What's on TV tonight Wednesday 27 May 2026? Two headlines, and they don't need to fight each other for attention because the timings broadly work. The UEFA Conference League Final between Crystal Palace and Rayo Vallecano kicks off at 8pm BST from Leipzig. By the time football finishes, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Series 2 is opening on BBC Three at 9pm. Crystal Palace in their first European final. Emma Myers back as Pip Fitz-Amobi, with a missing person and an approaching trial.

Around those two: Falling reaches Episode 4 on Channel 4, with a prison-visit scene trailed as the most charged hour of the six-part series so far. A Taste for Murder is penultimate on ITV1. Richard Madeley goes inside CECOT, the El Salvador mega-prison, for a 90-minute Channel 5 documentary. BBC Two carries Surgeons: at the Edge of Life and a documentary portrait of Vladimir Putin assembled from photographs. MasterChef moves to York.

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 Three, BBC Four, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky Arts, TNT Sports 1, TNT Sports 2, TNT Sports 3, and TNT Sports 4. For yesterday's listings see our Tuesday 26 May 2026 TV guide.

What's on TV tonight: quick picks

  • A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (S2, Eps 1 & 2) -- BBC Three, 9pm + 9.50pm; BBC One 10.40pm + 11.30pm (BBC Three-less regions) -- NEW SERIES; Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi; Holly Jackson's sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood; Henry Ashton as Max Hastings (trial approaching); Eden H Davies as Jamie Reynolds (missing); Jude Morgan-Collie as Connor (Jamie's brother); Netflix simultaneous international release; full series BBC iPlayer
  • UEFA Conference League Final: Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano -- TNT Sports 1, coverage 6.30pm, kick-off 8pm BST -- Red Bull Arena, Leipzig; CRYSTAL PALACE'S FIRST-EVER EUROPEAN FINAL; Palace beat Fredrikstad (play-off) + Shakhtar Donetsk 5-2 agg (semi); Rayo also in first European final; subscription required
  • Falling (Ep 4) -- Channel 4, 9pm -- Jack Thorne; Peter Hoar (It's A Sin, Last of Us); Keeley Hawes (Anna); Paapa Essiedu (Father David); pivotal prison-visit scene; David Dawson as Phil; Anna: excruciating encounter pulls her back to the convent; full series C4 streaming
  • A Taste for Murder (Ep 5, PENULTIMATE) -- ITV1, 9pm -- Warren Brown as DCI Joe Mottram; Phyllis Logan; Capri-set; Angelica in danger from Daniele; mobsters at the restaurant; Joe's evening with Daria derailed; finale tomorrow Thursday 28 May ITV1 9pm; full series ITVX
  • Richard Madeley: Inside the World's Mega Prison -- Channel 5, 9pm -- 90 minutes; ITN Productions; CECOT El Salvador; $115m, 23-hectare, 40,000-capacity facility opened 2023; ~15,000 current inmates; steel bunks, shaved heads, lights never off; Madeley experiences solitary confinement; "fear" smell; director: Belarmino Garcia; My5 streaming
  • Surgeons: at the Edge of Life (S8) -- BBC Two, 9pm -- retired photographer Peter; synthetic tube to replace blood vessels heart-to-brain; heart stopped, body drained; machine pumps blood to brain; vascular surgeon Orwa Falah: "the patient is dead on the table"; Falah on the soul; series premiered 6 May 2026
  • MasterChef (S22) -- BBC One, 8pm -- new judges Anna Haugh + Grace Dent; 8 semi-finalists; National Railway Museum York; railway-heritage banquet; must run on time; tomorrow: Mauro Colagreco spy theme at Raffles London; Friday: critics Sitwell/Famurewa/Clay; final four
  • The Future with Hannah Fry (Ep 3) -- BBC Two, 7.30pm -- 2023 series repeated BBC Two from 13 May 2026; "Weaponization of Data": death of privacy, AI misinformation, doxxing; content slightly dated -- tech has moved on since production
  • EastEnders -- BBC One, 7.30pm -- Ross Marshall asks bride-to-be Vicki Fowler whether she slept with Zack Hudson; Vicki walks down the aisle into a public showdown; shattered trust; wedding-day humiliation; Den Watts's daughter
  • Putin: in Ten Pictures -- BBC Two, 9pm -- documentary strand profiling Putin via photographs; "far from beloved and very much alive"; 1990s St Petersburg businessman; "always looked at you like he had better things to do"; Stasi ID card 1985; school photo; shirtless horse image "like a melted cowboy"; facsimile Kremlin offices in bunkers; all eps iPlayer
  • George Clarke's Beautiful Builds -- Channel 4, 8pm -- architect George Clarke; Luke Millard garden designer; Mitch and Elliott's post-war house in Bromley; walls knocked down, extension, kitchen units, arched triptych of doors; series 2
  • Cornwall: a Year by the Sea -- Channel 5, 8pm -- spring clean-up after winter storms; baby seal in a surf school; jellyfish on Minack Theatre balcony; Global Pasty Championships at Heligan; St Piran's Day
  • Classic Movies: the Story of Mulholland Drive -- Sky Arts, 8pm -- David Lynch's 2001 film; noir, Tinseltown satire and nightmare; Lynch on his creative process; critics disagree; film itself at 9pm
  • Amandaland (S2) -- BBC One, 9pm -- Lucy Punch; Motherland spin-off; Pam Ferris guest as Elspeth; beautiful big house; health-driven sale; Amanda's Radio Times gambit + cat-sitting with an allergy; mates' rates engineering
  • Only Child (S2) -- BBC One, 9.30pm -- BBC Scotland sitcom; Gregor Fisher as Ken; Greg McHugh as Richard; Bryce Hart writer; Ken to Aviemore for QR code help; platform mix-up; Jennifer Saunders voice-only as Sally the agent (panto news)
  • A Very Peculiar Practice (Ep 3, repeat run) -- BBC Four, 10pm + 10.50pm -- Andrew Davies; 1986 BBC Two; Peter Davison as Dr Daker; Timothy West as Prof Furie (West died Nov 2024, posthumous); David Troughton as Dr Buzzard; tranquiliser plot; repeat run began 20 May 2026
  • Inside the Tower of London -- Channel 5, 8pm -- German spy executed at the Tower; Yeoman Sergeant AJ Clark; Ceremony of the Keys
  • Natural History Museum: World of Wonder (FINAL EP) -- Channel 5, 7pm -- fossil-hunting Morocco; bison in Kent; possible new wasp
  • Location, Location, Location -- Channel 4, 8pm -- Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer in west London
  • French Open Day 4 -- TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am + TNT Sports 4 -- second-round singles beginning at Roland Garros
  • Giro d'Italia Stage 17 -- TNT Sports 3 from 10.45am -- Cassano d'Adda to Andalo, 202km; hilly; final climb via Molveno into Andalo, Trentino
  • Ireland v New Zealand Test -- Day 1 -- TNT Sports 2 from 11am -- Civil Service Cricket Club, Stormont, Belfast; Ireland's 13th Test; first Ireland-NZ red-ball meeting

