Top Gear (BBC 1/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Sunday 11th October 2020)

Freddie Flintoff, Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness each buy a sporty insurance write-off for £6,000 and take part in three challenges at the programme’s test track before they’re ordered to make their cars road legal and report to Alexandra Palace, where the producers have constructed a monstrous Wall of Death. The trio also celebrate the era of the 200mph supercar by going on a road trip in a Ferrari F40, a Lamborghini Diablo, and a Jaguar XJ220.

Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime (BBC 2/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Sunday 11th October 2020)

Michael Palin looks back on the making of Pole to Pole, in which he travelled along a single line of longitude across the USSR, Africa and finally into Antarctica. Along the way, he paid a visit to Chernobyl and gained an insight into the last days of the Soviet Union. His travels across Africa led to an encounter with some fellow globetrotters from his home town of Sheffield – but he was forced to make a detour when his planned route passed through a war zone.

Enslaved with Samuel L. Jackson (BBC 2/HD | 9:00pm to 10:00pm | Sunday 11th October 2020)

A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World, from the perspective of three different storylines. In the first episode, the actor travels to Gabon on the west coast of central Africa, where captives were herded onto ships.

Enslaved with Samuel L. Jackson (BBC 2/HD | 10:00pm to 11:00pm | Sunday 11th October 2020)

A look at 400 years of human trafficking from Africa to the New World, from the perspective of three different storylines. The team continue their detailed examination of how 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas.

Saving Lives at Sea (BBC 2/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Tuesday 13th October 2020)

In Essex, the crew at Walton and Frinton gets an unusual mayday call to a ship called HMS Pickle. Arriving on scene, they discover it is not the modern naval vessel they expected, but a replica of a ship that once served in Nelson’s fleet, and though the original survived the battle of Trafalgar, this one is shipping water and sinking fast. On the east coast of Scotland, the crew at Anstruther faces a tricky rescue trying to extract a walker with a badly broken leg from a remote coastal path. And in the Shannon basin in Ireland, the volunteers at one of the RNLI’s few inland stations at Lough Derg are woken in the early hours of the morning by their pagers – cries for help have been heard coming from the 40-mile-long lake. After launching into inky darkness and thick fog, the crew make an eerie discovery.

The Grand Party Hotel (BBC 1/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Thursday 15th October 2020)

Laurence asks Kris to fight in a charity boxing match to raise cash for a homeless shelter. Can he make the leap from mild-mannered hotel manager to prizefighter? VIP guest Louise Brookes checks in, asking for the same room she stayed in 175 times while she attended the inquest into the Hillsborough disaster, and Ciara launches a new competition to promote weddings at the hotel.

Secret Scotland (Channel 5/HD | 8:00pm to 9:00pm | Friday 16th October 2020)

The comedian explores Grampian and the Central Highlands, going behind the region’s most iconic sights to see what the tourists miss – and unearth the hidden gems in her home country. She begins her journey in Perthshire at Blair Castle, which has a unique claim to fame as the home of Europe’s only private army. From there, Susan travels to Invergordon, where she goes underground to explore an amazing feat of wartime engineering and the home of a world record-breaking echo. In the Cairngorms, the comedian meets a special and charming group of animals – Britain’s only wild reindeer herd.

All TV guide information taken from DigiGuide — www.getdigiguide.tv/?p=1&r=15119.