What's on TV tonight Friday 5 June 2026? The biggest event of the evening is a finale that also marks an anniversary. MasterChef closes its twenty-second series on BBC One at 8pm -- and this one carries extra weight, because it falls on the 20th anniversary of the current format. Two decades in, the show has had the sharpest reset of its run: Gregg Wallace and John Torode are gone, and the partnership of Grace Dent and Anna Haugh has delivered what one review called "a fresher, more entertaining and warmer viewing experience." Tonight three contestants are asked to produce the best meal of their lives. The winner joins a list of champions that stretches back twenty years.
Sky Atlantic has two episodes of Ponies back to back at 9pm and 10pm. Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson have been the best reason to have Sky Atlantic for the past fortnight, and tonight the double bill pushes both characters into territory that is uncomfortable in different ways: Bea on a first date with someone who would arrest her if he knew who she was; Twila discovering that Moscow in 1977 is not a place that forgives errors of the physical kind.
BBC One takes on Have I Got News for You's Series 71 finale at 9pm -- the last episode of the run, with David Tennant in the chair. BBC Two has Hidden Treasures of the National Trust at 9pm, finding Charles Wade's inexplicable samurai collection at Snowshill Manor and the Portland sheep at Calke Abbey. BBC Four opens its evening with Aretha Franklin and closes it with Dolly Parton. BBC Two finishes at 11pm with Bring Them Down -- Christopher Andrews's revenge drama that relocated from Yorkshire to Wicklow and traded Paul Mescal for Barry Keoghan and came out ahead.
Sport starts at Lord's at 10.15am -- England and New Zealand in Day 2 of the first Test. Roland Garros has its men's semi-finals from 1.30pm. The Women's Giro d'Italia runs 159 kilometres from Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme from 2pm.
Browse what's on right now for live updates, see tonight's full highlights, or go straight to the channels list -- including dedicated pages for BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four, ITV1, Channel 4, Sky Atlantic, Sky Sports Main Event, Sky Sports Cricket, TNT Sports 1, and TNT Sports 3. For yesterday's listings see our Thursday 4 June 2026 TV guide.
What's on TV tonight: quick picks
- MasterChef (S22, SERIES FINALE) -- BBC One, 8pm -- 20th anniversary current format; Grace Dent + Anna Haugh; three contestants cook best three-course meal of their lives; following 2025 champion Harry Maguire; extraordinary roll call of winners; "fresher, more entertaining and warmer viewing experience"; Jane Rackham byline; iPlayer
- Ponies (double bill) -- Sky Atlantic, 9pm + 10pm -- Emilia Clarke as Bea; Haley Lu Richardson as Twila; 9pm: Bea's first date since widowed -- Andrei, top KGB agent, severely miffed if he clocks she's not really Russian; Twila's advice on over-enthusiastic new date -- at home depressing, here life-saving; 10pm: grin wiped off Twila's face, first brush with death; Jack Seale byline; Now
- Have I Got News for You (S71, SERIES FINALE) -- BBC One, 9pm -- David Tennant hosts last episode of Series 71; Michael Gove + Chloe Petts guests; Ian Hislop + Paul Merton; iPlayer
- Hidden Treasures of the National Trust (S4) -- BBC Two, 9pm (9.30pm Wales) -- Snowshill Manor Cotswolds: Charles Wade "not your average Victorian collector"; old buckets, battle-scarred blades, doorbells, ancient anatomy, seven suits of samurai armour, miniature village; armour selected for British Museum exhibition, needs gentle restoration; Mike Flannery objects conservator, fixing doorbell automation; then 70 miles: Calke Abbey -- natural history, mainly taxidermy + living conservation flock of rare Portland sheep; jewellery collection dazzles honorary NT jewellery adviser John Benjamin; iPlayer
- Aretha Franklin Night -- BBC Four, 9pm -- BBC performances collection including 2015 Natural Woman that reduced President Obama to tears; Aretha throws fur coat to floor; then 9.40pm: 1968 Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw -- Respect and Satisfaction; iPlayer
- Gardeners' World -- BBC Two, 8pm (8.30pm Wales) -- peak rose season; Monty Don solves common rose problems, celebrates roses in glory; annuals and exotics; lettuce and beetroot in the veg plot; Sue Kent, gardens with stories, Penarth; Brighton: clever city garden, small space, big impact; Bedfordshire: succulents and sun-loving plants; Simon O'Hagan byline; iPlayer
- Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches -- Channel 4, 8pm -- Iran conflict impact on tourism; jet fuel prices soared, thousands of flights cancelled; peak season approaching; last-minute bargains as tour operators slash prices; Kate Quilton cuts through noise; is a UK staycation safer?; Johnathon Hughes byline; C4 streaming
- Celebrity Gogglebox (S8) -- Channel 4, 9pm -- eighth series, 50th episode milestone; Rylan + mummy Linda; Vernon Kay + Paddy McGuinness; Shaun Ryder + Bez; Roman + Martin Kemp; Stephen + Anita Mangan; Rob Beckett + Tom Allen; Mo Gilligan + Babatunde Aleshe; Denise van Outen + Johnny Vaughan; new faces; Michael Hogan byline; C4 streaming
- Dolly Parton: Here I Am -- BBC Four, 10.20pm -- 2019 profile; timely repeat, health issues + Caesars Palace residency cancellation; "I'm not dumb and I'm not even blonde"; business brain; legendary songwriting; feminist streak in lyrics; Jane Fonda + Lily Tomlin reveal they never saw Dolly without the wig; JR byline; iPlayer
- Bring Them Down ★★★ (15) -- BBC Two, 11pm -- Christopher Andrews writer-director; brutal revenge drama; Irish landscapes and dialect; relocated Yorkshire to Wicklow (tax incentives); lost Mescal and Burke, gained Christopher Abbott (menace) + electric Barry Keoghan; sheep puppets blow away in the wind; confident debut; Kevin Harley byline; iPlayer
- The Marvellous Miniature Workshop -- BBC One, 7.30pm (not Scotland or Wales) -- another chance: Sara Cox + team re-create Reading's Central Club, celebrating Caribbean culture in miniature
- Under the Vines -- BBC One, 2pm -- New Zealand comedy-drama; winery finances at mercy of frosty weather; daytime
- England v New Zealand -- 1st Test, Day 2 -- Sky Sports Main Event + Sky Sports Cricket, from 10.15am -- Lord's; highlights BBC Two 7pm
- French Open -- Men's Semi-Finals -- TNT Sports 1, from 1.30pm -- Roland Garros, Paris; Day 13; two semi-final matches; clay
- Women's Giro d'Italia Stage 7 -- TNT Sports 3, from 2pm -- Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme, 159km
See what's on right now for live updates.