See what's on right now for live updates.

Tonight's TV schedule: full listings

Time Channel Programme
9.30am TNT Sports 1 + TNT Sports 4 French Open Day 4 LIVE -- Roland Garros; second-round singles begin; tournament 24 May--7 Jun
10.45am TNT Sports 3 Giro d'Italia Stage 17 LIVE -- Cassano d'Adda to Andalo, 202km; hilly; Molveno climb; Andalo finish
11.00am TNT Sports 2 Ireland v New Zealand Test LIVE -- Day 1; Stormont, Belfast; Ireland's 13th Test
6.30pm TNT Sports 1 Conference League Final coverage start -- Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano, Leipzig
7.00pm Channel 5 Natural History Museum: World of Wonder FINAL EP -- Morocco fossils; Kent bison; new wasp
7.30pm BBC One EastEnders -- Vicki Fowler wedding showdown; Ross Marshall; Zack Hudson; Den Watts's legacy
7.30pm BBC Two The Future with Hannah Fry Ep 3 -- "Weaponization of Data"; AI misinformation; doxxing; privacy
8.00pm TNT Sports 1 UEFA Conference League Final KICK-OFF -- Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano; Red Bull Arena Leipzig
8.00pm BBC One MasterChef S22 -- Anna Haugh + Grace Dent; 8 semi-finalists; National Railway Museum York
8.00pm Channel 4 George Clarke's Beautiful Builds S2 -- Bromley; Luke Millard; arched triptych of doors
8.00pm Channel 4 Location, Location, Location -- Kirstie Allsopp + Phil Spencer; west London
8.00pm Channel 5 Inside the Tower of London -- German spy; Yeoman Sergeant AJ Clark; Ceremony of the Keys
8.00pm Channel 5 Cornwall: a Year by the Sea -- storm clean-up; seal in surf school; Pasty Championships
8.00pm Sky Arts Classic Movies: the Story of Mulholland Drive -- David Lynch; noir; documentary
9.00pm BBC Three A Good Girl's Guide to Murder S2 Ep 1 NEW SERIES -- Emma Myers; Pip Fitz-Amobi; Good Girl Bad Blood
9.00pm BBC One Amandaland S2 -- Lucy Punch; Pam Ferris as Elspeth; cat allergy; Radio Times gambit
9.00pm BBC Two Surgeons: at the Edge of Life S8 -- Orwa Falah; Peter; heart stopped; body drained of blood
9.00pm BBC Two Putin: in Ten Pictures -- Stasi ID card 1985; shirtless horse; facsimile Kremlin bunkers
9.00pm Channel 4 Falling Ep 4 -- Keeley Hawes; Paapa Essiedu; David Dawson; prison-visit scene
9.00pm ITV1 A Taste for Murder Ep 5 PENULTIMATE -- Warren Brown; Angelica in danger; finale tomorrow
9.00pm Channel 5 Richard Madeley: Inside the World's Mega Prison -- CECOT El Salvador; 90 mins; ITN Productions
9.00pm Sky Arts Mulholland Drive -- David Lynch, 2001; film broadcast
9.30pm BBC One Only Child S2 -- Gregor Fisher as Ken; Greg McHugh as Richard; Aviemore platform chaos
9.50pm BBC Three A Good Girl's Guide to Murder S2 Ep 2 -- Pip investigates; Jamie Reynolds missing
10.00pm BBC Four A Very Peculiar Practice Ep 3 (repeat) -- Peter Davison; Timothy West; David Troughton; Andrew Davies
10.40pm BBC One A Good Girl's Guide to Murder S2 Ep 1 -- BBC One broadcast (BBC Three-less regions)
10.50pm BBC Four A Very Peculiar Practice Ep 4 (repeat) -- Dr Buzzard's tranquiliser scheme
11.30pm BBC One A Good Girl's Guide to Murder S2 Ep 2 -- BBC One broadcast (BBC Three-less regions)

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder -- Series 2 -- BBC Three, 9pm and 9.50pm

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Series 2, Episodes 1 and 2. BBC Three at 9pm and 9.50pm. NEW SERIES. Adapted from Holly Jackson's sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood. Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi. Henry Ashton as Max Hastings. Eden H Davies as Jamie Reynolds. Jude Morgan-Collie as Connor. BBC Three-less regions: BBC One at 10.40pm and 11.30pm. Full series on BBC iPlayer and Netflix (simultaneous international release) from launch night.

Series 1 of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder went out in summer 2024 and found a big enough, enthusiastic enough audience that a second run was always going to happen. Emma Myers — cast after Wednesday established her as someone who could do deadpan intelligence with an edge of genuine distress — made Pip Fitz-Amobi more than a teen detective archetype. A girl who solved a murder and is now carrying what the investigation took out of her. Series 2 begins with that cost still unpaid.

