonight Tuesday 26 May 2026? Two answers run in parallel at 9pm. BBC One has Who Do You Think You Are? with Zoe Ball, who last appeared in public grief rather than genealogy when she left BBC Radio 2's Breakfast Show in December 2024 after losing her mother Julia. Channel 4 has Episode 3 of Falling, Jack Thorne's six-part drama about a nun and a Catholic priest, with Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu making the premise feel considerably less absurd than it sounds on paper. Later at 10.40pm, BBC One carries the penultimate episode of Half Man, the BBC/HBO series Richard Gadd wrote after Baby Reindeer. The finale is two days away, on Thursday 28 May.

The rest of the evening fills out around those three. Sky History launches World War II with Tom Hanks with a triple-bill of opening episodes from 9pm, the UK premiere following the History Channel's US debut on 25 May. Sky Arts has a documentary portrait of Shirley MacLaine at 92. U&Dave runs The Way Out, Mel Giedroyc's Belgian-format game show, with Ed Gamble's team against Nish Kumar's in a miniature world. BBC Four brings Reframed: Marilyn Monroe from 10pm, six days before Monroe's centenary on 1 June 2026.

Browse what's on right now for live updates, see tonight's full highlights, or go straight to the channels list -- including pages for BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, ITV1, Channel 4, Sky Arts, Sky History, TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports 3, and U&Dave. For yesterday's listings see our Monday 25 May 2026 TV guide.

What's on TV tonight: quick picks

  • Who Do You Think You Are? -- Zoe Ball -- BBC One, 9pm -- mother Julia died 2024 (pancreatic cancer, age 74); Zoe left Radio 2 Breakfast Show Dec 2024; children Woody and Nelly hoped for Vikings and pirates; finds Scotland, Guernsey and Cornwall connections; stories of hardship, mental illness, prison and resilience; emotional centre: she wishes she could have shared it all with her mum
  • Half Man (Ep 5, PENULTIMATE) -- BBC One, 10.40pm -- BBC/HBO six-parter; Richard Gadd (Baby Reindeer) as Ruben Pallister; Jamie Bell as Niall Kennedy; step-brothers; two timelines; "You shouldn't have told me that, Niall"; dropped iPlayer 22 May; finale broadcasts 28 May
  • Falling (Ep 3) -- Channel 4, 9pm -- six-part romantic drama; Jack Thorne; Keeley Hawes as Anna (nun); Paapa Essiedu as Father David (priest); Rakie Ayola, Jason Watkins, Niamh Cusack; David wakes on park bench; coach trip to Weston-super-Mare; bishop language: "shameful" and "weak"; Tina goes missing; full series C4 streaming
  • The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine -- Sky Arts, 9pm -- 2026 documentary; Jean Lauritano; PBS production; MacLaine is 92 (born 24 April 1934); Oscar for Terms of Endearment 1983; Don Siegel quote: "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her"; reincarnation beliefs; open marriage
  • World War II with Tom Hanks -- Sky History, 9pm + 9.55pm + 10.50pm -- NEW SERIES; UK premiere; History Channel US debut 25 May; 20-episode series; Tom Hanks + Gary Goetzman exec producers; historian Jon Meacham; A+E Factual Studios / Nutopia; Hitler's rise, Poland, the Blitz, Barbarossa; Dan Snow and Simon Sebag Montefiore contributing (per Radio Times)
  • Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr -- BBC One, 8pm -- four designers in pairs; guitar shop + gift shop in Hay-on-Wye; judge Michelle Ogundehin; guest Ross Bailey (retail expert); "pillars of good design"
  • Bake Off: The Professionals -- Channel 4, 8pm -- judges Benoit Blin + Cherish Finden; presenters Liam Charles + Ellie Taylor; six pairs elite pastry chefs; Paris Brest first challenge; suspended chocolate structure showstopper; father-and-son team, never made Paris Brest, entirely relaxed about it; Traitors-inspired pre-titles skit
  • The Way Out -- U&Dave, 9pm -- Mel Giedroyc hosts; Belgian format; "Shrink Machine" theme; Ed Gamble's "Horrid Little Rat People" (Chloe Petts, Lou Sanders) vs Nish Kumar's "Society of the Best Friends" (Amy Annette, David O'Doherty); hamster cage, spider's nest, ticking bomb; live hamster
  • Reframed: Marilyn Monroe -- BBC Four, from 10pm -- four-part 2022 CNN doc narrated by Jessica Chastain; Monroe centenary 1 June 2026, six days away; second centenary broadcast this week after Being Stanley Baxter on 24 May (Baxter died Dec 2025, four months short of his 100th)
  • Soccer Aid: More Than Just a Game -- ITV1, 9pm -- Robbie Williams; 20 years of Soccer Aid (founded 2006 with Jonathan Wilkes, Old Trafford); raised over £121m for UNICEF; main match Sunday 31 May at London Stadium
  • Emmerdale -- ITV1, 8pm -- Kammy Hadiq (Shebz Miah), suspected Emmerdale Farm arsonist; Belle Dingle's concerns; Dingle family dynamics
  • The New Statesman -- Rewind TV, 9pm + 9.30pm -- 1987 repeat; Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard; written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
  • French Open Day 3 -- TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am + TNT Sports 4 from 10am -- first-round matches continue at Roland Garros
  • Giro d'Italia Stage 16 -- TNT Sports 3 from noon -- Bellinzona to Carì, 113km; FULLY SWISS STAGE; 3,000m climbing; Carì final climb 11.7km at 7.9%; ramps to 13%
  • T20 Blast: Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles -- Sky Sports Main Event / Cricket, 7pm -- Utilita Bowl, Southampton; South Group

See what's on right now for live updates.

