TV guide: 12 of the best new shows to watch, beginning tonight

The Money List

Sunday, RTÉ1, 8pm

Baz Ashmawy presents a new quizshow that’s all about the money. Two teams compete to fill in the missing answers on a list and win loads of money – sounds easy, right? Give me a pen. But it’s not that straightforward. Before the teams fill in their lists – whether it’s US presidents or Madonna hits – they have to make a bid on how many correct answers they reckon they can get. If they get the required number correct they win that round. Then there’s a second stage, where each correct answer brings you one step up the money ladder towards a top prize of €15,000 (no, not a million – those days are over). But one wrong answer can send you tumbling down that ladder to zero.

Baz Ashmawy presents The Money List. Photograph: Andres Poveda

Boiling Point

Sunday, BBC1, 9pm

Stephen Graham and Vinette Robinson star in this drama series set in the cut-throat world of the restaurant kitchen. It’s a TV sequel to the Bafta-nominated 2021 film, also starring Graham and Robinson, which was filmed in one shot. The series picks up after the film ends, and finds Carly (Robinson) taking on the role of head chef in her new restaurant amid a crisis in the hospitality industry. Meanwhile, Andy (Graham) is recovering from his heart attack, but his mental health is taking a lot longer to bounce back.

Love in the Country

Monday, RTÉ2, 9.30pm

Anna Geary presents this dating show with rural twist, in which six single people living and working in remote parts of Ireland are on the hunt for someone who’s up for getting it together in the country. These country lads and lasses may not be city slickers, but they’ve got busy lives and little time for commuting up to Coppers or heading to the matchmaking festival at Lisdoon. Can Anna help them hook up with a like-minded soul who doesn’t mind getting a bit of silage on their soles? First up is 20-year-old Alanagh Loftus, who is a student and sheep farmer in Roscommon.

Union with David Olusoga

Monday, BBC2, 9pm

So, I hear you ask: how did Britain come to be created? Historian and writer David Olusoga is here with the answers in this four-part series, as he takes us back to the early 17th century, when King James decided that a big merger of his two kingdoms of Scotland and England was a great idea. James got the buy-in from the Welsh, but MPs in parliament were opposed to the plan. Around the same time, the plantation of Ulster began, and Olusoga traces events leading up to the Irish rebellion of 1641, from the perspective of a Protestant settler family, and shows how the legacy of the conflict still resonates in Northern Ireland today.

Tuesday, Channel 4, 9.30pm

It was inevitable, I suppose – Channel 4 has made a film about the notorious Covid-era carousing at Number 10 Downing Street, where staff and politicians partied hearty while the rest of the nation suffered through lockdown, an appalling death toll from coronavirus and ordinary people isolated from their dying loved ones. The trailer shows Boris Johnson urging people to stay at home and just say no if their friends ask to meet up, cut with footage of frenzied booze-ups and karaoke parties, as staff and politicians stuck two fingers up to the nation and downed another two fingers of tipple. Methinks the party scenes might be a tad exaggerated, but the human cost of Covid is certainly not overstated.

Juice

Tuesday, BBC1, 11.35pm

Mawaan Rizwan’s hit series reaches its final episode, but no doubt he’ll be back for a second series of this raucous comedy based on Rizwan’s 2018 Edinburgh Fringe show. The series takes us down the rabbit-hole and into the madcap mind of Jamma, a kiddult with a chaotic life who can’t go through a day without sparking another big disaster, like a gay Pakistani version of Frank Spencer. His family are okay with his sexuality – they just wish he wasn’t such a weirdo. Meanwhile, his therapist boyfriend Guy (Russell Tovey) is finding Jamma’s pathological commitment-phobia a bit of a headwreck. Jamma’s mum and bruv are played by his real-life mother and brother.

Payback

Wednesday, UTV, 9pm

Lexie Noble is living an ideal family life in Edinburgh, which is of course the first sign that something awful is about to happen that will threaten everything she holds dear. What she doesn’t realise is that her wonderful home life is being financed by local crimelord Cal Morris, who has hired her accountant husband Jared to launder his illegal earnings. Soon Lexie is forced into working for Morris, but the police are watching Jared’s every move, and are ready to use Lexie and her family to catch the ganglord. Morven Christie plays Lexie, with Peter Mullan as Morris.

Fools for Love?

Wednesday, RTÉ1, 9.35pm

It’s a jungle out there in the online dating world, with anyone who ventures in there without being prepared could find themselves targeted by toxic trolls, abusers and romance scammers. Journalist Aoife Moore delves into this dark realm of dating to find out how online predators exploit vulnerable people’s need for love and companionship, and gets advice from experts on how to protect ourselves in this relentlessly hostile environment. Moore meets people who have had first-hand experience of dating scams, explicit online abuse and revenge porn, including a woman who discovered the man she had met on Tinder and had been dating for a year also had several other Tinder girlfriends on the go.

Tarrthálaithe na hÉireann

Thursday, TG4, 8pm

Ireland has beautiful coastlines and mountains, but they can also be treacherous places, and in this series we meet brave and rescue teams around the country tasked with saving lives around our coasts and on our peaks. In this first episode, we relive the incredible story of Sara Feeney and Eimear Glynn, who found themselves swept out to sea while paddleboarding off the Galway coast. The nation was gripped as rescue teams searched for the two women. We also meet the team from Valentia Coastguard in Co Kerry, the country’s longest-established coastguard station.

Donal’s Feasts, Fasts and Festivals

Thursday, RTÉ1, 10.15pm

For many religions around the world, food and food preparation are an integral part of their faith, and chef Donal Skehan is on a culinary trip to find out how people express their devotion at the dinner table. In this second episode, Skehan sits with a Muslim family as they break their fast during Eid al-Fitr, at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Skehan also helps a Romanian Orthodox family as they prepare a lavish Easter feast, and joins a Hindu family as they celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights.

Ghosts

Friday, BBC1, 8.30pm

It’s the fifth series of the spooky comedy series about a couple who move into an old country house and find themselves sharing the space with a motley crew of ghosts from various periods of history. As the new series begins, Mike and Alison are dealing with the fallout from the gatehouse fire and the loss of their B&B business, and having a serious discussion about their failing finances. But don’t worry, the ghostly laughs won’t be far behind, as Alison plots her revenge on the ghosts for their macabre April Fool’s joke, and Mike gets an unexpected visit from the insurance company about the fire.

The Fast and the Farmer-ish

Friday, BBC1, 7.30pm

The dust may have settled on the ploughing championships, but things are about to churn up again as series two of the badly punning ploughing contest begins. Six farming teams from around Britain and Northern Ireland jump into their supersize tractors and face off in a race through the fields that will literally make the earth tremble. Farmer and social media star Tom Pemberton hosts the contest, with gamesmaster Jimmy setting some gargantuan challenges for the teams, which include Fermanagh lads Stephen and Niall, who will be looking to repeat the success of fellow Fermanagh team The Bogmen, who scooped the prize in series one.