Holly Jackson's sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood is structured differently from the first. The Andie Bell case is closed; what is not resolved is the trial of Max Hastings, the antagonist whose legal fate has been hanging since Series 1. Henry Ashton returns as Hastings, and the approaching trial gives Series 2 a temporal pressure Series 1 didn't have. Pip is not starting fresh. She is still living inside the wreckage of the previous investigation.

The disappearance

The case at the centre of Series 2 is the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds, played by Eden H Davies. Jamie's brother Connor (Jude Morgan-Collie) approaches Pip for help. What makes it more than a straightforward missing-person inquiry is what Pip notices and the police don't: inconsistencies in the account, details that don't fit the official reading, the administrative convenience that lets a case be closed before it's actually resolved. Pip has learned to spot the pattern. Spotting it doesn't make her want to engage. It makes her angry, then pulls her back in anyway.

That tension between Pip's reluctance and her instinct to chase inconsistencies is where the character's richness sits. Jackson understood it in the novel; the adaptation has to show it on a face rather than in an interior monologue. Emma Myers's performance in Series 1 demonstrated she has the tools. She plays determination as something that costs Pip rather than something she wears comfortably.

The podcast element

One thing Series 2 develops is Pip's podcasting. In the novel she has built an audience through her Series 1 investigation, and that changes how she moves through the case. She is not just a private individual conducting unofficial research. She is, by now, something with a public presence and the complications that come with it. The podcast format also gives the series a structural device that feels current rather than imposed.

Peter Hoar, who directed It's A Sin and worked on The Last of Us, brings a visual sensibility that knows how to make small-scale emotional material feel consequential. Both of those credits involved young people in situations that were overtaking them. The tone is right for what the source material requires.

Episodes 1 and 2 on BBC Three at 9pm and 9.50pm. The full six-episode series is on BBC iPlayer from tonight, with a simultaneous international release on Netflix.

UEFA Conference League Final: Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano -- TNT Sports 1, coverage 6.30pm, kick-off 8pm BST

UEFA Conference League Final. Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano. Red Bull Arena, Leipzig. Kick-off 8pm BST. Coverage on TNT Sports 1 from 6.30pm. Subscription required.

Crystal Palace have never been here before. Forty-nine years in the Football League as a constant presence, two FA Cup finals (1990 and 2016, both lost), seasons that have brushed against Europe without getting inside it. Tonight they are in a European final, in Germany, against a Spanish club who have spent most of their history in the lower reaches of La Liga and are themselves making history with this appearance. The Red Bull Arena in Leipzig will host the first-ever European final for both sides.

The route Palace took to get here says something about modern football's bureaucratic architecture. They were initially in the Europa League, dropped into the Conference League play-off stage following a UEFA ruling on multi-club ownership -- Lyon's minority stake in Crystal Palace triggered the regulation -- and proceeded to progress through the competition from that point. The play-off against Fredrikstad from Norway was the gateway. The semi-final against Shakhtar Donetsk, the Ukrainian club who have been playing home matches in neutral countries since the 2022 invasion, produced one of the more dramatic aggregate scores of the Conference League season: 3-1 in Krakow in the first leg, 2-1 at Selhurst Park, 5-2 overall.

Rayo's own road

Rayo Vallecano, a Madrid club with a working-class identity that distinguishes them culturally from Atlético and Real, have had a Europa League presence in recent years but never reached a European final before tonight. Their route through the Conference League was built on defensive resilience and the kind of collective organisation smaller clubs use when they can't rely on squad depth. They arrive in Leipzig without Palace's Premier League resources, but also without having had to fight through a play-off insertion to get here.

The match is being played on a neutral ground in Central Europe, which reduces the home-crowd effect both clubs might otherwise bring to a final. The Red Bull Arena holds approximately 43,000 in UEFA configuration. Both sets of fans will be represented in significant numbers.

Why this matters

Palace's manager has made this group of players believe they can do things the club's history would not have predicted. European football requires adaptation -- shorter tournament formats, opponents who study you differently, the psychological adjustment to playing once a week in a knockout competition rather than the rhythm of a domestic season. Palace have managed that adjustment. They are here. Whatever happens tonight, the fact of tonight is already part of the club's history.

Live on TNT Sports 1 from 6.30pm BST. Kick-off 8pm.

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

Falling, Episode 4 of 6. Channel 4 at 9pm. Written by Jack Thorne. Directed by Peter Hoar. Cast: Keeley Hawes as Anna, Paapa Essiedu as Father David, David Dawson as Phil. Also: Rakie Ayola, Jason Watkins, Niamh Cusack, Adrian Scarborough. Full series on Channel 4 streaming.

Three episodes in, Falling has established what it is doing. It is not a love story that uses the Church as decoration. It is a drama genuinely interested in what it costs two people to acknowledge something their vocations have not given them permission to feel. Episode 4 shifts the weight toward the consequences of acknowledgement.

The episode's centre is a prison-visit scene. Father David (Paapa Essiedu) goes to see Phil, a prison inmate played by David Dawson. The scene simmers. Phil is not a pleasant man and the encounter is not designed to be comfortable. Dawson has built a career on playing characters who are barely containing something, and Phil's anger sits close to the surface throughout. Peter Hoar, who directed this episode, made It's A Sin and worked on The Last of Us; both productions held tension for long stretches before releasing it. He knows how to let a scene breathe rather than hurrying it toward its point.

Anna's episode

For Keeley Hawes's Anna, Episode 4 is about what disappointment feels like when you have spent a long time building a life around a certainty. An excruciating encounter with a stranger -- the details are better discovered than described -- pulls her back toward the convent rather than away from it. The drama has been careful not to frame the convent as a prison. Anna's faith is not a trap she is trying to escape. It is a structure that has made sense of her life, and the situation she is now in does not make it stop making sense. It makes it more complicated.