Tonight's TV schedule: full listings

Time Channel Programme
9.30am TNT Sports 1 French Open Day 3 LIVE -- Roland Garros; final day first-round matches; tournament 24 May--7 Jun
10.00am TNT Sports 4 French Open Day 3 LIVE -- additional court coverage
12.00pm TNT Sports 3 Giro d'Italia Stage 16 LIVE -- Bellinzona to Carì, 113km; fully Swiss; 3,000m climbing
3.45pm BBC One Garden Rescue -- Flo Headlam and Joe Swift; Stockport; muddy garden transformation
7.00pm Sky Sports Main Event + Cricket T20 Blast: Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles LIVE -- Utilita Bowl, Southampton; South Group
8.00pm BBC One Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr -- Hay-on-Wye; guitar shop + gift shop; Michelle Ogundehin; Ross Bailey
8.00pm Channel 4 Bake Off: The Professionals -- Benoit Blin + Cherish Finden; Paris Brest; chocolate showstopper
8.00pm ITV1 Emmerdale -- Kammy Hadiq arson suspicion; Belle Dingle; Dingle family
9.00pm BBC One Who Do You Think You Are? -- Zoe Ball -- mother Julia died 2024; Scotland, Guernsey, Cornwall; hardship and resilience
9.00pm Channel 4 Falling Ep 3 -- Keeley Hawes (nun); Paapa Essiedu (priest); Jack Thorne; Weston-super-Mare; Tina missing
9.00pm Sky Arts The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine -- 2026 PBS doc; Jean Lauritano; MacLaine, 92; Terms of Endearment Oscar
9.00pm Sky History World War II with Tom Hanks Ep 1 NEW SERIES -- UK premiere; Hitler's rise; Jon Meacham; Nutopia
9.00pm ITV1 Soccer Aid: More Than Just a Game -- Robbie Williams; 20 years; £121m for UNICEF; main match 31 May
9.00pm U&Dave The Way Out -- Mel Giedroyc; Shrink Machine; Ed Gamble vs Nish Kumar; live hamster
9.00pm Rewind TV The New Statesman -- Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard; 1987 repeat; Marks and Gran
9.30pm Rewind TV The New Statesman -- second episode
9.55pm Sky History World War II with Tom Hanks Ep 2 -- invasion of Poland; the Blitz
10.00pm BBC Four Reframed: Marilyn Monroe -- 2022 CNN doc; narrated Jessica Chastain; centenary peg (Monroe 1 Jun 2026)
10.50pm Sky History World War II with Tom Hanks Ep 3 -- Operation Barbarossa
10.40pm BBC One Half Man Ep 5 PENULTIMATE -- Richard Gadd as Ruben; Jamie Bell as Niall; "You shouldn't have told me that"

Who Do You Think You Are? -- Zoe Ball -- BBC One, 9pm

Who Do You Think You Are?, with Zoe Ball. BBC One at 9pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Zoe Ball has been a fixture of British broadcasting for three decades, and her biography has been public in the way Radio 2 presenters' lives tend to be: morning show familiarity and personal milestones announced between songs. The death of her mother Julia in 2024 (pancreatic cancer, aged 74) broke through that professional surface in a way that was hard to manage on air. Julia's illness was the reason Zoe left the Radio 2 Breakfast Show in December 2024. The programme she had made her own was not something she could hold at the same time as grief.

Tonight's episode was always going to carry that weight, because the show is built on the idea that the past illuminates the present. For Zoe, the past and present arrived at the same time: she is tracing a family tree her mother is no longer here to see explored. Her children Woody and Nelly had specific hopes for the research. Vikings, pirates, something with a bit of adventure in it. The family tree does not deliver Vikings or pirates. What it delivers is more complicated, and in the end more affecting.

Scotland, Guernsey and Cornwall

The programme takes Zoe to three parts of Britain she did not expect to find in her ancestry: Scotland, Guernsey and Cornwall. Each connection opens a different layer. Scotland brings one strand of the family into focus. Guernsey and Cornwall bring others, including stories that the word "hardship" barely contains: mental illness, childhood deaths, destitution, prison sentences. These are not unusual in a family history reaching back through the nineteenth century -- the social conditions that produced them were widespread -- but encountering them as specific named people, in specific documented situations, gives them a weight that statistics do not.

What the family history turns up is not the romantic escapism Woody and Nelly were after. It is resilience in the older, less comfortable sense of the word: people surviving things that would stop most lives in their tracks, because there was no alternative but to survive them. That is a different kind of ancestry to discover. Harder to celebrate straightforwardly, harder to dismiss.