Tonight's TV schedule: full listings
| Time | Channel | Programme |
|---|---|---|
| 10.15am | Sky Sports Main Event + Sky Sports Cricket | England v New Zealand -- 1st Test Day 2 LIVE -- Lord's; first of three Tests |
| 1.30pm | TNT Sports 1 | French Open -- Men's Semi-Finals LIVE -- Roland Garros, Paris |
| 2.00pm | BBC One | Under the Vines -- New Zealand comedy-drama; winery and frosty weather |
| 2.00pm | TNT Sports 3 | Women's Giro d'Italia Stage 7 LIVE -- Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme, 159km |
| 7.00pm | BBC Two | England v New Zealand -- 1st Test Day 2 Highlights -- Lord's; edited coverage |
| 7.30pm | BBC One | The Marvellous Miniature Workshop -- Sara Cox; Reading's Central Club; Caribbean culture (not Scotland or Wales) |
| 8.00pm | BBC One | MasterChef SERIES FINALE -- 20th anniversary; Grace Dent + Anna Haugh; three contestants; best three-course meal |
| 8.00pm | BBC Two | Gardeners' World -- Monty Don roses; Sue Kent Penarth; Brighton city garden; Bedfordshire succulents (8.30pm Wales) |
| 8.00pm | Channel 4 | Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches -- Iran conflict; jet fuel; Kate Quilton |
| 9.00pm | BBC One | Have I Got News for You S71 SERIES FINALE -- David Tennant; Michael Gove + Chloe Petts |
| 9.00pm | BBC Two | Hidden Treasures of the National Trust S4 -- Snowshill Manor; Calke Abbey; Portland sheep; John Benjamin (9.30pm Wales) |
| 9.00pm | BBC Four | Aretha Franklin Night -- BBC performances; 2015 Natural Woman, Obama tears; fur coat |
| 9.00pm | Sky Atlantic | Ponies -- Emilia Clarke; Haley Lu Richardson; Bea's first date: Andrei, top KGB agent |
| 9.40pm | BBC Four | Aretha Franklin: 1968 Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam -- Respect; Satisfaction |
| 10.00pm | Sky Atlantic | Ponies -- Twila's first brush with death |
| 10.20pm | BBC Four | Dolly Parton: Here I Am -- 2019 profile; Caesars Palace cancellation; Jane Fonda + Lily Tomlin |
| 11.00pm | BBC Two | Bring Them Down ★★★ (15) -- Christopher Andrews; Christopher Abbott; Barry Keoghan; Wicklow |
| Now streaming | BBC iPlayer | MasterChef Series 22; Hidden Treasures of the National Trust S4; Aretha Franklin Night |
| Now streaming | Now | Ponies full series |
| Now streaming | Channel 4 streaming | Celebrity Gogglebox S8; Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches |
MasterChef -- SERIES FINALE -- BBC One, 8pm
MasterChef, Series 22, Series Finale. BBC One at 8pm. SERIES FINALE. Judges Grace Dent and Anna Haugh. Jane Rackham byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Twenty years is the number that MasterChef's producers have been building toward since the current format was established, and tonight the series finale arrives at that anniversary carrying the weight of everything that has accumulated since. The show has had a complicated recent history. The Torode-and-Wallace era ran for two decades and became, in the process, one of the fixed institutions of British television: competitive, warm, occasionally absurd, reliably watched. Then, in 2025, it changed.
Grace Dent and Anna Haugh took the chairs vacated by John Torode and Gregg Wallace, and the series that resulted has been described, in the reviewing that followed, as "a fresher, more entertaining and warmer viewing experience." That description matters because it is not the description you would reach for if the show had simply continued in the previous mould with different faces. Dent brings the food criticism instinct -- the capacity to articulate, precisely and quickly, what is wrong with a dish -- and Haugh brings the professional chef's perspective, the understanding of what execution actually requires under pressure. They have, in the three episodes of the current run that have preceded tonight, pushed each other and the format into territory the programme hasn't quite occupied before.