Jack Thorne's script has been asking from the beginning: what happens when two people who have organised their lives around a vocation find that the vocation's rules are insufficient for what they are feeling? Episode 4 is where the inadequacy of the rules becomes most acute. "Is God still on their side?" is the question the episode sets up for the second half of the run.

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

A Taste for Murder -- Episode 5 (Penultimate) -- ITV1, 9pm

A Taste for Murder, Episode 5 of 6. ITV1 at 9pm. PENULTIMATE EPISODE. Warren Brown as DCI Joe Mottram. Phyllis Logan co-stars. Full series on ITVX. Finale: Thursday 28 May, ITV1, 9pm.

The cosy-crime genre has a specific relationship with geography. The setting does a lot of the narrative work: Capri, in the case of A Taste for Murder, brings sunlight and aperitivi and the sense that violence would be somehow more incongruous here than anywhere else, which is precisely why it works as the backdrop for both murder and gangland business.

DCI Joe Mottram arrived on the island already carrying grief. His wife is dead, and the show has been careful about how that loss shapes him. Not a man dramatising his bereavement, but someone trying to find a way forward and finding that the way forward involves Daria and a series of evenings that keep being derailed before they can become anything. Tonight's derailment is a serious one. Joe's daughter Angelica is in danger from Daniele, her boyfriend, whose character has been assembling itself over four episodes and whose connections to the island's mobster community are now making themselves felt. The mobsters are at the restaurant. The evening plans are gone.

Warren Brown plays Mottram with the combination of authority and private disorganisation the genre rewards in its detective leads. Capable in a crisis, considerably less capable in the situations that don't require police skills. Phyllis Logan brings her usual precision.

The finale is tomorrow night -- Thursday 28 May at 9pm on ITV1. If you are behind, the full series is on ITVX now.

On ITV1 at 9pm.

Richard Madeley: Inside the World's Mega Prison -- Channel 5, 9pm

Richard Madeley: Inside the World's Mega Prison. Channel 5 at 9pm. 90-minute documentary. ITN Productions. CECOT, El Salvador.

The Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo -- CECOT -- opened in February 2023 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. President Nayib Bukele's government built it as the physical statement of a campaign against the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs that had made El Salvador one of the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere. The statistics are routinely cited: $115 million in construction cost, 23 hectares, capacity for 40,000 inmates, currently housing approximately 15,000. The images that circulated when it opened -- rows of shaved-headed men in white shorts, crammed into cells, heads bowed on instruction -- produced an immediate international argument about whether this was legitimate security policy or a human rights catastrophe. Possibly both.

Richard Madeley is the journalist who goes inside for Channel 5. The lineage he is joining includes Louis Theroux, Trevor McDonald, Piers Morgan and Werner Herzog, all of whom have made substantial films inside prison systems at various points in their careers. Each of those films produced a version of the same confrontation: a journalist from one social register entering a space built on a different one, and having to describe what they find without losing their own frame of reference.

Inside

The conditions Madeley describes align with what earlier reporting has documented. Steel bunks. Shaved heads. More tattoo than flesh, in the phrase the documentary appears to use. Artificial lights that are never switched off, which removes the basic circadian marker that separates day from night and is, depending on your frame, either a security measure or a form of chronic stress. The solitary confinement experience Madeley undergoes in the film produces his description of the smell: "fear." That is a subjective reading of an environment, but it is also the honest record of what the experience produced in him.

The prison director is Belarmino Garcia, who has given media access to a facility that the Salvadoran government has used as a showcase for its anti-gang policy. That access is not neutral. It is managed. What the documentary does with the tension between the access that was granted and the full picture of what the facility represents will determine whether it sits alongside Theroux's work or below it.

On Channel 5 at 9pm. Available on My5.

Surgeons: at the Edge of Life -- Series 8 -- BBC Two, 9pm

Surgeons: at the Edge of Life, Series 8. BBC Two at 9pm. Vascular surgeon Orwa Falah. Available on BBC iPlayer.

The series has been running since 2017, and its formula has remained unchanged because the formula is correct: access to real surgical procedures, real patients, real outcomes. No reconstruction, no dramatisation, nothing that stands between the viewer and what is actually happening. Series 8 continues that approach, and tonight's case is among the more extreme operations the series has documented.

Peter is a retired photographer. The blood vessels connecting his heart to his brain have been damaged to the degree that they cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. Vascular surgeon Orwa Falah will insert a synthetic tube to create the new pathway. The procedure requires, for a period, that Peter's heart be stopped entirely and his body be drained of blood. A machine takes over, pumping blood to his brain while the rest of the circulatory system is bypassed. Falah's description of that moment is the one that stays: "the patient is dead on the table." The patient is dead on the table, and the surgeon is working to make them alive again before that state becomes permanent.

Falah is a Muslim, and the programme gives him space to articulate what the profession means from within his faith. What it means to be alive. What matters -- not the machinery of the body, but what the body houses. A surgical theatre is not an obvious place for that kind of reflection, which is perhaps why it lands clearly when it arrives. The people who do this work every day have developed a relationship with the boundary between life and death that most of us do not need to develop, and the series is at its best when it lets them describe what that relationship feels like.

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

MasterChef -- Series 22 -- BBC One, 8pm

MasterChef, Series 22. BBC One at 8pm. Judges: Anna Haugh and Grace Dent. Eight semi-finalists. National Railway Museum, York. Available on BBC iPlayer.

The post-Wallace-and-Torode era of MasterChef began in 2025, and the pairing of Anna Haugh (chef-patron of Myrtle in Chelsea, a restaurant with Michelin recognition) and Grace Dent (food critic for the Guardian, author, broadcaster) represents a deliberate recalibration. Less panto, more considered. Haugh brings professional kitchen standards; Dent brings the reader's perspective -- the person who eats out and forms an opinion rather than the person who cooks professionally and judges technique.