The emotional centre

The episode's most honest moment arrives when Zoe articulates what she is actually feeling beneath the research. She would have liked to tell her mum about this. Not to present a finished document, not to formally share a discovery, but to be on the phone and say: you'll never believe what I've just found out about your grandmother. Julia is not here for that conversation. The research produces results that deserve to be shared, and the person she would most naturally share them with is gone.

That is not a novel grief response -- it is one of the most common ones, the sudden surplus of things to say to someone who can no longer receive them -- but seeing it surface in the context of a genealogy programme gives it a particular clarity. Who Do You Think You Are? works, across its many years on air, because the research always connects back to the living person doing it. Tonight it connects back to a living person whose most significant recent loss is the reason the episode exists at all.

On BBC One at 9pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Half Man -- Episode 5 (Penultimate) -- BBC One, 10.40pm

Half Man, Episode 5 of 6. BBC One at 10.40pm. Created and written by Richard Gadd. Cast: Richard Gadd as Ruben Pallister, Jamie Bell as Niall Kennedy. Stuart Campbell as young Ruben, Mitchell Robertson as young Niall. BBC/HBO co-production. The finale (Episode 6) broadcasts on BBC One on Thursday 28 May 2026.

Baby Reindeer was, among many other things, an extended exercise in making the audience uncomfortable about what they were watching and why they wanted to keep watching it. Richard Gadd's follow-up, Half Man, takes a different structural approach. A two-timeline drama about step-brothers: Niall (Jamie Bell), apparently moving forward into domesticity and fatherhood, and Ruben (Gadd), who arrives in the present-day story like something the past sent back to complicate it.

The relationship between Ruben and Niall is step-fraternal, not biological. That distinction matters. They were brought together by circumstance rather than blood, which means whatever holds them together, or fails to hold them, was built rather than inherited. The teenage timeline (Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson as the young Ruben and Niall) shows how that structure was assembled. The present-day timeline is where we see what survived the assembly.

The penultimate hour

Episode 5 dropped on BBC iPlayer on 22 May, four days before tonight's linear broadcast, which is now the standard rhythm for this series. The episode pushes the present-day timeline toward something that sounds, in the episode's key line, like a point of no return: "You shouldn't have told me that, Niall. You really shouldn't have told me that." The line belongs to Ruben, and it is spoken after Niall has said something to him. What Niall has said, the audience at this point in the series has either already seen (on iPlayer) or will discover tonight.

What the line does structurally is set up the finale in a particular way. Ruben is not processing new information with equanimity. He is processing something that has changed the coordinates of the situation. Jamie Bell, who has been building Niall's anxious solidity across five episodes -- a man trying to be ready for fatherhood and marriage while something in his past makes that readiness feel precarious -- has been doing the heavier lifting of the two parts precisely because Niall's interior life is less legible than Ruben's. Bell plays people who are managing something, and Niall is managing quite a lot.

Gadd created a show after Baby Reindeer that does not attempt to replicate its specific mode. Half Man is slower, more formally constructed, more interested in the machinery of family and what happens when adult lives force a reckoning with the framework that built them. The finale on Thursday 28 May will tell us what that reckoning costs.

On BBC One at 10.40pm. Episodes 1 to 5 are on BBC iPlayer now.

Falling -- Episode 3 -- Channel 4, 9pm

Falling, Episode 3 of 6. Channel 4 at 9pm. Written by Jack Thorne. Cast: Keeley Hawes as Anna, Paapa Essiedu as Father David. Also: Rakie Ayola, Jason Watkins, Niamh Cusack, Adrian Scarborough, David Dawson. Series premiered 19 May 2026. Full series available on Channel 4 streaming.

Jack Thorne has been writing about love in circumstances that make love structurally impossible for the better part of two decades. His characters find each other in the wrong context, or at the wrong time, and getting to each other usually requires damaging something else. Falling is his most explicitly theological version of this premise: a nun and a Catholic priest, both settled in their vocations, who meet and produce a situation the Church's rule structure has no ambiguity about.

What Thorne has written is not a polemic about Catholicism, and not a romance using religion as backdrop. It is a drama that takes seriously the fact that Anna (Keeley Hawes) is a devout woman who has made a genuine commitment, and Father David (Paapa Essiedu) is a man who believes in his vocation. The drama's tension comes from the gap between what they feel and what they have built their lives around, not from the suggestion that the Church is simply wrong and their feelings simply right.

Episode 3

This week, David wakes on a park bench. The previous episode's "broken-heart-to-broken-heart" exchange with Anna (the phrase appears in the episode's language) has landed him there, and the morning-after staging says something about how destabilising the conversation was for someone trying to hold a vocation together. A coach trip to Weston-super-Mare is involved, the kind of specific mundane detail Thorne drops in to keep his scripts grounded. The dramatic terrain this week includes a bishop who brings the institutional Church into the equation with language like "shameful" and "weak", the register of someone using authority to manage a situation that is producing inconvenience. And Tina goes missing, which opens a thread running alongside the central relationship.

