TV Guide UK Tonight: Fri 17 Apr 2026 – Missed Call Finale, Beyond Paradise & Prince Night

Published: 13 April 2026

Friday has a clear emotional centrepiece this week. Missed Call reaches its finale on Channel 5 at 9pm, with Joanna Scanlan’s Sarah finally getting the answers she’s been chasing across rural France all week — assuming, of course, that the answers are what she wants them to be. Elsewhere, Beyond Paradise continues its Friday run on BBC One at 8pm, Cadbury vs McVitie’s: Battle of the Biscuits takes on the chocolate digestive wars on Channel 4 at 8pm, and BBC Four devotes its entire evening to Prince from 9pm. Bill Bailey’s portrait series gets one more outing at 7.30pm on BBC One, and The Young Offenders returns to Cork at 9.30pm for more reliably chaotic comedy.

Quick Picks: Tonight’s Best

• Missed Call Finale ⭐ — Channel 5, 9pm — Episode 5 of 5. All the answers, finally. Scanlan at her best
• Beyond Paradise — BBC One, 8pm — Friday night Devon detective. Shipton Abbott has another mystery
• Prince Night — BBC Four, 9pm — Archive performances, live concerts. A proper music evening
• Cadbury vs McVitie’s — Channel 4, 8pm — Battle of the biscuits. More interesting than you’d think
• The Young Offenders — BBC One, 9.30pm — Cork. Chaos. Conor and Jock. Reliable
• First Dates — Channel 4, 10pm — Series 25. Fred Sirieix back behind the bar
• Extraordinary Portraits — BBC One, 7.30pm — Bill Bailey. Emotional portrait reveal

Early Evening

Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey – BBC One, 7.30pm

Bill Bailey’s portrait series has been quietly winning audiences over since it started — partly because Bailey is a more thoughtful and generous presenter than his comedy persona might suggest, and partly because the format is genuinely moving when it works. Tonight’s subject has been matched with an artist who takes a more unconventional approach to the brief than most portrait painters would dare, and the reveal at the end is, by all accounts, the kind of television that gets people reaching for their phones to tell someone to put it on.

The show works best when the artist takes a creative risk and it pays off. Tonight that appears to be exactly what happens. Don’t miss the last ten minutes. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Unreported World – Channel 4, 7.30pm

Channel 4’s foreign affairs strand occupies the same 7.30pm slot it held last week, and as ever it’s reporting on something that the mainstream news cycle has largely decided isn’t worth twenty seconds. It’s the kind of programme you forget you watched until three days later when you’re still thinking about it. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

Prime Time

Gardeners’ World – BBC Two, 8pm

BBC Two’s flagship gardening show continues from Longmeadow with Frances Tophill and Joe Swift doing what the programme does every spring — putting whatever the weather has been doing into context, suggesting what you should probably be planting now even if you haven’t, and visiting a garden somewhere in the country that makes you feel briefly inadequate about your own. April is when the show hits its natural rhythm, and the seasonal advice at this point in the year is actually useful rather than theoretical. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Beyond Paradise – BBC One, 8pm

Humphrey and Martha are back in Shipton Abbott, which continues to be a remarkably dangerous small Devon town by any statistical measure. The new episode brings another mystery that only really makes sense if you accept that Shipton Abbott’s murder rate per capita would be a major incident anywhere else in the country — but that’s the deal with this kind of drama, and Beyond Paradise has always been upfront about the genre contract it’s operating under.

It’s a reliable programme. Not the most demanding hour on the schedule, but that’s rarely what Friday at 8pm on BBC One is there to provide. Humphrey’s particular method of working things out — by appearing not to work things out at all — remains the engine of it, and Devon itself does half the heavy lifting, which the writers probably didn’t expect but won’t complain about. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Cadbury vs McVitie’s: Battle of the Biscuits – Channel 4, 8pm

Following on from last week’s Primark vs John Lewis documentary in the same slot, Channel 4 turns its consumer journalism instincts towards a rivalry that turns out to have more behind it than the biscuit tin suggests. The question of who owns the chocolate digestive as a concept — who makes the definitive version, whose factory tour is more interesting, whose brand heritage means anything to consumers actually standing in front of a supermarket shelf — takes the documentary into territory that’s more about marketing, nostalgia, and brand loyalty than anyone who clicked on for biscuits might expect.

The format works because both companies have genuine histories worth exploring, and the tension between them is real rather than manufactured. Whether you emerge with a strong opinion about chocolate digestives that you didn’t have before is between you and the tin. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

9pm: The Finale

Missed Call ⭐ – Channel 5, 9pm (SERIES FINALE)

Five episodes. Five nights. One question: where is Katie, and what happened to her?

Joanna Scanlan has been carrying this thriller from the moment Sarah arrived in rural France looking for her daughter and found a wall of polite obstruction where she’d expected help. The series has been a study in a particular kind of dread — the dread of being right about something that everyone around you is treating as an overreaction. Sarah has been right. The question has always been about exactly how right she is, and whether the truth, when it comes, is something she can do anything with.