Tonight's semi-final challenge sends eight contestants to the National Railway Museum in York, with a brief tied to railway heritage. The museum, which houses the largest collection of railway objects in the world, ran bicentenary programming through 2025 marking 200 years since the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened on 27 September 1825. Anna Haugh designed a menu that draws on that heritage. It has to be served on time, because railway catering has always run to a schedule and the brief asks for that specificity to be honoured.

What the National Railway Museum produces as a setting is the particular problem of spectacular environments: the food has to compete with where it is being served. That is not a given for any set of contestants, and the pressure of a banquet format -- multiple courses, multiple covers, coordination between the kitchen and the service -- is different from individual plates.

Tomorrow the semi-finalists move to Raffles London and are asked to re-create Michelin-starred Mauro Colagreco's dishes on a spy theme. Friday brings the critics: William Sitwell, Jimi Famurewa and Xanthe Clay will decide the final four.

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

EastEnders -- BBC One, 7.30pm

EastEnders. BBC One at 7.30pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Soap opera has a long tradition of the ruined wedding, and EastEnders returns to it tonight with what is shaping up to be one of the more chaotic ceremonies Walford has witnessed in recent years. Vicki Fowler is at the altar. Ross Marshall, before or as the ceremony gets under way, asks her directly: did she sleep with Zack Hudson, the half-brother of her adoptive half-sister? The question is out. Vicki walks down the aisle into a public showdown -- incendiary accusations, shattered trust, the kind of wedding-day humiliation that the tabloids in EastEnders's fictional universe would spend three episodes fictionalising.

Vicki is the daughter of Den Watts, which gives the show a specific inheritance to work with. Den and Angie's relationships produced some of the most-watched episodes in the programme's history, and writing their daughter into a ceremony that collapses in a similar pattern is a deliberate act of continuity. Scandal, heartbreak, a camera in the right place at the wrong moment for everyone involved.

On BBC One at 7.30pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Putin: in Ten Pictures -- BBC Two, 9pm

Putin: in Ten Pictures. BBC Two at 9pm. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer.

The "life in pictures" documentary format works best when the photographs are not illustrations of a story you already know but something that complicates or reframes it. The challenge of applying the format to Vladimir Putin is that his public image has been managed with extraordinary care for more than two decades, which means most of the photographs in public circulation are either formal portraits or official releases. Finding the ones that tell a different story is the editorial task.

What this documentary appears to find: a 1985 Stasi ID card, from the years Putin spent in Dresden as a KGB officer, which predates his public persona entirely. A school photograph that, the documentary notes, is not sweet. The famous shirtless-on-horseback image from 2009, which the film apparently describes as making him look "like a melted cowboy" -- the gap between the image's intended power and the way it was actually received internationally is a subject worth spending time on. And the facsimile Kremlin offices, built in various bunkers and secure locations around Russia, which the programme presents as evidence of a specific kind of paranoia: the concern that if anyone can predict where you are, you are already exposed.

A 1990s businessman who dealt with Putin when he was working as a fixer for the mayor of St Petersburg provides one of the documentary's more useful first-hand accounts. His observation -- that Putin "always looked at you like he had better things to do with his time" -- is the kind of specific detail that accumulates differently over the course of a career than it does in a single encounter. The man the businessman met was not yet the person the photographs would later try to construct.

On BBC Two at 9pm. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer.

Amandaland -- Series 2 -- BBC One, 9pm

Amandaland, Series 2. BBC One at 9pm. Lucy Punch as Amanda. Pam Ferris guest. A third series already commissioned. Full series on BBC iPlayer.

The Motherland spin-off continues with its reliable interest in what Amanda will do next and why it will be slightly more self-interested than she would publicly admit. Series 2, which began on 6 May 2026, has been building Amanda's world with the same cast — Joanna Lumley as her mother Felicity, plus Philippa Dunne, Samuel Anderson, Ekow Quartey — and sharpening the specific texture of Amanda's social manoeuvring.

Tonight brings Pam Ferris as Elspeth, a reclusive neighbour who lives in a beautiful house she is preparing to sell because her health requires it. Amanda's response to this situation unfolds in the way that Amanda's responses to most situations unfold: with an identifiable ulterior motive wrapped in what presents itself as neighbourly warmth. The copy of Radio Times she gifts to Elspeth is not a spontaneous act of kindness. The cat-sitting, despite an allergy that the show gives proper physical comedy treatment, is in service of a longer objective. Amanda wants first refusal on the house at mates' rates, and she is prepared to endure the allergy consequences of that ambition.

Lucy Punch's performance keeps Amanda just the right side of sympathy. The show works because Amanda is not a villain. She is a person who has decided to treat social situations as problems with optimal solutions, and whose execution is always funnier and less smooth than the strategy she devised.

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

Only Child -- Series 2 -- BBC One, 9.30pm

Only Child, Series 2. BBC One at 9.30pm. Written by Bryce Hart. Gregor Fisher as Ken. Greg McHugh as Richard. BBC Scotland commission. Available on BBC iPlayer.

BBC Scotland commissioned Only Child as its own comedy rather than a spin-off, and the distinction matters to how the show positions itself. It is set in Forres, in Moray -- not Edinburgh, not Glasgow, but a smaller Scottish town with its own particular character. Gregor Fisher's Ken is a widowed patriarch who has a clear sense of what would be good for Richard, and whose sense of that tends to conflict with Richard's sense of what would be bearable.

Tonight's episode is a train journey. Ken needs to go to Aviemore and has decided that Richard should accompany him to help navigate the QR code scanner at the ticket barrier -- a specific and contemporary piece of parental helplessness that the show handles with affection rather than contempt. Ken is not stupid; he has a relationship with technology that is simply different from his son's, and the show understands that. The platform mix-up that turns the excursion into a fiasco does not happen because Ken is foolish. It happens because train stations are confusing and family outings have a thermodynamic tendency toward chaos.

