TV Guide UK Tonight: Thurs 16 Apr 2026 – The Apprentice Final, Race Across the World & Taskmaster

Published: 12 April 2026

Thursday night has something for almost everyone, and the 9pm hour is where the evening gets properly interesting. The Apprentice reaches its series 20 final on BBC One at 9pm, with an all-women showdown between Pascha Myhill and Karishma Vijay competing for Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment. At the same time on Channel 4, Taskmaster series 21 hits episode 2 with Armando Iannucci, Kumail Nanjiani, and Joanna Page going physical. And on Channel 5 at 9pm, Missed Call reaches its penultimate episode, with Joanna Scanlan’s France-set thriller now entering its most urgent stretch. Before all of that, Race Across the World is on BBC One at 8pm with the series 6 teams now deep into the overland grind from Sicily to Mongolia. And for football, the Europa League delivers two quarter-final second legs on TNT Sports — Nottingham Forest hosting Porto on a 1-1 aggregate, and Aston Villa looking to close out a 3-1 advantage against Bologna.

Quick Picks: Tonight’s Best

• The Apprentice Final ⭐ — BBC One, 9pm — Series 20 finale. Pascha vs Karishma. Lord Sugar decides
• Taskmaster — Channel 4, 9pm — Series 21 Ep 2. Physical tasks. Iannucci adopts a persona. It goes
• Race Across the World — BBC One, 8pm — Ep 3. The cracks are starting to show on the long road east
• Nottingham Forest v Porto — TNT Sports 1, 8pm — EL QF second leg. 1-1 on aggregate. Anything can happen
• Missed Call — Channel 5, 9pm — Ep 4. The penultimate hour. The screws are tightening
• Big Mood — Channel 4, 10pm — Series 2 premiere. Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West are back
• EastEnders — BBC One, 7:30pm — Nicola finally gets to hold baby Ivy

Early Evening

EastEnders – BBC One, 7:30pm

The neonatal unit storyline that has been building since Nicola went into premature labour has been genuinely difficult to watch — and tonight it reaches the moment everyone has been waiting for. Ivy has been in intensive care since arriving at 31 weeks, and Nicola has been barred from holding her after catching flu in the hospital. George got skin-to-skin time first, which has been quietly devastating for Nicola in a way the show has handled with some care.

Tonight, Nicola’s temperature finally drops and the nurses clear her to hold Ivy. It’s the kind of storyline EastEnders does properly when it commits to it — not rushed, not melodramatic, but letting the reality of a premature birth carry its own weight. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Prime Time

Emmerdale – ITV1, 7:30pm

Thursday’s ITV instalment continues whatever threads the village has been pulling this week. Catch up via ITVX.

Race Across the World – BBC One, 8pm

Series 6, Episode 3. The five pairs — Jo and Kush, Katie and Harrison, Molly and Andrew, Puja and Roshni, and Mark and Margo — are now properly into the journey, having started in Palermo and pointed themselves in the general direction of Mongolia, 12,000km away without a flight booking between them. The format lives and dies on whether the travel itself throws up enough friction, and three episodes in, the answer is yes.

Episode 3’s description is a plain one — “challenging terrain and tight budgets begin to test relationships and endurance” — which in Race Across the World language means someone is about to have an argument over a bus fare in a language neither of them speaks. The series 6 route through Europe and into Central Asia is the most geographically ambitious the show has attempted, and it’s starting to feel it. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Paul Merton: Driving Amazing Trains – Channel 4, 8pm

Episode 2. After the Isle of Wight opener last week, Paul Merton heads to Switzerland and into the kind of terrain that makes railway engineering either very impressive or very expensive to maintain — often both. He rides up front on the Glacier Express, which is one of those journeys that people plan holidays around, then gets to help stoke a 1920s steam locomotive through the mountain passes to a glacier.

Merton’s connection to trains is a genuinely personal one — his father drove on the London Underground — and it shows in the way he talks to the people keeping these lines running. The show isn’t trying to be Michael Portillo. It’s gentler and more interested in the mechanics than the social history. Whether that’s your thing will depend entirely on your relationship with locomotives, but if it is, this is very good television. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

Yorkshire’s Poshest Hotel: Grantley Hall – Channel 5, 8pm (SERIES FINALE)

The four-part Channel 5 series following Grantley Hall — the five-star North Yorkshire hotel built from a run-down country house by Barnsley-born Valeria Sykes and her son Richard — reaches its final episode tonight. Rooms start at £1,000 a night and go up to £4,500, and the hotel has attracted names including Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury. The series has been doing what this kind of access documentary does: following staff and guests, and letting the contrast between the Yorkshire directness and the five-star formality do most of the work. Catch up via My5.