The twenty-year roll call
The anniversary frame gives tonight's episode a specific context. MasterChef under the current format has produced winners who have gone on to open restaurants, write cookbooks, gain recognition in their own right -- the "extraordinary roll call" the promotional material invokes is not empty phrasing. Following last year's champion, Harry Maguire, the winner tonight adds their name to a sequence that stretches back two decades.
The note here: the Harry Maguire in question is the 2025 amateur MasterChef champion, not the footballer of the same name. Two people can share a name. The MasterChef Harry Maguire is the cook; the England defender is separately accounted for.
The final challenge
Three contestants remain. The brief is the broadest and most demanding the competition sets: prepare the best three-course meal you have ever cooked. Not in a specific style, not for a specific guest, not at a specific restaurant. Your best. Whatever that means for you, in this kitchen, tonight.
The freedom in that brief is its difficulty. A cook who has spent their life making a small number of dishes to the highest standard they can reach has a different answer to that question than a cook who has ranged widely and shown versatility across the series. Neither approach is wrong; Grace Dent and Anna Haugh are good enough judges to recognise when the answer to the brief is honest and when it is hedged.
The series has been building toward this. The skills visible across the semi-final and the heats preceding it establish what each of the three finalists is capable of on their best day. Tonight is about whether that best day arrives on schedule.
On BBC One at 8pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Ponies -- Double Bill -- Sky Atlantic, 9pm and 10pm
Ponies, double bill. Sky Atlantic at 9pm and 10pm. Emilia Clarke as Bea. Haley Lu Richardson as Twila. Jack Seale byline. Available on Now.
The second outing of back-to-back Ponies arrives at the point in the series where the show starts to test what it has established. The first three episodes spent time building the rules of the world -- who Bea and Twila are, what Moscow in 1977 looks like from inside, what the CIA wants from two women the Soviet system considered beneath notice. Now those rules are being used against the characters.
9pm -- Bea's first date
Bea (Emilia Clarke) is a widow. That is her cover and, to some degree, her reality -- the husband died, the circumstances were not straightforward, and the question of how she processes that under operational pressure has been one of the series' ongoing concerns. Tonight she goes on her first date since the bereavement.
The man she is sitting across from is Andrei. Andrei is, it emerges, a top KGB agent in Moscow. The fact that she is not actually Russian -- or not in the way her cover requires -- sits between them for the duration of the date like a problem she cannot look at directly. He will, as Jack Seale's piece puts it, be severely miffed if he susses her.
Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) has been coaching Bea on the mechanics of the encounter. Her advice: how to handle a man who is more enthusiastic about a new relationship than you are. In a different context, at home, the advice would be mildly depressing -- the kind of guidance a friend gives when someone is at a remove from what they want emotionally. Here, in operational terms, it is guidance that could save her life. The gap between those two readings of the same conversation is where the episode's comedy and its tension sit alongside each other.
Emilia Clarke has been doing something particular in this role: playing someone who is technically skilled at appearing normal and emotionally not quite ready to be. The date scene is the sharpest version of that tension the series has yet produced.
10pm -- Twila's first brush with death
The second half of the double bill is where the series pivots. Twila has been the fearless one, the character whose constitutionally abrasive approach to the world has served as the counterweight to Bea's over-prepared anxiety. The grin, as the note says, is wiped off her face.
"First brush with death" is the kind of thing spy drama tends to treat as a plot mechanism -- the moment of danger that establishes stakes and is then cleared up by the episode's close. What makes it worth watching is whether the programme uses that mechanism to show something real about the character, or whether it settles for the function. The indication from the episode is that it does the former.
Haley Lu Richardson has been the series' consistent surprise: a character who could have been comic relief has been written, and performed, as someone whose bravado is doing actual psychological work rather than serving as decoration. What tonight's episode adds to that is the specific quality that comes from watching a character discover the limits of their own fearlessness.
On Sky Atlantic at 9pm and 10pm. Full series available on Now.
Have I Got News for You -- Series 71 Finale -- BBC One, 9pm
Have I Got News for You, Series 71, Series Finale. BBC One at 9pm. David Tennant in the chair. Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Guests: Michael Gove and Chloe Petts. Available on BBC iPlayer.
HIGNFY closes its 71st series tonight, and the finale host is David Tennant. Tennant has been in the chair before and is the kind of performer who suits the format: enough authority to drive the panel, enough willingness to be laughed at to keep the atmosphere functional when the jokes are running against him. The rotating guest-host system that has defined HIGNFY since 2002 has produced a range of results across its years; Tennant is at the more capable end of it.
Michael Gove as a panellist is one of those casting choices that contains a specific kind of political comedy potential. Gove has been a recurring figure in British political life for long enough that the news archive available to Ian Hislop's team is extensive, and his own facility with language -- a genuine rhetorical capability that has coexisted with his political record -- makes him a participant rather than a target, which is the more interesting category. Chloe Petts brings the stand-up angle; her comedy instincts in a panel format have been sharp enough in previous appearances to make her a useful counterweight to the politician-in-the-room energy.