Jennifer Saunders provides a voice-only performance as Sally, Richard's theatrical agent, whose call arrives with panto-audition news. The fact that Saunders is doing it at all gives the sequence a comic weight that the content might not otherwise carry.

Series 2 began on BBC Scotland on 4 May and moved to BBC One on 6 May 2026.

On BBC One at 9.30pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

A Very Peculiar Practice -- BBC Four, 10pm and 10.50pm

A Very Peculiar Practice, Episode 3 (of the repeat run). BBC Four at 10pm and 10.50pm. Written by Andrew Davies. Original BBC Two broadcast 1986--88. Cast: Peter Davison, Timothy West, David Troughton, Graham Crowden, Barbara Flynn. Repeat run began 20 May 2026. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Andrew Davies's BBC Two series occupies a particular place in the history of British television comedy-drama: a workplace satire with an academic setting, in which the absurdities of institutional life at a fictional English university are examined through the experience of Dr Stephen Daker (Peter Davison), a GP who arrives at the university medical practice to find his colleagues are considerably more peculiar than he had anticipated.

Timothy West's Professor Furie is, forty years on from first broadcast, one of the more interesting character constructions in the series. Furie is brilliant and manic and difficult to predict, and West played him as someone who contained multitudes without the multitudes having been organised into a coherent personality. West died in November 2024. The BBC Four repeat run began on 20 May 2026, which means tonight's episodes are, in the most straightforward sense, a posthumous broadcast. West would have known the work was going to be seen again. Whether he knew it would be seen in circumstances that made every appearance feel additionally significant is another matter.

David Troughton's Dr Bob Buzzard represents a different kind of university-practice dysfunction: not the chaos of Furie but the calculated self-interest of a man who is exploring medical options primarily for their private-consultancy potential. Tonight, Buzzard is looking at a tranquiliser trial. The trial is of scientific interest only to the extent that the consultancy fees it enables are of financial interest to him. Davies writes this without the character becoming a simple satire. Buzzard has his own logic, and the show treats it as logic.

On BBC Four at 10pm and 10.50pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

George Clarke's Beautiful Builds -- Channel 4, 8pm

George Clarke's Beautiful Builds, Series 2. Channel 4 at 8pm. Architect George Clarke. Garden designer Luke Millard. Available on Channel 4 streaming.

George Clarke's series has settled into a specific brief: post-war houses that were built quickly and functionally and that have become, over seventy years of incremental modification, cluttered and poorly flowing. The houses are the product of a particular moment in British architectural history -- a period when getting people housed was the priority and spatial generosity was a secondary consideration. What Clarke and his team do is address those structural limitations with the kind of thinking the original construction did not have the budget or time for.

Mitch and Elliott's three-bedroom house in Bromley is this week's subject. South-east London suburban housing from the post-war period has a characteristic quality: reasonable room sizes connected by corridors and walls that stop the internal space from making visual sense. The solution, as in most of these cases, involves removing walls, extending, and finding a design language that makes the resulting open space feel deliberate rather than random. The arched triptych of doors that serves as the series opener's centrepiece is the kind of detail that elevates a renovation from functional to finished.

Luke Millard's work in the garden is the complement to Clarke's interior work. The outdoor rooms he creates have to connect to the interior logic -- when the walls inside come down and the back of the house opens up, the garden becomes part of what you see from inside, and what you see from inside has to be worth seeing.

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

Classic Movies: the Story of Mulholland Drive -- Sky Arts, 8pm

Classic Movies: the Story of Mulholland Drive. Sky Arts at 8pm. Followed by the film itself at 9pm. Available on Now.

The Classic Movies documentary strand has been working its way through films whose cultural significance is clear and whose meaning is contested. Mulholland Drive arrives as the first 21st-century entry, which puts it in a different position from the Golden Age Hollywood subjects that preceded it: the film is recent enough that many of its first reviewers are still working, and the critical reception is documented rather than reconstructed.

David Lynch's 2001 film began as an ABC television pilot that the network rejected, was expanded by Lynch with additional scenes, and became the film that is now on most serious lists of the best American cinema since 2000. The plot summary is unreliable because the film is designed to resist summary: a car accident on Mulholland Drive, an aspiring actress, an amnesiac woman, a Hollywood casting process, a blue box, a third act that rewires everything that preceded it. The experience of watching it is not the experience of solving it.

The documentary interviews Lynch about his creative process, which Lynch has always described in terms of ideas arriving rather than being constructed. The critical material -- the attempts by reviewers and academics to assemble what the film means -- runs alongside that account and does not always agree with it. That disagreement is part of what the film produces. A cinema that arrives at a settled meaning quickly is rarely the cinema that stays in the mind.

The film itself follows at 9pm on Sky Arts.

The Future with Hannah Fry -- Episode 3 -- BBC Two, 7.30pm

The Future with Hannah Fry, Episode 3 of 6. BBC Two at 7.30pm. Original 2023 series; BBC Two repeat run from 13 May 2026. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Hannah Fry's 2023 series was produced at a moment when the AI conversation was accelerating rapidly and the institutional responses to it were still catching up. Three years on, the "Weaponization of Data" episode -- tonight's subject -- has the specific quality of material that was ahead of its formal reception at the time and has since been overtaken by the event itself.

The three threads: the death of privacy in an environment where data collection has become ambient; the use of AI to generate and amplify misinformation and propaganda at a scale and speed that human editorial processes were not designed to detect; and doxxing -- the malicious exposure of a private person's home address, phone number or personal details to an audience that may act on them. All three were live issues in 2023. All three have become considerably more acute since.

The series is worth watching with that gap in mind. The analysis Fry provides is sound; what has changed is not the analysis but the scale of the problem it was analysing. LLMs had not yet achieved the public reach they would by 2025 when the series was made. The specifics date; the underlying argument does not.

