TV Guide UK Tonight: Sun 30 Aug 2026 – Vigil, Trigger Point & 24 Hours in Police Custody

Published: 29 August 2026

Sunday 30 August 2026. Two returning dramas open at exactly the same minute: BBC One starts a third series of Vigil, and ITV1 starts a third series of Trigger Point. Channel 4 puts 24 Hours in Police Custody in the same slot for good measure. Coronation Street says goodbye to Nina at 8.30pm. EastEnders doesn’t air on Sundays.

Quick Picks: Tonight’s Best

• Vigil BBC One, 9pm. Series three, and the Arctic looks extraordinary.
• Trigger Point ITV1, 9pm. A lorry, a drone and no good options.
• 24 Hours in Police Custody Channel 4, 9pm. A hit-and-run that wasn’t one.
• Coronation Street ITV1, 8.30pm. Nina’s farewell.
• EastEnders is not on tonight — it returns Monday at 7.30pm.

Early Evening

The Italian Job – BBC Two, 5.25pm

Michael Caine, a plan, three Minis and the best final shot in British cinema. BBC Two at 5.25pm.

Countryfile – BBC One, 6pm

John Craven, Charlotte Smith and Megan McCubbin whittle a year of viewer photographs down to twelve for the 2027 calendar, which raises money for Children in Need.

Hamza: African Birds of Prey – BBC One, 7pm

Hamza Yassin spent his working life behind a camera before anyone put him in front of one, and it shows here. He is in Kenya filming raptors: sea eagles taking fish off the surface of Lake Naivasha, and a fondness for vultures that he defends properly, explaining how different species have divided up a carcass between them rather than simply competing for it. The one he really wants is the Sokoke scops owl, dappled brown and roughly the size of a fist, and by the time he finds it you want him to.

Force of Nature – ITV1, 7pm

The last of the run, and the one that turns the camera round onto the people doing the work: biologists sinking a well in drought-hit Senegal for chimpanzees, volunteers in Mexico picking bedraggled flamingo chicks out of the mud, and a snow leopard in India crossing a line it should not have crossed and being moved on.

Emmerdale – ITV1, 8pm

DS Ramsden’s suspicions are hardening, Gabby is not coping, and Caleb and Ruby are rattled. Coronation Street follows at 8.30pm.

Antiques Roadshow – BBC One, 8pm

From Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, where the queue produces a Batman mask, a portrait of a woman poet nobody has heard of, and Elizabethan clothing rare enough to make the specialists go quiet.

Coronation Street – ITV1, 8.30pm

Two things happen at once. Todd tells Gemma her aunt is dying, and Celeste spends her last breath on a family secret with a very long fuse. Then Nina Lucas leaves Weatherfield for Whitby, which is exactly where a self-declared queen of darkness would go. Mollie Gallagher is off after seven years to play Clarice Starling in a touring stage version of The Silence of the Lambs, and the memorial garden farewell circles back to Seb’s death in 2021 — a storyline the programme built out of the real killing of Sophie Lancaster.

Modern Classics at the Proms – BBC Four, 8pm

Tom Service presents this year’s newly commissioned work. The recurring question — whether any of it will still be played in fifty years — is one the programme is honest enough to leave open. BBC Four at 8pm.

Prime Time

Vigil – BBC One, 9pm ⭐

Kirsten Longacre gets off a plane in the Arctic and is immediately handed a rifle and asked whether she can use one, which tells you most of what this series intends. A member of a covert British special forces unit has been shot dead at a remote research station, and the polar bears are the least of the problem: the ice around Svalbard is the subject of an increasingly unfriendly argument between nations who all want what is underneath it.

The structural gamble is that Amy Silva stays in Glasgow overseeing the operation from a desk, and the second she gets near a morning off she is caught in a bomb blast, which connects the two threads and does not let either of them breathe. Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie spend most of the series on different continents and it works better than it has any right to. Filmed in Svalbard and Scotland; the first two episodes are on iPlayer tonight, and episode two is on BBC One tomorrow at 9pm.

