The 10 best TV shows to watch this week, from Ripley to MasterChef

Renegade Nell

Friday 29 March, Disney+

Sally Wainwright – the writer behind Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack and Last Tango in Halifax – is known for her strong, implacable women, and her new series about a formidable highwaywoman is no different. Louisa Harland (best known as Orla in Derry Girls) is Nell Jackson, a swashbuckling bright spark who finds herself on the run when she’s falsely accused of murder. Responsible for her younger sisters after their father’s death, Nell turns to robbing the rich to survive – but that’s not her only problem, as a strange pixie-like creature called Billy Bland (Nick Mohammed in full Mr Swallow mode) arrives to lead her on a journey to a higher, magical destiny.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Friday 29 March, Paramount+

It’s perhaps a strange time to release a series sympathetic to a Russian aristocrat, but that’s exactly what Ewan McGregor’s new drama is. He plays Count Alexander Rostov, a nobleman who, in 1922, escapes the Bolshevik death penalty after it is discovered he once wrote a poem in support of a revolution. Instead of a bullet to the head, he’s exiled to a tatty attic room of a lavish hotel where he’s left to languish away from the toils and troubles of the upheaval spreading through Russia. Over the next 16 years he befriends a crew of hotel residents, including a young piano prodigy, a prince, and a one-eyed cat.

The Famous Five

Friday 29 March, 5.30pm, BBC iPlayer and CBBC

All the worry over the reboot of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series going “woke” ended up being nonsense when the first episode arrived over Christmas. The second – Peril on the Night Train – is just as charming. We’re in 1939 and Uncle Quentin is tinkering over his invention, a proto computer he’s dubbed the Algebra Engine, powerful enough to help Britain finally win the war. George, Julian, Dick, Anne and dog Timmy take it upon themselves to deliver the computer to the Secret Intelligence Service’s top-secret facility in Scotland on the sleeper train – but so are others who want to use the computer for their own evil.

Pilgrimage: The Road Through North Wales

Friday 29 March, 9pm, BBC Two

If I were one of the seven celebrities embarking on the BBC’s annual Easter pilgrimage this year, I’d be a bit miffed – previous treks have travelled through Portugal, Italy and Chile; this one is in… North Wales. That was until I saw the stunning Welsh scenery, of course – who needs sun when you’ve got Snowdonia’s peaks? Spencer Matthews, Christine McGuinness, Eshaan Akbar, Tom Rosenthal, and Sonali Shah are among the famous faces following the route linked by churches dedicated to early Celtic Christian saints, sharing their own experiences of faith along the way.

Mammals

Sunday 31 March, 7pm, BBC One

A bank holiday weekend calls for relaxing nature documentaries, and David Attenborough is back on the BBC with a new series just in time. Each of the six episodes will chart how mammals have adapted and evolved over the past 66 million years to become some of the most intelligent animals on Earth. Sunday’s opening episode focuses on how certain mammals have developed skills and senses to allow them to thrive in the dark, from the Etruscan shrew – the smallest land mammal in the world – which uses its sensitive whiskers to hunt, to the greater bulldog bats of Trinidad that have learned how to fish.

Paul O’Grady’s Great Elephant Adventure

Sunday 31 March, 8pm, ITV1

Before his death this time last year, Paul O’Grady swapped dogs for elephants, travelling through Thailand and Laos meeting the friendly giants that have been rescued and rehabilitated by specialist conservation centres. He begins in the hills near Chiang Mai – the “elephant capital” of Thailand – where the Elephant Nature Park, home to 116 elephants who have been saved from a hard life in the tourist industry or working in the logging industry. It’s difficult to hear how the elephants have been mistreated – especially for animal lover Paul – but ultimately uplifting to see them finally cared for and loved in their old age.

This Town

Sunday 31 March, 9pm, BBC One

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has just announced that the long-awaited film of his Brummy gangster drama will start filming later this year (with Cillian Murphy reprising his role as Tommy Shelby). But first, Knight’s latest series transports us to 80s Birmingham, when youth culture was taking over and the city’s music scene was exploding. We experience the period through the eyes of four young musicians (all played by relatively unknown actors) who form a band against the backdrop of unrest and violence.

MasterChef

Monday 1 April, 6.30pm, BBC One

Monday’s opening episode marks an impressive 20 series of the amateur version of MasterChef. There are 58 competing chefs this year, each hoping to impress judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace with their home-honed skills in the kitchen. The first six cooks up to the plate are tasked with a brand-new challenge, Back to Basics, in which they must take an everyday ingredient and turn it into something truly spectacular. To secure a spot in the quarter finals, they’ll then have to make one of Gregg’s favourite dishes of all time – potato gnocchi.

Royal Autopsy

Tuesday 2 April, 9pm, Sky History

Professor Alice Roberts and Home Office pathologist Brett Lockyer return with a new series dissecting (not literally) the deaths of various monarchs throughout history. First up is George IV, otherwise known as “the party king”. Ruling for 10 years from 1820 until he death, George IV was famously overweight and spent his time drinking and squandering his money on lavish celebrations. But was it really his excessive lifestyle that really caused his demise?

Ripley

Thursday 3 April, Netflix

Andrew Scott is having quite the moment, following a Golden Globe-nominated turn in All of Us Strangers. His next role sees him take on Patricia Highsmith’s con artist Tom Ripley as he skulks about 1960s New York, scraping a living by ripping people off. He senses an opportunity to make a lot of money when he’s approached by a millionaire who wants Ripley to travel to Italy and convince his nomadic son to return home. But the story behind the man’s escape from the US is much darker than anticipated, and soon Ripley is embroiled in a world of deceit, fraud and murder.