Keeley Hawes has an ability to make authority and vulnerability coexist in the same performance without either one feeling performed. Anna is a woman who has spent a long time being certain about her choices; Hawes plays the uncertainty that arrives when those choices are questioned without turning Anna into a different character. Paapa Essiedu has built a reputation for playing intelligent men under pressure, and David is both of those things at once.

The supporting cast -- Rakie Ayola, Jason Watkins, Niamh Cusack, Adrian Scarborough, David Dawson -- gives the drama the weight it needs around the central two. This is not a two-hander in a vacuum. The world pressing in on Anna and David has its own voices.

On Channel 4 at 9pm. Full series on Channel 4 streaming.

The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine -- Sky Arts, 9pm

The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine. Sky Arts at 9pm. 2026 documentary directed by Jean Lauritano, originally produced for PBS. Shirley MacLaine was born 24 April 1934. She is 92.

One of the useful things a documentary about Shirley MacLaine can do in 2026 is remind the audience that she has been working in the entertainment industry for 71 years. Her career began in 1955 with Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, a dark comedy in which she played a young widow. Not the obvious casting for a 20-year-old newcomer, but Hitchcock saw something in her that more conventional directors might have routed differently. That instinct persisted. Her subsequent filmography is not a smooth upward arc. It is the career of someone who kept taking decisions that did not follow the obvious logic.

Jean Lauritano's documentary, made for PBS, covers that arc with MacLaine's co-operation, which means the portrait has access a more distant account would not. MacLaine at 92 is not a person who has softened her edges for the occasion. The reincarnation beliefs that brought public ridicule are in the film. She wrote about past lives in detail and stood by those accounts when the reception was not charitable. The open long-distance marriage, the biographical fact that generated more commentary than most of her films, is in the film. Don Siegel's verdict on her is in the film: "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her." Not warm from a director she worked with, and the documentary does not sand it smooth.

The Oscar

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment in 1983, on her sixth Oscar nomination overall (five previous nominations). The acceptance speech -- "I deserve this" -- became the sentence most associated with her public persona by people who had not necessarily seen the film. There are multiple ways to read those three words. MacLaine said them as someone who had been waiting a long time and was not pretending otherwise. The documentary is interested in what she actually wanted from a life in which she achieved most of the external measures of success, and whether the answer is simpler than the mythology that built up around her.

She reinvented herself, after the decade in which she was a leading woman in romantic comedies and dramas, into the feisty mothers and grandmothers who brought her a different kind of audience. That transition was not accidental, and Lauritano's documentary is good on why it worked: MacLaine has always been better at playing determination than warmth, and the later roles gave her characters who could be warm without suppressing the determination.

On Sky Arts at 9pm.

World War II with Tom Hanks -- Sky History, 9pm, 9.55pm and 10.50pm

World War II with Tom Hanks. NEW SERIES. Episodes 1, 2 and 3. Sky History UK premiere, following the History Channel US debut on 25 May 2026. Executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman. Historian: Jon Meacham. Production: A+E Factual Studios and Nutopia. 20-episode series. Not an Apple TV+ production.

Tom Hanks has described the Second World War as "the largest event in human history." That is the starting point for a 20-episode documentary series Sky History is launching in the UK one day after the History Channel's US premiere. Three episodes air tonight (9pm, 9.55pm, 10.50pm) covering Hitler's rise to power, the invasion of Poland, the Blitz, and Operation Barbarossa. A dense opening statement for a series with a lot of ground to cover.

The production comes from A+E Factual Studios and Nutopia, with Hanks and his longtime producing partner Gary Goetzman as executive producers. Jon Meacham, the American historian and Pulitzer Prize winner whose work on presidential biography has given him a platform in popular historical media, brings the academic architecture. This is not an archive-footage compilation with narration over the top. It treats the history as something to be argued, not just illustrated.

Contributing historians, according to Radio Times, include Dan Snow and Simon Sebag Montefiore, two names who have become the most prominent faces of British popular history on television. Snow's approach to military history and Montefiore's to European political and social history between them cover a lot of the terrain the series needs to cross.

The World at War in the frame

Marking 50 years since The World at War (the Thames Television series that broadcast in 1973--74, narrated by Laurence Olivier) is not a frivolous comparison. The World at War remains the standard against which subsequent WW2 documentary series are measured, not because it was the first or the most comprehensive, but because Jeremy Isaacs's editorial decisions about structure, testimony and visual evidence produced something that held together as a complete work rather than a collection of episodes. Whether a 20-episode series with an American studio sensibility and a Hollywood executive producer as its public face can do something similarly coherent across a larger canvas is the question that serious viewers of the genre will be watching to answer.

Tonight's three episodes cover the period from the early 1930s to 1941, which is the section of WW2 history in which the decisions that shaped everything else were being made. Hitler's consolidation of power in Germany, the annexation of territory that preceded the formal invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain, and then the German invasion of the Soviet Union -- these are not obscure episodes. They are the ones that every WW2 history must account for, and the test is what this series finds to say about them that the previous ones have not.

On Sky History at 9pm (Ep 1), 9.55pm (Ep 2), and 10.50pm (Ep 3).

Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr -- BBC One, 8pm

Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr. BBC One at 8pm. Four amateur designers in pairs, transforming a guitar shop and a gift shop in Hay-on-Wye. Judge: Michelle Ogundehin. Guest judge: Ross Bailey (retail expert).

Hay-on-Wye is primarily known for bookshops, which makes a guitar shop and a gift shop slightly unexpected raw material for an interior design competition. The town's identity gives the designers a context richer than a blank commercial unit. The brief is retail transformation, which is a specific design challenge: a space that works aesthetically also has to move customers around it in a way that sells things.

That is where Ross Bailey comes in as guest judge. He approaches retail spaces from the commercial side rather than the aesthetic one. His "pillars of good design" for a shop are practical: lure customers in, flow them around, keep them. Michelle Ogundehin's aesthetic standards and Bailey's commercial ones are not incompatible, but they are not identical, and the most interesting design conversations this week happen where the two sets of criteria meet.

One pair is, as the episode frames it, functioning more like contractors than designers. That is a repeating pattern in design competition formats. Some participants are technically competent but operating at a level of execution rather than concept, and the judging has to articulate why that difference matters. Ogundehin is good at this. Her criticism tends to be clear about which problem she is identifying rather than leaving contestants to guess.

On BBC One at 8pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Bake Off: The Professionals -- Channel 4, 8pm

Bake Off: The Professionals, 2026 series, Episode 1 (or continuing episode). Channel 4 at 8pm. Judges: Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden. Presenters: Liam Charles and Ellie Taylor.

The Bake Off: The Professionals format runs on a different principle from The Great British Bake Off. The contestants are not enthusiastic amateurs working at the limits of their domestic kitchen ability; they are professional pastry chefs who do this for a living. The pressure is different because the baseline is different. A Paris Brest is not a challenge for an experienced pĂ¢tissier in the way it is for a home baker. What you are watching instead is the difference between professionals at the top of their field and professionals who, on a given day and under competition conditions, are not quite at the top of theirs.

Which makes the father-and-son team who have never made a Paris Brest before -- and who are entirely relaxed about this gap in their experience -- one of the more entertaining dynamics of tonight's episode. The casual confidence is either completely warranted or completely mistaken, and the competition is the device for finding out which. Either outcome is good television.

Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden have been the judges since 2016, which gives them a shared critical vocabulary and a clear sense of what professional pastry work at this level should look like. The Traitors-inspired pre-titles sequence is a sign that the production has been paying attention to what engages an audience that watches everything, and has decided to lean in.

The showstopper asks for a suspended chocolate structure inspired by a childhood toy. The structural engineering of that challenge, across six pairs of professional pastry chefs who presumably have opinions about their preferred childhood toys, is going to produce an interesting range of interpretations.

On Channel 4 at 8pm. Available on Channel 4 streaming.

The Way Out -- U&Dave, 9pm

The Way Out. U&Dave at 9pm. Hosted by Mel Giedroyc. Belgian-format remake. Launched 12 May 2026. Tonight's theme: "Shrink Machine." Teams: Ed Gamble's "Horrid Little Rat People" and Nish Kumar's "Society of the Best Friends."

The Belgian format that The Way Out is adapting sits somewhere between a physical game show and a lateral-thinking puzzle competition, and Mel Giedroyc is about as well-suited a host as the show could have found. She has the warmth to make the format feel playful rather than relentless, and the comic timing to help when a challenge goes sideways.

Tonight's theme is "Shrink Machine" -- a miniature world through which the two teams have to navigate and solve. Ed Gamble's team (the "Horrid Little Rat People," which is either a very bad or a very good team name, and Gamble is the one who chose it) includes Chloe Petts and Lou Sanders. Nish Kumar's "Society of the Best Friends" pairs him with Amy Annette and David O'Doherty. These are, in aggregate, six comedians with high puzzle tolerance and the competitive instincts that make panel shows work.

The specific challenges -- escaping a giant hamster cage, getting through an outsized spider's nest, deciphering distorted clues, defusing a ticking time bomb -- have the kind of constructed absurdity that works in a miniaturised world context. There is a live hamster in the episode, which is a production decision that either creates a memorable moment or causes mild chaos, and is probably intended to do both. The leaderboard going into next week's finale is established tonight.

On U&Dave at 9pm.

The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine and Reframed: Marilyn Monroe -- a note on the centenary

BBC Four broadcasts Reframed: Marilyn Monroe from 10pm tonight, six days before Marilyn Monroe's centenary on 1 June 2026. Monroe was born 1 June 1926. The four-part CNN documentary series from 2022 was narrated by Jessica Chastain and had its UK premiere on BBC Two in 2023; tonight's BBC Four broadcast is a purposeful repeat with a clear editorial reason.

This is the second centenary in a week on BBC Four. Being Stanley Baxter broadcast on Sunday 24 May 2026, the exact anniversary of his birth on 24 May 1926. Baxter died on 11 December 2025, aged 99, four months short of the centenary, which made the Sunday broadcast a posthumous tribute rather than a birthday celebration. Six days later, BBC Four runs Monroe's centenary peg. Two performers from the same mid-twentieth-century era, six days of broadcast apart, brought together by the same calendar.