Ian Hislop and Paul Merton require no introduction after 71 series. The chemistry between them -- not warmth exactly, more a shared long-term understanding of what each one is about to do -- is the programme's constant. Everything else, hosts and guests included, operates around that axis.
It has been a particular week for news. That tends to help.
On BBC One at 9pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Hidden Treasures of the National Trust -- BBC Two, 9pm
Hidden Treasures of the National Trust, Series 4. BBC Two at 9pm (9.30pm Wales). Two locations: Snowshill Manor, Gloucestershire; Calke Abbey, Derbyshire. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Series 4 of Hidden Treasures has been operating at the unusual end of the National Trust's portfolio -- the places whose collections suggest their owners had very specific, very intense interests that nobody quite felt able to moderate. Tonight's pair are both in that category, separated by 70 miles and temperamentally by something rather larger.
Snowshill Manor
Snowshill Manor sits in the Cotswolds in the way that Cotswolds manor houses tend to sit: stone, quiet, surrounded by the kind of countryside that appears on biscuit tins. Inside, it is not like that at all.
Charles Wade was the owner who filled it. The series describes him as "not your average Victorian collector," which is the kind of observation that is doing considerable work. The collection Wade assembled across his lifetime at Snowshill runs from old buckets to battle-scarred blades to doorbells to ancient anatomical specimens. He also acquired seven suits of samurai armour -- a holding significant enough that the British Museum has selected the suits for an upcoming exhibition. Before the armour can travel to Bloomsbury, it requires gentle restoration, and that work is happening now.
Objects conservator Mike Flannery is handling the doorbell automation -- a specific task that sits somewhere between historic preservation and mechanical engineering, which is the kind of thing that Hidden Treasures does best: showing the practical reality of what keeping old things alive actually involves. The doorbells are not inherently fascinating objects. The question of what has gone wrong with their mechanism, and what it takes to fix it without damaging what makes them original, is rather more interesting.
The miniature village in the garden is Wade's other claim to the viewer's attention. An exquisite model of a village, built at a scale that takes several minutes of looking to fully register, is the kind of thing that reveals the gap between knowing that a person built it and understanding what that actually required of them.
Calke Abbey
Calke Abbey, 70 miles to the north, offers a different kind of accumulation. The natural history collection there is primarily taxidermy -- the preserved evidence of the natural world that the family who owned Calke gathered across generations. What lifts tonight's Calke segment above the standard collection-documentation mode is the living element alongside the preserved one.
The rare Portland sheep are a conservation project in themselves. Portland sheep are one of Britain's oldest breeds -- small, horned, the kind of animal that was once common and is now maintained by specifically committed breeders and conservation schemes. Calke's flock sits within that tradition, and its presence on the estate gives the episode a living equivalent to the taxidermy: both are acts of preservation, one literal and static, one ongoing and biological.
John Benjamin, honorary jewellery adviser to the National Trust, encounters Calke's jewellery collection and finds it dazzling. Benjamin's eye for what a collection of this kind represents -- not just financially, but historically and aesthetically -- gives the segment a different kind of commentary from the conservation work elsewhere in the episode.
On BBC Two at 9pm (9.30pm Wales). Available on BBC iPlayer.
Aretha Franklin Night -- BBC Four, 9pm
Aretha Franklin Night. BBC Four at 9pm. Double bill: BBC performances collection from 9pm; Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw 1968 from 9.40pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
BBC Four's Friday music slot belongs to Aretha Franklin tonight, and the double bill it has assembled has a specific, memorable centrepiece.
The first film collects Aretha Franklin's BBC performances across her career. They span different eras and different settings, but the one that anchors the collection is the 2015 performance of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" -- the song Carole King wrote, the song Franklin made permanent, the song she performed at the Kennedy Centre Honours ceremony in the presence of President Barack Obama.
Obama cried. The footage of him doing so became one of those clips that circulates in perpetuity, partly because a sitting president visibly moved is newsworthy, partly because what Franklin does in that performance is the kind of thing that is hard to watch without some physical response if you are paying attention. The specific image that has travelled alongside the clip: the moment Franklin sets her fur coat on the floor before she begins. The coat falls with a particular kind of assurance -- not drama, not gesture, but the unselfconscious practical action of a person who is about to do something and needs to be unencumbered. The insouciance of that movement, as tonight's coverage notes, is its own communication.
The 1968 Amsterdam performance
At 9.40pm, the baton passes to Concertgebouw Amsterdam in 1968. The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the world's great concert halls -- renowned for its acoustics, its place in the history of European orchestral music, and the specific quality of attention an audience brings to a room of that kind. Franklin in 1968 was at a specific point in her career: "Respect" had been released the previous year, "Chain of Fools" had followed, and she was at the peak of her commercial and critical standing. Playing in Amsterdam, in a concert hall of that provenance, she belted out the classics.
"Respect" and "Satisfaction" are the two signalled in tonight's listings. "Satisfaction" is, of course, the Rolling Stones song -- Franklin's recording of it is the kind of appropriation that works because it is more interested in the lyric than in the arrangement the original imposed. The Concertgebouw performance is early enough in her catalogue that the performances have the specific energy of an artist who is discovering, in real time, what she is capable of.