9pm: The Final Reckoning

The Apprentice ⭐ – BBC One, 9pm (SERIES 20 FINAL)

This is the one. Sixteen weeks of boardroom dismissals, failed tasks, and increasingly confident assertions that the candidates are “the best person for the job” have come down to two people: Pascha Myhill and Karishma Vijay.

Myhill, 22 and from Berkshire, wants to use Lord Sugar’s £250,000 to set up a recruitment company within private healthcare — a sector where she already works. It’s a focused, specific pitch that doesn’t require much leap of faith. Vijay, 28 and from Surrey, runs a beauty brand and is asking for investment to expand it. It’s a harder sell in terms of the numbers, but Vijay’s performance across the series — and in particular through last week’s interview stage, where she apparently reduced one of the interviewers to tears — suggests she’s not someone who folds when the room gets difficult.

The final task this year follows the standard format: two teams built by the finalists, one large-scale event or product launch, and then a boardroom debrief where everything unravels or doesn’t. It’s worth remembering this is also a first — the show has never before had an all-women final. Either way, it’s a first. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Taskmaster – Channel 4, 9pm

Series 21, Episode 2. The first episode last week established the series’ general atmosphere — Armando Iannucci treating the tasks as puzzles to be solved with slightly too much intellectual investment, Kumail Nanjiani approaching everything with the wariness of someone who has seen enough television to know it won’t go well, and Joanna Page finding a gear between competitive and relaxed that the show’s best contestants tend to occupy.

Tonight’s episode, titled “Leg Up, Johnny!”, goes physical. Iannucci adopts an undisclosed new persona before a stunt that the show is keeping quiet about. Nanjiani is in oven gloves trying to do something with skittles, which is the kind of sentence that makes more sense when you see it. Page attempts a skill she hasn’t tried since she was 12 — there’s real money on it being some form of gymnastics. Joel Dommett gets a pretty umbrella and Amy Gledhill is apparently shouted at about scrambled eggs. Series 21 has two Oscar nominees in the cast, which the press releases have been making a lot of, but the show doesn’t particularly care about credentials. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

Missed Call – Channel 5, 9pm

Episode 4 of 5. The penultimate instalment, and Joanna Scanlan’s Sarah is running out of time and patience in rural France. Four episodes of closed doors, polite stonewalling from the local authorities, and the specific kind of panic that comes from knowing something is wrong and not being able to make anyone else behave as if it matters — and now one episode to go.

Four-parters tend to make their big move in episode three. Five-parters often wait until four, which is where the series is tonight. Whether the shift is a revelation or a complication, it needs to happen tonight, because episode five has to wrap everything up. Scanlan has been very good throughout — the sort of acting where you don’t notice how good it is until you try looking away and can’t. One more night after this. Catch up via My5.

Sport

Football: Nottingham Forest v Porto – TNT Sports 1, 8pm (k/o 8pm)

UEFA Europa League Quarter-Final, Second Leg. Forest host Porto at the City Ground with the aggregate score level at 1-1 after the first leg in Portugal ended in a draw. This is a coin-flip tie on paper. Forest will have the crowd behind them and Porto will have the experience of European knockout football at this stage. The away goals rule no longer applies in UEFA competition, which means if it’s level after 90 minutes, extra time and potentially penalties are on the table. TNT Sports 1, kick-off 8pm. A TNT Sports subscription is required.

Football: Aston Villa v Bologna – TNT Sports 2, 8pm (k/o 8pm)

UEFA Europa League Quarter-Final, Second Leg. Villa host Bologna at Villa Park with a very comfortable 3-1 lead from the first leg in Italy, where Ollie Watkins scored twice including a late goal to put the tie effectively beyond doubt. Bologna would need to score three without reply to go through. You can never completely rule it out — this is European football — but Villa should be in the semi-finals by 10pm. TNT Sports 2, kick-off 8pm. A TNT Sports subscription is required.

Late Night

Big Mood – Channel 4, 10pm (SERIES 2 PREMIERE)

Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West are back as Maggie and Eddie, the best friends at the centre of Camilla Whitehill’s comedy-drama about female friendship and bipolar disorder. The first series arrived quietly and built an audience by word of mouth rather than fanfare — the kind of show people kept telling each other about in the weeks after it aired.