Reframed as a series was distinctive for taking a fresh look at Monroe rather than repeating the familiar mythology. The lens is closer to biography than hagiography, and the narration by Jessica Chastain is measured enough to give the material room to breathe rather than being pressed into a pre-formed argument about Monroe's significance. The centenary connection is reason enough to watch it if you missed the 2023 run.

On BBC Four from 10pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Soccer Aid: More Than Just a Game -- ITV1, 9pm

Soccer Aid: More Than Just a Game. ITV1 at 9pm. Robbie Williams looks back at 20 years of Soccer Aid. The 2026 Soccer Aid main match takes place on Sunday 31 May at London Stadium.

Soccer Aid began in 2006. Robbie Williams co-founded it with Jonathan Wilkes, and the first match was at Old Trafford. In the 20 years since, it has raised over £121 million for UNICEF -- a figure that requires a particular kind of sustained commitment to reach, and that makes it one of the more significant celebrity charity vehicles in British television history, measured purely by what it has generated.

Tonight's documentary is a retrospective, with Williams looking back at two decades of a concept that could very easily have remained a one-off. The format -- celebrity footballers playing genuine charity matches with enough competitive edge to make them watchable -- worked in 2006 when there was no established template for it, and the fact that it has continued to generate enough interest to fill large stadiums 20 years later says something about how the format was constructed. The main 2026 match is on 31 May at London Stadium, five days from now.

On ITV1 at 9pm.

Emmerdale -- ITV1, 8pm

Emmerdale. ITV1 at 8pm.

The arsonist storyline that has been building in Emmerdale reaches another stage tonight. Kammy Hadiq, played by Shebz Miah, sits under the suspicion of having set fire to Emmerdale Farm -- the kind of charge that reverberates through a community as tightly connected as the Dales village, and that produces collateral damage well beyond the person accused.

Belle Dingle is at the centre of it. She has lived through her own harrowing domestic abuse experience and has, perhaps because of that, been more willing to give Kammy the benefit of the doubt than the community around her. She welcomed him into the Dingle family fold, which is a significant act in the internal logic of Emmerdale; the Dingles are not an easy family to enter. Now she worries she has been pushing too hard in a direction Kammy himself has not asked her to go.

What the storyline is doing, beneath the arson suspicion, is something Emmerdale handles better than it sometimes gets credit for: the complex aftermath of domestic abuse, and the way that experience changes how someone navigates subsequent relationships and loyalties. Kammy has his own history. The show has not made it simple.

On ITV1 at 8pm.

The New Statesman -- Rewind TV, 9pm and 9.30pm

The New Statesman. Rewind TV at 9pm and 9.30pm. 1987 ITV satirical sitcom. Rik Mayall as Alan B'Stard. Written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran.

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran created Alan B'Stard in 1987, and the character -- a ruthless, venal Conservative MP who operated on the principle that everything was for sale, including his own grandmother -- was designed to satirise a particular political moment. That the satire has aged into something that continues to find an audience in repeat is a comment less on the writers' prescience than on the durability of the type they created. Alan B'Stard remains specific enough to be a character rather than a symbol, and Rik Mayall's performance is the reason: the comedy works because Mayall played the contempt as genuine rather than performed. B'Stard is not pretending to be monstrous for effect. He is monstrous, and entirely comfortable about it.

Rewind TV broadcasts two episodes tonight. The format of late-evening repeats suits The New Statesman. It was always a show that worked better in concentrated doses than as long-running weekly event television, and two back-to-back half-hours is the right shape for it.

On Rewind TV at 9pm and 9.30pm.

Sport today

French Open Day 3 -- TNT Sports 1 and 4, from 9.30am

Roland Garros runs its first-round draw across the opening days of the main draw. Day 1 was Sunday 24 May, Day 2 was Monday 25 May, Day 3 is today, and the first round typically extends into Day 4 as well. TNT Sports 1 carries the coverage from 9.30am; TNT Sports 4 adds additional court coverage from 10am.

Day 3 at Roland Garros tends to be where the scheduling catches up with any weather delays from the previous two days, which means some matches that had appeared to be Day 2 affairs are finishing today. The clay surface suits slow, high-bouncing exchanges that reward patience, and the first round at Roland Garros historically produces the most time-consuming matches of any Grand Slam round; the gaps between draws and results can be large.

Live on TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am and TNT Sports 4 from 10am BST.

Giro d'Italia Stage 16 -- TNT Sports 3, from noon

Stage 16 of the 109th Giro d'Italia is a peculiarity: 113 kilometres from Bellinzona to Carì, both in Canton Ticino, in the Swiss part of Italy's neighbouring country. It is a fully Swiss stage of the Italian Grand Tour -- an unusual arrangement that reflects the geography of this part of the Alps, where the political border cuts across terrain that has no concern for national cycling competitions.

The stage looks short on paper. 113km is less than a standard road stage. What it contains is 3,000 metres of climbing, which is not a small number for any distance. The final ascent to Carì is 11.7km at a 7.9% average, with the last three kilometres tightening to an 8% average and ramps reaching 13%. That is a proper mountain finish: long enough that the outcome is decided by sustained climbing ability rather than a short final acceleration, steep enough in its upper section to produce the kind of fragmentation in the GC group that race leaders and rivals are calculating their energy for.