On BBC Four at 9pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Gardeners' World -- BBC Two, 8pm
Gardeners' World. BBC Two at 8pm (8.30pm Wales). Monty Don. Simon O'Hagan byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Peak rose season is the exact phrase that Gardeners' World deploys when it wants to signal that things are, for a few weeks, at their most photogenic. Roses in early June in a good year are the kind of subject that does not require much editorial assistance: they photograph well, they smell of the thing people mean when they say they want their garden to smell, and the range of varieties available to the contemporary gardener is extensive enough that the programme could do rose content for several consecutive episodes without running short of material.
Monty Don is in the main garden, solving common rose problems and, alongside the problem-solving, celebrating the roses that are performing as intended. This is the season for both simultaneously -- the roses that are underperforming have usually been dealt with by circumstances that are identifiable and correctable; the roses that are flourishing give the programme its visual case.
Annuals and exotics alongside the roses. The vegetable plot has arrived at the point where lettuce and beetroot can be planted, which is the kind of practical timing information that the programme delivers as a service rather than as content -- a specific recommendation for a specific week, aimed at the viewers who are at the relevant stage in their own gardening.
Gardens further afield
Sue Kent takes the programme on location, visiting a mix of gardens with stories in Penarth -- the coastal town in the Vale of Glamorgan, where the combination of sea air and garden ambition produces the kind of plant collection that makes sense in the specific climate and would not necessarily make the same sense elsewhere.
Brighton gets a visit for a cleverly designed city garden whose contribution to the episode is the small-space argument. The Bedfordshire garden, meanwhile, is the other end of the visual spectrum: one gardener has filled their plot with striking succulents and sun-loving plants, the kind of planting that depends on specific conditions and delivers, in those conditions, a display that most conventional planting would not approach.
On BBC Two at 8pm (8.30pm Wales). Available on BBC iPlayer.
Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches -- Channel 4, 8pm
Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches. Channel 4 at 8pm. Kate Quilton. Johnathon Hughes byline. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Dispatches puts the question that has been sitting in the background of holiday planning since spring, and which the travel industry has been trying not to amplify by saying too clearly: is this summer's holiday actually going to happen?
The Iran conflict has had a specific, measurable effect on the aviation industry. Jet fuel prices have soared in response to the geopolitical situation in the region, and the operational consequence of those costs has been widespread. Thousands of flights have been cancelled -- not as a precautionary measure related to conflict geography, but as an economic response to the cost structure of running an aircraft when fuel prices are at this level. Tour operators are sitting on packages they need to sell; peak season is arriving; the incentive to slash prices and move inventory is real.
Kate Quilton's approach in Dispatches -- and she has been the programme's most effective presenter when the subject matter requires someone to cut through competing commercial and institutional interest -- is to address the questions that holidaymakers actually have rather than the ones that make the clearest documentary structure. The central ones: which destinations are genuinely affected, and which are benefiting from the displacement of demand toward them? Is a last-minute booking now a bargain or a risk? Is a UK staycation the safer bet, and if so, what does that calculation actually look like when you add up what it costs?
The channel has the right timing for this. The Foreign Office travel advice has been moving; the airlines' messaging has been inconsistent; and the people trying to decide whether their August booking is still intact need someone to give them a straight answer.
On Channel 4 at 8pm. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Celebrity Gogglebox -- Channel 4, 9pm
Celebrity Gogglebox, Series 8. Channel 4 at 9pm. 50th episode. Michael Hogan byline. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Celebrity Gogglebox reaches a milestone tonight: the 50th episode of the spin-off, in a series that has now run long enough to develop its own fixed pairs and its own internal dynamics. The eighth series has settled into the format that works -- famous people watching television in their own homes, offering the reactions that the rest of us have when nobody is recording them, except that someone is.
The returning pairs are the architecture of the show: Rylan and his mum Linda, who operate as a unit with a specific and reliable chemistry; Vernon Kay and Paddy McGuinness, whose friendship has the quality of two people who know each other well enough not to need to perform for the cameras; Shaun Ryder and Bez, who bring an approach to television commentary that requires no elaboration; Roman and Martin Kemp, father and son in the same chairs they have occupied across multiple series; Stephen and Anita Mangan; Rob Beckett and Tom Allen, whose comedians-on-the-sofa dynamic has been one of the programme's more consistently funny pairings; Mo Gilligan and Babatunde Aleshe; Denise van Outen and Johnny Vaughan, a pairing that recalls a specific era of British television and has rather more warmth in the retrospective than the era itself sometimes allowed.
New faces are promised. The 50th episode is not a retrospective -- it is a regular episode with a specific number attached to it, which is the correct way to treat that milestone. The show does not need to celebrate itself; the viewers who have watched 50 of these know what it is.
On Channel 4 at 9pm. Available on Channel 4 streaming.
Dolly Parton: Here I Am -- BBC Four, 10.20pm
Dolly Parton: Here I Am. BBC Four at 10.20pm. 2019 documentary. JR byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
The 2019 profile of Dolly Parton returns tonight, and its timing is not incidental. Parton recently cancelled her residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas following reported health issues -- news that landed with the particular weight of Dolly Parton news, which is to say: a great deal of concern from a great many people, because she is one of those figures whose continued presence in the world seems to operate as a kind of reassurance.
