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TV tonight: an emergency services worker does terrible things in Glasgow-set thriller

The Control Room

Sunday, 9pm, BBC One

Gabe (Iain De Caestecker) is a bit of an everyday hero in his work as an emergency call handler in Glasgow – grateful parents have even named their newborns after him. But – with this being a thriller – the good guy is soon forced to do bad things when he answers a desperate call. Gabe’s past catches up with him in the form of childhood sweetheart Sam (Joanna Vanderham) who needs a hand with shifting something that she, well, definitely shouldn’t be shifting. Over three pacy if somewhat clunkily written daily episodes, Gabe is confronted with things he’d rather forget, and we helplessly watch on as his life is turned upside down. Hollie Richardson

Better Things

10.15pm, BBC Two

Pamela Adlon’s Emmy-nominated comedy-drama about an LA actor juggling her career with looking after three daughters strides into its fifth season, kicking off with a double bill. It’s a busy – and emotional – day for Sam (Adlon): she helps her eldest Max (Mikey Madison) find an apartment, tells her mother Phil (Celia Imrie) about their family’s shocking genealogy findings, and celebrates a family friend getting into Harvard with a vat of sake. HR

Murder in Provence

8pm, ITV

Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll are romantic partners-cum-sleuths Antoine Verlaque and Marine Bonnet, investigating the seamier side of Aix-en-Provence with the help of detective friend Hélène (Keala Settle). Tonight, in a new series adapted from the novels of ML Longworth, their plans for a weekend break are gazumped after a murder at the local university. Ali Catterall

BBC Proms 2022

8pm, BBC Four

Summer means Proms and perennial conductor John Wilson is making his return with an all-British programme. He will perform with the recently relaunched Sinfonia of London, who will play favourites including Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis as well as pieces from Huw Watkins, Arnold Bax and William Walton. Henry Wong


Paul Hollywood Eats Mexico

9pm, Channel 4

Fresh cactus, mindblowing chilli, the perfect taco, and a scorpion or two – just a few of the dishes that end up on the baker man’s plate during a road trip of discovery in Mexico. Among the highlights: a visit to the world’s most dangerous firework festival and (more unexpectedly) a mining town obsessed with Cornish pasties. AC

Walter Presents: Four Strangers

11pm, Channel 4

Another excellent foreign-language drama; this time a dark thriller from Croatia. In Zagreb, a quartet of people – all from different backgrounds but facing similar levels of jeopardy – are caught up in the aftermath of a brutal event. When the police start asking awkward questions, unlikely alliances start to emerge. Phil Harrison

Film choice

Martha Marcy May Marlene, 9pm, Great! Movies

Sarah Paulson and Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene.
Sarah Paulson and Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy

The role that made Elizabeth Olsen a star wasn’t as a cog in the Marvel machine, it was as a young woman on the edge in Sean Durkin’s unsettling 2011 drama. Olsen plays Martha, who flees a commune run by the softly spoken but abusive Patrick (John Hawkes) and hides out with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy) at their lakeside home. As her time in the cult is slowly revealed, Martha’s difficulty in adjusting to “normal” life – and paranoia that Patrick and his acolytes will track her down – makes her lose control. A sense of unease suffuses the film, from the whistling drone of the soundtrack to Martha’s intimations of danger, which may or may not be real. Simon Wardell

Monsters, Inc, 5.10pm, BBC One

Pete Docter’s animated comedy is up there with the finest in the Pixar canon, and features some of the most infectious laughter in cinema (courtesy of two-and-a-half-year-old Mary Gibbs). Billy Crystal and John Goodman voice Mike and Sully, residents of Monstropolis employed to hide in bedrooms at night and jump out at human children, whose screams then power the city (“We scare because we care”). But then a young girl, Boo (Gibbs), upends everything they know. A sheer joy, even without the slam dunk of a kid running around giggling. SW

Little Women, 6.30pm, Channel 4

Saoirse Ronan in Little Women.
Saoirse Ronan in Little Women. Photograph: Atlaspix/Alamy

Louisa May Alcott’s oft-filmed novel about the four March sisters of 19th-century Massachusetts might seem old hat. But writer-director Greta Gerwig draws out its modern relevance while retaining much of the original text. Debates about women’s roles – domestically, financially, creatively – are ever-present as Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) seek their different places in the world. Pick your favourite and relax into some quality costume drama. SW

Live sport

International One-Day Cricket: England v India, 10.30am, Sky Sports Cricket Heather Knight leads England in the third and final ODI in the series from Old Trafford.