A 113km stage that packs 3,000m of climbing is not a transitional stage. It is a mountain stage with a short warm-up. The general classification will move today.

Live on TNT Sports 3 from noon BST.

Cricket: T20 Blast -- Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles -- Sky Sports, 7pm

The Vitality T20 Blast South Group match between Hampshire Hawks and Essex Eagles is at the Utilita Bowl in Southampton from 7pm, live on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket. Essex finished bottom of the South Group in the 2025 Blast, which gives this fixture some competitive interest beyond the local: the Eagles are playing into a season where any improvement on last year's position is meaningful, and Hampshire are playing on their own ground in front of a home crowd that has reason to expect them to press that advantage.

Live on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket from 7pm BST.

Also worth watching today

Garden Rescue -- BBC One, 3.45pm

Flo Headlam and Joe Swift are in Stockport today, working on a garden that the programme describes as muddy -- the kind of baseline that invites the full treatment. The Garden Rescue format is reliable afternoon television: a real outdoor space, a genuine transformation, and presenters who know the difference between a plant that will survive a Stockport winter and one that won't. On BBC One at 3.45pm.

Frequently asked questions

What's on TV tonight Tuesday 26 May 2026?

Tuesday 26 May 2026 has BBC One anchoring the prime-time slot at 9pm with Who Do You Think You Are? -- Zoe Ball, followed at 10.40pm by the penultimate episode of Half Man (Richard Gadd, Jamie Bell). Simultaneously at 9pm, Channel 4 has Falling Episode 3 (Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu, Jack Thorne's six-part romantic drama). Sky History launches World War II with Tom Hanks as a NEW SERIES with a triple-bill from 9pm (UK premiere, following US History Channel debut 25 May). Sky Arts has The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine at 9pm. ITV1 has Emmerdale at 8pm and Soccer Aid: More Than Just a Game (Robbie Williams, 20 years of Soccer Aid) at 9pm. U&Dave has The Way Out at 9pm (Mel Giedroyc, "Shrink Machine" theme, Ed Gamble vs Nish Kumar). BBC Four has Reframed: Marilyn Monroe from 10pm, six days before Monroe's centenary on 1 June 2026. At 8pm: Interior Design Masters (BBC One, Hay-on-Wye) and Bake Off: The Professionals (Channel 4, Paris Brest). French Open Day 3 is on TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am; Giro d'Italia Stage 16 (Bellinzona to Carì, fully Swiss, 113km with 3,000m climbing) is on TNT Sports 3 from noon. T20 Blast: Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles is on Sky Sports from 7pm.

What is Zoe Ball's Who Do You Think You Are episode about?

Zoe Ball's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? airs on BBC One at 9pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026. It follows her family history research after the death of her mother Julia Ball, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2024 aged 74. Zoe had left BBC Radio 2's Breakfast Show in December 2024 because of the bereavement. Her children Woody and Nelly were hoping for Vikings and pirates in the family tree. Instead, Zoe finds connections to Scotland, Guernsey and Cornwall, along with stories of mental illness, childhood deaths, destitution, prison sentences, hardship and resilience. The emotional core of the episode is her realisation of how much she would have liked to share the discoveries with her mother while Julia was still alive. Available on BBC iPlayer.

What time is Half Man on tonight and is it the final episode?

Half Man Episode 5 airs on BBC One at 10.40pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026. It is the penultimate episode, not the final episode -- the finale (Episode 6) broadcasts on BBC One on Thursday 28 May 2026. Half Man is a six-part BBC/HBO co-production created and written by Richard Gadd, who also stars as Ruben Pallister; Jamie Bell plays Niall Kennedy and the two characters are step-brothers, not blood brothers. The drama uses a two-timeline structure: Stuart Campbell as young Ruben and Mitchell Robertson as young Niall in the teenage scenes, alongside a present-day storyline in which Niall is an expectant father and anxious groom when Ruben reappears. Episode 5 dropped on BBC iPlayer on 22 May 2026, four days ahead of linear broadcast, and contains the key line: "You shouldn't have told me that, Niall. You really shouldn't have told me that." Gadd's previous BBC series was Baby Reindeer.

What happens in Falling Episode 3?

In Falling Episode 3 -- Channel 4 at 9pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026 -- Father David (Paapa Essiedu) wakes on a park bench the morning after a "broken-heart-to-broken-heart" exchange with Anna (Keeley Hawes). A coach trip to Weston-super-Mare features in the episode. A vindictive bishop brings the institutional Church into the story, using language like "shameful" and "weak". Tina goes missing, introducing a thread that runs alongside the central relationship. Falling is a six-part British romantic drama written by Jack Thorne which premiered on Channel 4 on 19 May 2026; the full series is available on Channel 4 streaming. Supporting cast: Rakie Ayola, Jason Watkins, Niamh Cusack, Adrian Scarborough, and David Dawson.

What time does World War II with Tom Hanks start on Sky History?