On BBC Two at 7.30pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Live sport today

UEFA Conference League Final -- TNT Sports 1, coverage 6.30pm, kick-off 8pm BST

Covered at length above. Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano at the Red Bull Arena, Leipzig. Crystal Palace's first-ever European final. Live on TNT Sports 1 from 6.30pm.

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

Roland Garros moves into the second round on Day 4 of the 2026 French Open. The first round at the clay-court major tends to run longer than at other Grand Slams, which means some first-round matches may be completing today before the second-round schedule gets properly under way. Live on TNT Sports 1 from 9.30am and TNT Sports 4 from the same time.

Giro d'Italia Stage 17 -- TNT Sports 3, from 10.45am

Stage 17 is a 202km hilly day from Cassano d'Adda, in the province of Milan, to Andalo in Trentino. The route north through the Alps takes the peloton via Molveno before the final climb into Andalo, a ski resort village that sits at 1,050 metres. It is not a high-mountain stage in the summit-finish sense, but the final 30 kilometres are sufficiently demanding to produce racing rather than a controlled ride to a sprint. After the pure climbing of Stage 16 and its Swiss drama, Stage 17 gives the general classification a different kind of test.

Live on TNT Sports 3 from 10.45am BST.

Ireland v New Zealand Test -- Day 1 -- TNT Sports 2, from 11am

This is Ireland's 13th Test match in history, and the first time they have faced New Zealand in red-ball cricket. The venue is the Civil Service Cricket Club ground at Stormont in Belfast -- not Malahide in Dublin, where Ireland have played several previous Tests, but the Stormont ground, with its particular political geography and its reputation as a ground that rewards spin in certain conditions.

New Zealand are a side that does not underestimate unfamiliar opponents in unfamiliar conditions, a lesson the international game has served up often enough to have become embedded in how touring sides prepare. Ireland's Test cricket has developed considerably since their inaugural Test in 2018; the squad is not what it was then, and the conditions in Belfast in late May are conditions Irish players know better than any touring side.

Live on TNT Sports 2 from 11am BST.

Also worth watching today

Natural History Museum: World of Wonder -- Channel 5, 7pm (Final episode)

The series ends with fossil-hunting in Morocco, bison in Kent, and the possibility of a new species of wasp. The Natural History Museum as a subject is resistant to exhaustion -- there is always something in the collections or in the field teams that the series has not reached yet -- and the final episode delivers the combination of global fieldwork and domestic surprise that the run has maintained throughout. On Channel 5 at 7pm.

Location, Location, Location -- Channel 4, 8pm

Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer are in west London, which is a buyer's market only in the most aspirational sense of that phrase. The specific combination of what the buyers want and what west London is prepared to offer generates the familiar productive tension. On Channel 4 at 8pm.

Inside the Tower of London -- Channel 5, 8pm

A German spy's execution at the Tower, the Ceremony of the Keys, and Yeoman Sergeant AJ Clark. The Tower of London as a continuing documentary subject has not run out of material yet, and the German spy episode is a strand of the Tower's wartime history that does not get the same coverage as the more famous executions. On Channel 5 at 8pm.

Cornwall: a Year by the Sea -- Channel 5, 8pm

The spring episode covers the aftermath of a winter that left a baby seal in a surf school and a jellyfish on the balcony of the Minack Theatre. The Global Pasty Championships at Heligan give the episode a competitive dimension, and St Piran's Day provides the seasonal ceremony. On Channel 5 at 8pm.

Frequently asked questions

What's on TV tonight Wednesday 27 May 2026?

Wednesday 27 May 2026 opens with the UEFA Conference League Final on TNT Sports 1 -- Crystal Palace v Rayo Vallecano, coverage from 6.30pm, kick-off 8pm BST at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, Crystal Palace's first-ever European final. Then at 9pm, BBC Three launches A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Series 2, Episodes 1 and 2 (Emma Myers as Pip Fitz-Amobi, Holly Jackson's sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood; Netflix simultaneous international release; full series on BBC iPlayer). Channel 4 has Falling Episode 4 at 9pm -- Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu, David Dawson's pivotal prison scene, directed by Peter Hoar. ITV1 has the penultimate episode of A Taste for Murder at 9pm (Warren Brown, Capri, finale Thursday 28 May). Channel 5 has Richard Madeley: Inside the World's Mega Prison at 9pm -- 90 minutes in CECOT, El Salvador, ITN Productions. BBC Two has Surgeons: at the Edge of Life Series 8 at 9pm and Putin: in Ten Pictures at 9pm. BBC One has MasterChef at 8pm (Anna Haugh and Grace Dent, National Railway Museum York), Amandaland Series 2 at 9pm (Lucy Punch, Pam Ferris guest), and Only Child Series 2 at 9.30pm. EastEnders is at 7.30pm -- Vicki Fowler's wedding showdown. BBC Four has A Very Peculiar Practice from 10pm. French Open Day 4 is on TNT Sports from 9.30am. Giro d'Italia Stage 17 (Cassano d'Adda to Andalo, 202km) is on TNT Sports 3 from 10.45am. Ireland v New Zealand Test cricket Day 1 is live on TNT Sports 2 from 11am at Stormont, Belfast.

When does A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Series 2 start?

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Series 2 starts on Wednesday 27 May 2026, with Episodes 1 and 2 launching on BBC Three at 9pm and 9.50pm. The same two episodes broadcast on BBC One later that evening (10.40pm and 11.30pm) in regions without BBC Three. The full six-episode series drops on BBC iPlayer from launch night and releases simultaneously on Netflix internationally. Series 2 is an adaptation of Holly Jackson's sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood. Emma Myers returns as podcasting teen detective Pip Fitz-Amobi. The new case is the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds (Eden H Davies); his brother Connor (Jude Morgan-Collie) asks Pip for help. Henry Ashton returns as Max Hastings, the Series 1 antagonist whose trial is now approaching.