The documentary was made in 2019 and covers the full arc of what Parton is: the business brain behind an entertainment operation that she has controlled, built, and extended across six decades; the songwriter whose catalogue is one of the most recorded in country music's history; the feminist whose credentials are embedded in her lyrics rather than stated in her interviews.
"I'm not dumb and I'm not even blonde" is the line that travels, and which the documentary places at or near its beginning. It is the declaration of a person who has spent decades letting people underestimate her and understands, with considerable equanimity, that the underestimation was their problem rather than hers.
The interviews with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin -- Parton's co-stars in Nine to Five, the 1980 film that remains one of the more effective combinations of comedy and feminist critique that American cinema has produced -- offer a specific observation. They never, across the entire shoot, saw her without the wig. The wig is the persona; the persona is not the mask over the person but a considered construction that Parton has been entirely open about building and maintaining. She has explained her aesthetic choices in terms that suggest she finds the boundary between performance and person less troubling than most people do, which is either admirable self-knowledge or evidence of something more complicated. The documentary is wise enough not to decide.
On BBC Four at 10.20pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Bring Them Down ★★★ (15) -- BBC Two, 11pm
Bring Them Down. BBC Two at 11pm. Cert 15. Three stars. Written and directed by Christopher Andrews. Christopher Abbott. Barry Keoghan. Kevin Harley byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
The late-night slot on BBC Two gets a debut feature that is brutal, confident, and has a production history interesting enough to be worth unpacking before you watch the film.
Christopher Andrews wrote and directed Bring Them Down. The original plan was Yorkshire -- the landscapes, the dialect, the specific texture of Northern English agricultural life that British film has visited before and that Andrews presumably had specific reasons for wanting. The production moved to Wicklow when the Irish tax incentive structure made the numbers work better, and the film that emerged mixes its Irish landscapes and Irish dialect to what the review calls "vivid effect." The relocation is not visible as a compromise. The Wicklow hills and the communities that live in and around them are sufficient on their own terms.
The casting changed during production. Paul Mescal and Tom Burke were originally attached and are no longer in the film. These are two actors of significant capability; their absence might have been the thing that made the film lesser. Instead, Andrews replaced them with Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan.
Abbott and Keoghan
Abbott brings menace in the specific register the film requires -- a quality of unpredictability held close, the kind of performance that makes scenes feel like they could become dangerous before they actually do. He is not an actor who announces what he is about to do, which is the only way that quality works in a character whose threat is the film's engine.
Barry Keoghan is described as electric, which is the word reviewers reach for when a performance does something they were not prepared for. Keoghan's range across his career -- from Saltburn to The Banshees of Inisherin to The Killing of a Sacred Deer -- has established him as someone who finds the specific thing a role needs rather than the general thing an actor would supply. In an Irish-set revenge drama, on a film that relocated from England to Ireland, Keoghan is not a shortcut to authenticity. He is a performance.
The sheep puppets
A note on the production that the pre-release material has flagged: the sheep used in the film's agricultural sequences were puppets. This is not, as it sounds, a budget constraint producing an absurd effect -- it is a practical solution to the problem that real sheep have no respect for filming schedules, move unpredictably, and, on the exposed hillside locations the production required, blow away in the wind. Andrews has been candid about the difficulty. The fact that Kevin Harley's review calls it a confident debut from a director to watch suggests the sheep did not damage it.
On BBC Two at 11pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Also worth watching tonight
The Marvellous Miniature Workshop -- BBC One, 7.30pm
Another chance to watch Sara Cox and the team re-create a real-world building in miniature. Tonight's subject is Reading's Central Club, reconstructed at small scale to celebrate Caribbean culture. The programme sits at the intersection of craft documentary and social history, and the Central Club episode is one of its better examples: the building carries a specific community significance, and the miniature version of it requires the makers to get the details right in a way that an invented building would not. On BBC One at 7.30pm (not Scotland or Wales). Available on BBC iPlayer.
Under the Vines -- BBC One, 2pm
Daytime viewing from the New Zealand comedy-drama. The winery's finances are at the mercy of frosty weather, which is the kind of seasonal complication that the series uses to keep the situation precarious without relying on the will-they-won't-they of the central relationship to carry everything. A pleasant hour if the cricket or the cycling haven't claimed you already. On BBC One at 2pm. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Live sport today
England v New Zealand -- 1st Test, Day 2 -- Sky Sports Cricket, 10.15am; highlights BBC Two, 7pm
Day 1 at Lord's established the conditions. Day 2 continues from wherever the stumps were drawn yesterday evening -- the balance of the innings, the number of wickets in hand, the partnership or lack of one that will determine the character of the morning session.
The second day of a Lord's Test is often the day that defines what the match is going to be. The pitch has pace and carries a surface history now; the seamers know its properties in a way they are still learning on Day 1. If the batting side survived the first day with wickets intact, Day 2 is the morning to build; if the bowling side made inroads, it is the morning to press the advantage before the pitch flattens further.