Series 2 has Dancing Ledge Productions back producing, and a cast that now includes Robert Lindsay among the new additions. The tone of the show — funny in the way that something can be funny when it’s also quite raw — hasn’t changed, but Coughlan and West have more to work with now the characters are established. All six episodes are available on Channel 4 streaming from tonight if you don’t want to wait. But the linear broadcast is worth doing for the experience of watching it as a weekly thing rather than a binge. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

The Viewing Schedule

What’s On Streaming

BBC iPlayer: The Apprentice final, Race Across the World, EastEnders
Channel 4 streaming: Taskmaster, Paul Merton: Driving Amazing Trains, Big Mood (all six episodes available from tonight)
ITVX: Emmerdale
My5: Missed Call (Mon–Fri run), Yorkshire’s Poshest Hotel: Grantley Hall
TNT Sports / discovery+: Nottingham Forest v Porto, Aston Villa v Bologna (subscription required)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EastEnders on tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026)?

Yes, EastEnders is on BBC One at 7:30pm tonight. Nicola gets the news she has been waiting for — baby Ivy’s temperature has finally dropped and she’s allowed to hold her daughter for the first time since the premature birth. It’s the emotional payoff to a storyline the show has taken seriously since day one. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is The Apprentice final on BBC One tonight?

The Apprentice series 20 final is on BBC One at 9pm tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026). Pascha Myhill faces Karishma Vijay in an all-women final — a first for the show. Myhill wants to build a healthcare recruitment company; Vijay is expanding her beauty brand. Lord Sugar has £250,000 to hand over. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is Race Across the World on BBC One tonight?

Race Across the World series 6 is on BBC One at 8pm tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026). It’s episode 3 of the nine-part series, with the pairs covering the Sicily-to-Mongolia route overland. Tight budgets and difficult terrain are starting to put relationships under strain. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is Taskmaster on Channel 4 tonight?

Taskmaster series 21 is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026). Episode 2 is titled “Leg Up, Johnny!” and involves physical tasks including Armando Iannucci doing a stunt in a new persona, Kumail Nanjiani with oven gloves and skittles, and Joanna Page attempting something she hasn’t done since childhood. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

Is the Europa League on TV tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026)?

Yes — two quarter-final second legs are on tonight. Nottingham Forest v Porto is on TNT Sports 1 at 8pm, with the tie level at 1-1 on aggregate — anyone’s game. Aston Villa v Bologna is on TNT Sports 2 at 8pm, with Villa 3-1 up from the first leg in Italy; they should be through. Both kick off at 8pm. A TNT Sports subscription is required for both matches.

What time is Missed Call on Channel 5 tonight?

Missed Call is on Channel 5 at 9pm tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026). It’s episode 4 of 5 — the penultimate night of Joanna Scanlan’s thriller set in rural France. One episode to go after tonight. Catch up via My5.

What’s the best thing to watch on TV tonight (Thursday 16 April 2026)?

The Apprentice final on BBC One at 9pm is the event television of the week — an all-women final, a first for the show, with both candidates having made a genuine case across the series. For something lighter, Taskmaster on Channel 4 at 9pm hits episode 2 with one of the stronger series 21 casts the show has assembled. For football, Nottingham Forest v Porto on TNT Sports at 8pm is the more compelling of the two Europa League ties tonight — level on aggregate and at the City Ground. And Big Mood series 2 premieres on Channel 4 at 10pm for anyone who’s been waiting.

Final Verdict

The Apprentice final is the standout tonight — it’s a genuinely good final-two, both candidates have performed well across the series, and the all-women conclusion is worth noting even if Lord Sugar will make his decision entirely on the business proposals rather than any other consideration. It’s good television for 9pm on a Thursday.

Taskmaster at 9pm on Channel 4 is the alternative if you want to laugh rather than get anxious. Series 21 has started well and episode 2 suggests the physical tasks are going to suit this particular cast.

Nottingham Forest v Porto on TNT Sports at 8pm is the football tie to watch tonight. 1-1 going into the second leg at the City Ground — Forest are at home and this is a European quarter-final. The stakes are real.

And for anyone staying up, Big Mood at 10pm on Channel 4 is the kind of premiere worth catching live — series 2 has been quietly anticipated since the first series built its audience through word of mouth rather than noise.

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