Who plays Pip in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?

Emma Myers plays Pip Fitz-Amobi in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. Myers is the American actress best known for Netflix's Wednesday, in which she plays Enid Sinclair. She returns for Series 2, which launches on BBC Three at 9pm on Wednesday 27 May 2026. Pip is a podcasting teen detective who solved the Andie Bell case in Series 1 and now, reluctantly, takes on the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds (Eden H Davies). Myers's casting was confirmed before BBC Three commissioned Series 1; her performance in the first run earned widespread critical approval and made the recommission a straightforward decision.

What time is the Conference League Final and where can I watch it?

The UEFA Conference League Final between Crystal Palace and Rayo Vallecano kicks off at 8pm BST on Wednesday 27 May 2026 at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig, Germany. You can watch it live on TNT Sports 1 with coverage from 6.30pm BST -- a TNT Sports subscription is required. This is Crystal Palace's first-ever European final. Palace reached the final through the Conference League play-off (after a multi-club ownership ruling related to Lyon's minority stake), then beat Fredrikstad and Shakhtar Donetsk 5-2 on aggregate in the semi-final (3-1 in Krakow, 2-1 at Selhurst Park). Rayo Vallecano are also in their first European final.

What happens in Falling Episode 4?

Falling Episode 4 airs on Channel 4 at 9pm on Wednesday 27 May 2026. The episode's centrepiece is a prison-visit scene between Father David (Paapa Essiedu) and Phil, a brutish inmate played by David Dawson. The scene is given proper screen time and simmers with anger. For Anna (Keeley Hawes), an excruciating encounter with a stranger pulls her back to the convent. The episode was directed by Peter Hoar, whose credits include It's A Sin and The Last of Us. The full series is available on Channel 4 streaming.

Is A Taste for Murder ending soon?

Yes. A Taste for Murder ends with its sixth and final episode on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday 28 May 2026 -- one night after Episode 5 (the penultimate). Episode 5 broadcasts on ITV1 at 9pm on Wednesday 27 May 2026 and features Joe Mottram's daughter Angelica in danger from her boyfriend Daniele, mobsters at the restaurant, and Joe's evening plans with Daria derailed. Warren Brown stars as DCI Joe Mottram with Phyllis Logan co-starring; the series is set on the island of Capri. The full six-part series is available on ITVX.

Why is Richard Madeley in El Salvador?

Richard Madeley is in El Salvador to film Inside the World's Mega Prison, a 90-minute ITN Productions documentary for Channel 5 broadcasting at 9pm on Wednesday 27 May 2026. Madeley visits CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo), a $115m, 23-hectare maximum-security prison opened in 2023 with a 40,000-inmate capacity (~15,000 currently held). CECOT is the centrepiece of President Nayib Bukele's campaign against the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs. Madeley experiences solitary confinement and describes the smell as "fear." Conditions documented: steel bunks, shaved heads, artificial lights never switched off. Prison director: Belarmino Garcia. The documentary joins a lineage of films made inside prison systems by Louis Theroux, Trevor McDonald, Piers Morgan and Werner Herzog. Available on My5 after broadcast.

Who are the new MasterChef judges in 2026?

The new MasterChef judges are Anna Haugh and Grace Dent, who took over after Gregg Wallace and John Torode departed in 2025. Tonight on BBC One at 8pm, eight semi-finalists prepare a banquet at the National Railway Museum in York with a railway-heritage theme, menu designed by Anna Haugh. Tomorrow the semi-finalists re-create Mauro Colagreco's Michelin-starred dishes at Raffles London on a spy theme. Friday's episode features critics William Sitwell, Jimi Famurewa and Xanthe Clay, with the final four decided.

What time is the Giro d'Italia today?

Stage 17 of the 2026 Giro d'Italia is live on TNT Sports 3 from 10.45am BST on Wednesday 27 May 2026. The stage runs from Cassano d'Adda (in the province of Milan) to Andalo (a ski-resort village at 1,050m in Trentino), covering 202km. It is a hilly stage with the final climb running via Molveno into Andalo. After Stage 16's fully Swiss day, Stage 17 returns the race to Italy. The finish is expected late afternoon BST.

When did Ireland and New Zealand last play a Test?

Ireland and New Zealand have never played a Test match against each other before. The Test starting on Wednesday 27 May 2026 at the Civil Service Cricket Club, Stormont, Belfast is the first ever red-ball meeting between the two countries. It is also Ireland's 13th Test match in history, since their inaugural Test in 2018. Day 1 is live on TNT Sports 2 from 11am BST.

Tonight's final word

Wednesday 27 May 2026 is heavy in the best way. The Conference League Final and the AGGGTM Series 2 launch have enough between them to make the evening feel like an occasion, and the surrounding schedule -- Falling's most charged episode so far, the penultimate chapter of A Taste for Murder, Madeley in El Salvador, a stopped heart on BBC Two -- gives people who are not interested in football or teen-detective drama plenty to occupy them.

Crystal Palace in a European final is a footballing fact that would have seemed improbable for most of the club's history. Whatever happens at the Red Bull Arena tonight, the journey to Leipzig is the thing that will persist. Pip Fitz-Amobi picking up another case she was determined not to take is a different kind of inevitability: the character is defined by that reluctance-and-compulsion cycle, and Series 2 begins with it intact.

Falling at 9pm on Channel 4 is where the week's drama is making its strongest argument. Four episodes in, Jack Thorne's six-parter has earned the prison scene it delivers tonight. The writing is careful and Peter Hoar's direction gives it space. It is the kind of television that rewards watching rather than having on in the background.

Check what's on right now, browse tonight's highlights, or find any channel through the full channels list. Thursday 28 May: the A Taste for Murder finale, the Half Man finale on BBC One, and the second day of the Ireland-New Zealand Test at Stormont.