World War II with Tom Hanks starts at 9pm on Sky History on Tuesday 26 May 2026, with a launch-night triple-bill: Episode 1 at 9pm, Episode 2 at 9.55pm, and Episode 3 at 10.50pm. This is the UK premiere, one day after the History Channel US debut on 25 May 2026. The series runs to 20 episodes and is executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, with historian Jon Meacham. It is produced by A+E Factual Studios and Nutopia -- not an Apple TV+ production. The opening three episodes cover Hitler's rise to power, the invasion of Poland, the Blitz, and Operation Barbarossa. Contributing historians include Dan Snow and Simon Sebag Montefiore, according to Radio Times. The series arrives more than 50 years after The World at War (1973--74).

Is Shirley MacLaine still alive and how old is she in 2026?

Yes. Shirley MacLaine was born 24 April 1934 and is 92 years old. The Unstoppable Shirley MacLaine is a 2026 documentary directed by Jean Lauritano, originally made for PBS, airing on Sky Arts at 9pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026. The film covers her career beginning with Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry in 1955, her Oscar win for Terms of Endearment (1983), her open long-distance marriage, her reincarnation beliefs, and what she actually wanted from life. Don Siegel's quote in the documentary -- "It's hard to feel any great warmth to her" -- gives a sense of the portrait's honesty.

What happens in Bake Off: The Professionals tonight?

Bake Off: The Professionals airs on Channel 4 at 8pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026. Judges Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden (both in the role since 2016) and presenters Liam Charles and Ellie Taylor preside over six pairs of elite pastry chefs. The episode opens with a Traitors-inspired pre-titles skit. The first challenge is Paris Brest; the showstopper is a suspended chocolate structure inspired by a childhood toy. One father-and-son team have never made a Paris Brest before but are notably relaxed about the gap in their experience.

Why is Reframed: Marilyn Monroe on BBC Four tonight?

BBC Four is broadcasting Reframed: Marilyn Monroe from 10pm on Tuesday 26 May 2026 as a timely repeat ahead of Marilyn Monroe's centenary -- she was born 1 June 1926, which means her 100th birthday falls on 1 June 2026, six days from broadcast. The four-part 2022 CNN documentary series, narrated by Jessica Chastain, had its UK premiere on BBC Two in 2023. This is also the second centenary broadcast in a week on BBC Four: Being Stanley Baxter aired on Sunday 24 May 2026 to mark what would have been Stanley Baxter's 100th birthday (born 24 May 1926; died 11 December 2025 aged 99).

What is the Giro d'Italia Stage 16 route?

Stage 16 of the 2026 Giro d'Italia runs from Bellinzona to Carì -- a distance of 113km -- on Tuesday 26 May. Both locations are in Canton Ticino, Switzerland, making it a fully Swiss stage of the Italian Grand Tour, which is unusual. Despite the relatively short distance, the stage contains 3,000 metres of climbing. The final ascent to Carì is 11.7km long at a 7.9% average gradient, with the last 3km averaging 8% and ramps reaching 13%. Live on TNT Sports 3 from noon BST.

What time is the French Open today and where can I watch it?

French Open Day 3 is live on TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am BST and on TNT Sports 4 from 10am BST on Tuesday 26 May 2026. This is the final day of first-round matches at Roland Garros. The 2026 French Open tournament runs from 24 May to 7 June 2026. TNT Sports has the exclusive UK broadcast rights for the tournament.

What time is the T20 Blast on Sky Sports tonight?

Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles in the Vitality T20 Blast South Group is live on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket from 7pm BST on Tuesday 26 May at the Utilita Bowl, Southampton. Essex finished bottom of the South Group in the 2025 Vitality Blast.

Tonight's final word

Tuesday 26 May is the kind of evening that rewards decision-making. The 9pm slot alone requires a choice: BBC One's genealogy documentary brings genuine emotional weight after two years of public bereavement, Channel 4's romantic drama between a nun and a priest builds toward whatever Jack Thorne has decided to do with the collision he has been setting up since 19 May, and Sky History is launching a 20-episode war documentary series with enough ambition to make the triple-bill opening feel earned rather than excessive.

Zoe Ball in a research room finding out that her ancestors survived things she had no idea they had survived, while wishing her mother were still here to hear about it -- that is the premise that will stay with people who watch it. The family history genre works best when the personal stakes are this clear, and Zoe's are. The discovery that the family tree contains no Vikings is, in its own way, a relief: what it contains instead is considerably more interesting.

Half Man at 10.40pm is where the evening ends on BBC One. The penultimate episode of Richard Gadd's second major series is the one where the question becomes not "what is this about" but "how is it going to end." Thursday 28 May provides the answer.

BBC Four at 10pm and Sky Arts at 9pm, running simultaneously, give the evening two documentary threads that circle a related territory: women who became phenomena and the gap between the public story and the private one. Marilyn Monroe at 100, six days early. Shirley MacLaine at 92, still apparently unwilling to be entirely legible to the people who've worked with her. Both documentaries are worth staying up for.

Check what's on right now, browse tonight's highlights, or find any channel through the full channels list. Wednesday 27 May: the Giro continues into Stage 17, and the BBC schedules continue to build toward the bank holiday weekend.