England's squad contains the batting depth to absorb the early losses that Lord's occasionally demands; New Zealand's bowling attack has the capacity to exploit whatever the conditions offer. The toss result from yesterday will be governing a great deal of what happens this morning.
Live on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket from 10.15am BST. Highlights on BBC Two at 7pm.
French Open -- Men's Semi-Finals -- TNT Sports 1, from 1.30pm
Day 13 at Roland Garros. The women's semi-finals were yesterday; today the men play theirs, and the two matches will determine the finalists for Sunday's title decider. The men's draw at Roland Garros in 2026 has produced the kind of outcomes that make the semi-finals genuinely open -- not the situation where the expected names have survived and the final is already written, but one where the clay-specific qualities of the remaining players are being tested against each other in conditions that reward patience and punish aggression that is not precisely timed.
The clay at this stage of the tournament is fourteen days in. The top spin that defines Roland Garros play at full pitch is being met with the defensive retrieval capacity that the best clay-court players develop specifically for this surface and this moment in a long week of competition. Two matches; four players; two places in Sunday's final. Live on TNT Sports 1 from 1.30pm BST.
Women's Giro d'Italia Stage 7 -- Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme -- TNT Sports 3, 2pm
Stage 7 of the Women's Giro d'Italia 2026 runs 159 kilometres from Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme. Sorbolo Mezzani sits in the Po Valley east of Parma; Salice Terme is a spa town in the Oltrepò Pavese wine country south of Pavia, where the Po plain begins to rise toward the Apennines. The stage moves the race out of the flat terrain of the Po basin and into the first climbing of the week, with Salice Terme as a finish that will reward the climbers beginning to establish themselves in the general classification.
Live on TNT Sports 3 from 2pm BST.
Frequently asked questions
What's on TV tonight Friday 5 June 2026?
Friday 5 June 2026 is led by the MasterChef Series 22 finale on BBC One at 8pm -- the 20th anniversary of the current format; Grace Dent and Anna Haugh judge; three contestants cook the best three-course meal of their lives; winner joins the roll call following 2025 champion Harry Maguire; Jane Rackham byline; BBC iPlayer. Sky Atlantic has Ponies double bill at 9pm and 10pm -- Emilia Clarke as Bea (first date with top KGB agent Andrei, Twila's life-saving advice on over-enthusiastic dates), Haley Lu Richardson as Twila (first brush with death in the 10pm episode); Jack Seale byline; Now. BBC One has Have I Got News for You Series 71 finale at 9pm -- David Tennant hosts; Michael Gove and Chloe Petts guests; iPlayer. BBC Two has Hidden Treasures of the National Trust Series 4 at 9pm (9.30pm Wales) -- Snowshill Manor (Charles Wade, seven suits of samurai armour for British Museum, Mike Flannery doorbell) and Calke Abbey (taxidermy, Portland sheep, John Benjamin jewellery); iPlayer. BBC Four has Aretha Franklin Night at 9pm -- 2015 Natural Woman that reduced President Obama to tears, Aretha's fur coat; then at 9.40pm her 1968 Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw performance of Respect and Satisfaction; iPlayer. BBC Two has Gardeners' World at 8pm (8.30pm Wales) -- Monty Don roses, Sue Kent Penarth, Brighton city garden, Bedfordshire succulents; Simon O'Hagan byline; iPlayer. Channel 4 has Will My Summer Holiday be Cancelled? Dispatches at 8pm -- Iran conflict, jet fuel, Kate Quilton; C4 streaming. Channel 4 has Celebrity Gogglebox Series 8 at 9pm -- 50th episode; Rylan and Linda, Vernon Kay and Paddy McGuinness, Rob Beckett and Tom Allen, Michael Hogan byline. BBC Four has Dolly Parton: Here I Am at 10.20pm -- 2019 profile, Caesars Palace cancellation, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin; iPlayer. BBC Two has Bring Them Down (cert 15, three stars) at 11pm -- Christopher Andrews, Christopher Abbott, Barry Keoghan, Wicklow; iPlayer. England v New Zealand 1st Test Day 2 is live at Lord's on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Cricket from 10.15am; highlights BBC Two 7pm. French Open Men's Semi-Finals are on TNT Sports 1 from 1.30pm. Women's Giro d'Italia Stage 7 Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme 159km is on TNT Sports 3 from 2pm.
What time is the MasterChef final 2026 and who are the judges?
The MasterChef Series 22 final airs on BBC One at 8pm on Friday 5 June 2026. It is the series finale and the 20th anniversary of the current format. Judges are Grace Dent and Anna Haugh, who took over from John Torode and Gregg Wallace in 2025. Three contestants prepare the best three-course meal of their lives. The winner joins the roll call following 2025 champion Harry Maguire. Jane Rackham has the byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
What is Ponies about tonight on Sky Atlantic?
Ponies is on Sky Atlantic tonight in a double bill at 9pm and 10pm on Friday 5 June 2026, available on Now. Emilia Clarke plays Bea and Haley Lu Richardson plays Twila -- CIA operatives in Moscow, 1977. In the 9pm episode, Bea goes on her first date since being widowed; the man is Andrei, a top KGB agent, who will be severely miffed if he works out she is not really Russian. Twila gives Bea advice on handling a man who is more enthusiastic about a new relationship than you are -- at home that would be depressing, but here it could be life-saving. In the 10pm episode, the grin is wiped off Twila's face as she endures her first brush with death. Jack Seale byline.