Trigger Point – ITV1, 9pm

The thing this series does better than anything else on ITV1 is make an ordinary object frightening. Tonight it is an IED on a lorry heading for a landmark in the City of London, and the complication is a drone circling above it that could set the device off the moment anyone moves. Lana Washington goes in anyway. Julie Graham’s Commander Nia Quentin supplies a certain amount of clunky explanation, but the sequence itself is genuinely hard to sit through, and not everyone gets out. It continues tomorrow at 9pm, with the full series on ITVX.

24 Hours in Police Custody – Channel 4, 9pm

A two-parter, and the shape of it is closer to a crime novel than a documentary. A 17-year-old is discovered beside a road with devastating head trauma, and his twin brother’s account has him going to meet a girl. Luton CID start by treating it as a hit-and-run, then find 17-year-old twins listed as missing on a national database, then pull the CCTV of the collision and discover it was nothing of the sort. What it becomes is a fight over territory between drug gangs. DS Tom Hamm and his team are unusually good company for this format — patient, sceptical, and not remotely interested in performing for the cameras.

Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India – BBC Two, 9pm

Three episodes, starting in Delhi with rapping, puppeteering and a tomb the pair are unreasonably delighted by. Their Italian trip worked because neither of them pretends to be an authority on anything, and the same holds here.

Rich House, Poor House – Channel 5, 9pm

Na’im and Sara swap a manor house for Leah’s council flat and each other’s weekly budget. The format is a blunt instrument and it works anyway, mostly because of what people say in the last ten minutes. Channel 5 at 9pm.

Silent Witness – Drama, 9pm

A double bill on Drama, running to 11.20pm.

A Few Good Men – Film4, 9pm

Tom Cruise’s plea-bargaining navy lawyer against Jack Nicholson’s colonel, and one of the most quoted exchanges ever written for a courtroom. Film4 at 9pm.

Surgeons: Life in Their Hands – More4, 9pm

A 25-year-old climber with lifelong liver disease has months to find a transplant. More4 at 9pm.

Elsewhere at 9pm: Quest is deep into a four-hour Repair Shop run from 8pm, Yesterday has Bangers & Cash, Legend shows Reign of Fire, and Sky Arts has Cliff Richard and the Shadows.

Late Night

Dame Maureen Lipman Remembers… Absurd Person Singular – BBC Four, 10pm

A short introduction to the play that follows at 10.15pm. Lipman is good on why Ayckbourn is a much darker writer than his reputation allows.

Absurd Person Singular – BBC Four, 10.15pm

The 1985 recording, with a cast — Michael Gambon, Cheryl Campbell, Geoffrey Palmer, Prunella Scales, Nicky Henson, Lipman herself — that would be impossible to assemble now. Three couples, three kitchens, three Christmas Eves, and a steadily rearranging pecking order. The joke that everyone remembers, the one involving a woman quietly trying to kill herself while everybody else assumes she is doing the washing-up, is still the cruellest thing in British comic theatre.

The Godfather – BBC Two, 10pm

Three hours, and worth clearing the evening for if you have somehow not seen it.

Sarah Millican: Late Bloomer – E4, 10pm

Her seventh special, on the gap between the child who would not speak and the adult who will say absolutely anything on a stage. E4 at 10pm, with Scream following at 11.05pm.

Match of the Day – BBC One, 10.30pm

Four games, including Manchester United against Ipswich.

Love Cheats – Channel 4, 10.15pm

Romance fraud, starting with a globally known musician who fell for a wealthy businessman whose life turned out to have been assembled for the purpose.

Unbelievable Moments: Caught on Camera – ITV1, 10.15pm

Roger Allam narrates, which lifts it about two divisions above where it belongs.

Sport

Day four of the second Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s starts at 10.15am on Sky Sports Cricket, with highlights on BBC Two at 7pm — a Test can end early, so it’s worth checking the score before you plan around it. In the Premier League, Leeds v Brentford and Chelsea v Brighton both kick off at 2pm, coverage starting at 12.30pm on Sky Sports Premier League and 1pm on Sky Sports Main Event, with Manchester United v Ipswich following on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event. The US Open begins at Flushing Meadows, live on Sky Sports Tennis from 3pm and Sky Sports Main Event from 11pm. Channel 5 has stage nine of La Vuelta at 7pm, a 187.4km mountain stage to Alto de Aitana.