Episode 5 has to answer everything, and five-part dramas that have been building across a week tend to go one of two ways: they either deliver an ending that justifies the structure, or they get so tangled in the revelations that the payoff collapses under its own weight. Scanlan has been outstanding throughout — the kind of performance where the stillness tells you more than the dialogue. Tonight finds out whether the writing is at her level. Catch up via My5.

Prince Night – BBC Four, 9pm

BBC Four giving an entire evening over to one artist is something it does particularly well, and Prince is an obvious choice for the treatment. The archive material available — Montreux performances, live concerts from the peak years, the run of work from 1982 through to the late nineties — is extraordinary, and this is the kind of television where the curation matters as much as the footage.

If you’ve never sat down with a BBC Four music night before, the format is straightforward: a themed block of performances and documentary content that tends to run until past midnight. Two hours barely scratches Prince’s catalogue, but two hours of archive Prince on a Friday night? That’s not a hard sell. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

The Young Offenders – BBC One, 9.30pm

Conor and Jock have returned to Cork and, as is traditional, brought trouble with them. The Irish sitcom has maintained its quality better than most comedies that have run this long, largely because the leads are still finding new ways to be catastrophically bad at everything they attempt whilst remaining entirely convincing as people who think they’re nearly pulling it off.

The show’s sense of place is part of what keeps it working — Cork as a character in itself, resistant to the lads’ ambitions, always ready to put them back where they started. Whatever the plan is tonight, it will not go as planned. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Late Night

The Assembly – ITV1, 10pm

The Assembly’s format — young people with learning disabilities interviewing a celebrity guest — continues to produce television that’s different enough from the usual late-night interview show to be genuinely interesting. The questions tend to be the ones professional interviewers have been trained not to ask, which is both the point and the value. Tonight’s guest will find out, as everyone who sits down with The Assembly finds out, that the format is harder to manage than it looks. Catch up via ITVX.

First Dates – Channel 4, 10pm (SERIES 25)

Fred Sirieix is back for another round of strangers sitting across a table from each other and trying to work out, in real time, whether they like what they find. Series 25 has been running through April and the matchmaking remains, if anything, more specific than it has any right to be. People arrive hoping for one thing and leave with something else entirely, which is basically the show’s entire premise at this point. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

The Viewing Schedule

What’s On Streaming

BBC iPlayer: Beyond Paradise, Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey, The Young Offenders, Gardeners’ World, Prince Night
Channel 4 streaming: Cadbury vs McVitie’s: Battle of the Biscuits, Unreported World, First Dates Series 25
My5: Missed Call (series finale and all previous episodes)
ITVX: The Assembly

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EastEnders on tonight (Friday 17 April 2026)?

No, EastEnders does not air on Fridays. The soap runs Monday to Thursday only on BBC One. If you’ve missed any episodes from earlier this week, catch up on BBC iPlayer.

What time is Missed Call on Channel 5 tonight?

Missed Call is on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight (Friday 17 April 2026). It’s episode 5 of 5 — the series finale of Joanna Scanlan’s five-night thriller set in rural France. Sarah finally gets the answers about her missing daughter Katie. All this week’s episodes are available on My5.

What time is Beyond Paradise on BBC One tonight?

Beyond Paradise is on BBC One at 8pm tonight (Friday 17 April 2026). Humphrey and Martha are back in Shipton Abbott with a new mystery to solve. The regular Friday night drama slot on BBC One continues. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What is Prince Night on BBC Four tonight?

Prince Night is on BBC Four from 9pm tonight (Friday 17 April 2026). BBC Four is devoting the evening to Prince’s music, with archive performances, live concerts, and interviews. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is The Young Offenders on BBC One tonight?

The Young Offenders is on BBC One at 9.30pm tonight (Friday 17 April 2026). Conor and Jock are back in Cork, and the latest episode continues the current series of the BBC One sitcom. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is First Dates on Channel 4 tonight?

First Dates Series 25 is on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight (Friday 17 April 2026). Fred Sirieix is back as host as a new set of singles sit down for dinner. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

What’s the best thing to watch on TV tonight (Friday 17 April 2026)?

Missed Call on Channel 5 at 9pm is the event television of the evening — the series finale of Joanna Scanlan’s five-night thriller arrives and all the answers about what happened to Katie in France are finally revealed. For reliable Friday drama beforehand, Beyond Paradise is on BBC One at 8pm. For a completely different kind of evening, Prince Night on BBC Four from 9pm is a proper archive music treat. And Cadbury vs McVitie’s: Battle of the Biscuits on Channel 4 at 8pm is the kind of consumer documentary that ends up being more gripping than anyone expected.

Final Verdict

Missed Call is the night’s standout. Joanna Scanlan has been exceptional across the five-episode run, and the finale is where all of that patient, understated performance either pays off or doesn’t. The Channel 5 thriller has been better than most people gave it credit for going in. Tonight finds out if it sticks the landing.

Beyond Paradise at 8pm on BBC One is the reliable choice if you just want a solid Friday night drama that doesn’t demand much from you. It delivers exactly what it promises and does it well.

For music fans, Prince Night on BBC Four from 9pm is exactly the kind of thing BBC Four was built for. Put it on and leave it on.

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