Who hosts Have I Got News for You tonight and what series is it?
Have I Got News for You Series 71 finale airs on BBC One at 9pm on Friday 5 June 2026. David Tennant hosts the last episode of Series 71. Permanent team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton are joined by guests Michael Gove and Chloe Petts. Available on BBC iPlayer.
Where does Hidden Treasures of the National Trust film tonight?
Hidden Treasures of the National Trust Series 4 films at two locations on BBC Two at 9pm (9.30pm Wales) on Friday 5 June 2026. The first is Snowshill Manor in the Cotswolds -- an extraordinary collection of curiosities assembled by Charles Wade, "not your average Victorian collector," including old buckets, battle-scarred blades, doorbells, ancient anatomy, seven suits of samurai armour, and an exquisite miniature village in the garden. The armour has been selected for a British Museum exhibition and needs gentle restoration; objects conservator Mike Flannery is working on the doorbell automation. The second location is Calke Abbey, Derbyshire, with a collection of natural history items (mainly taxidermy), a living conservation flock of rare Portland sheep, and a jewellery collection that dazzles honorary National Trust jewellery adviser John Benjamin. Available on BBC iPlayer.
What is Aretha Franklin Night on BBC Four tonight?
Aretha Franklin Night airs on BBC Four at 9pm on Friday 5 June 2026. The double bill opens with a collection of Aretha Franklin's BBC performances, including her 2015 rendition of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" -- the performance that reduced President Barack Obama to tears; look out for the moment she throws her fur coat to the floor. At 9.40pm: her 1968 performance at Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, including "Respect" and "Satisfaction." Available on BBC iPlayer.
Why is Dolly Parton: Here I Am airing on BBC Four tonight?
Dolly Parton: Here I Am, a 2019 documentary, airs on BBC Four at 10.20pm on Friday 5 June 2026 as a timely repeat following health issues that caused Parton to cancel her Caesars Palace residency in Las Vegas. The film covers her business brain, legendary songwriting, and feminist streak. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin reveal they never once saw her without her trademark wig. Available on BBC iPlayer.
What is Bring Them Down on BBC Two tonight?
Bring Them Down airs on BBC Two at 11pm on Friday 5 June 2026. Cert 15, three stars. Written and directed by Christopher Andrews, it is a brutal revenge drama using Irish landscapes and dialect -- Andrews originally planned Yorkshire but relocated to Wicklow for tax incentives. Paul Mescal and Tom Burke were originally cast; their replacements are Christopher Abbott (menace) and Barry Keoghan (electric). The sheep puppets used in production tended to blow away in the wind. Kevin Harley byline. Available on BBC iPlayer.
What time are the French Open Men's Semi-Finals today?
The French Open Men's Semi-Finals are live on TNT Sports 1 from 1.30pm BST on Friday 5 June 2026, at Roland Garros, Paris. Day 13 of the 2026 French Open. Two semi-final matches determine the finalists for Sunday's men's singles final. The 2026 French Open runs from 24 May to 7 June.
What is the Women's Giro d'Italia Stage 7 today?
Women's Giro d'Italia 2026 Stage 7 runs from Sorbolo Mezzani to Salice Terme, covering 159 kilometres. The stage moves the race out of the Po Valley and toward the Apennine foothills, finishing at the spa town of Salice Terme in the Oltrepò Pavese wine country. Live on TNT Sports 3 from 2pm BST on Friday 5 June 2026.
Tonight's final word
Friday 5 June has a clear centrepiece at 8pm on BBC One. The MasterChef Series 22 finale is also an anniversary: twenty years of the current format, now in its first year under new judges, with the question of what the show is becoming sitting alongside the question of who wins tonight. Grace Dent and Anna Haugh have had one series to establish themselves; the finale is the first real evidence of how the audience has come to feel about the change. Three contestants cooking the best meal of their lives in a kitchen they know well is the format at its most demanding and its most honest.
Sky Atlantic's double bill of Ponies at 9pm and 10pm is the evening's other occasion. The series has been running at a level that 96% on Rotten Tomatoes suggests, and tonight it pushes both characters into territory that matters: Bea on a date that could end her operation; Twila discovering that the fearlessness she has been running on has physical limits. Two hours of that, back to back, is a Friday evening well spent.
BBC Four's Aretha Franklin tribute at 9pm is the right programme for the right slot. The 2015 Natural Woman performance is one of those pieces of television that has been watched so many times it has become almost abstract -- except that it isn't, and watching the original in full rather than in the circulating clip version reminds you why it travels. Then Dolly Parton at 10.20pm: a timely repeat, and not a lesser one for being a repeat.
Hidden Treasures at 9pm on BBC Two has Charles Wade's samurai armour and the Portland sheep at Calke, which is more than sufficient. HIGNFY closes Series 71 with David Tennant at 9pm on BBC One. Bring Them Down arrives at 11pm on BBC Two with Barry Keoghan and a wind problem involving puppet sheep.
Check what's on right now, browse tonight's highlights, or find any channel through the full channels list. Yesterday: Thursday 4 June 2026.