The Viewing Schedule

What’s On Streaming

• BBC iPlayer: Vigil (full series), Countryfile, Hamza: African Birds of Prey, Antiques Roadshow, Pilgrimage: The Road Through the Alps, Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India, Modern Classics at the Proms
• ITVX: Trigger Point (full series), Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Force of Nature
• Channel 4 streaming: 24 Hours in Police Custody, Richard E. Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey, Love Cheats, Gogglebox, Sarah Millican: Late Bloomer
• 5: Rich House, Poor House, Inside Four Seasons: Park Lane
• NOW: Groomed: the Truth behind the Lie, The Terror: Devil in Silver
• U: Sister Boniface Mysteries, Have I Got a Bit More News for You

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EastEnders on tonight (Sunday 30 August 2026)?

No. EastEnders does not air on Sundays. It runs Monday to Thursday on BBC One, and the next episode is Monday 31 August at 7.30pm, when the Hawkins family arrive in Walford and wedding fever takes hold ahead of Cindy and Kim’s big days. The week’s four episodes are released as a boxset on iPlayer each Monday morning.

What time is Vigil on tonight?

Vigil returns to BBC One at 9pm with the first episode of series three. DI Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) lands at an Arctic research station where a member of a covert British special forces unit has been shot dead, while DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) runs the investigation from Glasgow. Episode two is on Monday at 9pm, and the series is on iPlayer.

What happens in Trigger Point tonight?

Trigger Point begins a third series on ITV1 at 9pm. Lana Washington (Vicky McClure) is called to a lorry carrying an IED towards a target in the City of London, tracked by a surveillance drone that could detonate it remotely. It continues on Monday at 9pm, with the full series on ITVX.

Why is Nina leaving Coronation Street?

Coronation Street is on ITV1 at 8.30pm, and Nina Lucas says her goodbyes in the memorial garden. Mollie Gallagher is leaving after seven years to play Clarice Starling in a UK touring production of The Silence of the Lambs. The scene calls back to the 2021 death of Nina’s boyfriend Seb, a storyline based on the real killing of Sophie Lancaster in 2007.

What live sport is on TV tonight: Sunday 30 August 2026?

Day four of the second Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s runs from 10.15am on Sky Sports Cricket, with highlights on BBC Two at 7pm. Leeds v Brentford and Chelsea v Brighton both kick off at 2pm on Sky Sports, with Manchester United v Ipswich later in the afternoon. The US Open starts at Flushing Meadows, live on Sky Sports Tennis from 3pm. Match of the Day is on BBC One at 10.30pm.

What’s the best thing to watch on TV tonight (Sunday 30 August 2026)?

Vigil on BBC One at 9pm. It goes head to head with Trigger Point on ITV1 and 24 Hours in Police Custody on Channel 4, so at least two of the three will need recording — though Vigil is on iPlayer as a full series tonight and Trigger Point is on ITVX in full.

What is 24 Hours in Police Custody about tonight?

The Ambush, the first of two parts, is on Channel 4 at 9pm. A 17-year-old is discovered beside a road with devastating head trauma, apparently run down and left there. Luton CID pull the CCTV, establish the collision was deliberate, and trace it back to a turf war between rival drug gangs.

What’s on BBC Two tonight?

BBC Two has The Italian Job at 5.25pm, Test highlights at 7pm, the first Pilgrimage: The Road Through the Alps at 8pm, Rob and Rylan’s Passage to India at 9pm and The Godfather at 10pm.

What time is Antiques Roadshow on tonight?

Antiques Roadshow is on BBC One at 8pm from Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, between Hamza: African Birds of Prey at 7pm and Vigil at 9pm.

Final Verdict

Sunday is a straight fight at 9pm and Vigil wins it — the Arctic setting alone justifies the budget, and splitting the two leads across a continent gives the series somewhere new to go. Trigger Point is the recording, and 24 Hours in Police Custody the one to catch up with midweek. Before all that, Coronation Street gives Nina a proper send-off at 8.30pm, and Hamza: African Birds of Prey at 7pm is the best hour of natural history on tonight. EastEnders returns tomorrow at 7.30pm.

Related: What’s On TV Tonight Sunday | What’s On TV Tonight Sat 29 Aug 2026 | What’s On TV Tonight Mon 31 Aug 2026