TV Guide UK Tonight: Thurs 2 Apr 2026 – Race Across the World, A Woman of Substance Finale & The Apprentice

Published: 29 March 2026

A big Thursday for new series fans. Race Across the World launches its sixth run on BBC One at 8pm, starting five pairs off from Palermo with Mongolia as the finish line and eight countries in between — no phones, no flights, not much money. The Apprentice follows at 9pm with a pet products task that doesn’t go well for either team. On Channel 4, A Woman of Substance reaches its series finale at 9pm with Emma Harte returning to Fairley Hall for the confrontations that have been building across the whole run. BBC Two gets stuck into the 1989 Kegworth air disaster with a documentary at 9pm, BBC Four is showing the five-star All About Eve from 8pm, and Harry Clark Goes to Rome arrives on BBC One at 10:40pm. A decent spread across the channels.

Quick Picks: Tonight’s Best

• Race Across the World ⭐ — BBC One, 8pm — Series 6 premiere: five pairs, Palermo to Mongolia, eight countries, no phones and very little cash
• A Woman of Substance Finale — Channel 4, 9pm — Emma returns to Fairley Hall. Three showdowns, decades in the making
• The Apprentice — BBC One, 9pm — Pet toys task. One team builds a cat climbing frame the size of a small shed. The other invents a bed that talks back
• All About Eve — BBC Four, 8pm — Bette Davis at her most formidable. Five stars. Essential
• Kegworth: Flight to Disaster — BBC Two, 9pm — Sombre and well-made account of the 1989 M1 crash
• Harry Clark Goes to Rome — BBC One, 10:40pm — The Traitors winner attempts to get an audience with the Pope

Early Evening

Diet: Can You Eat Yourself Happy? Tonight — ITV1, 7pm (10:45pm STV)

Journalist Lara Lewington looks at the relationship between what we put on our plates and how we actually feel. The premise has been circulating in wellness circles for years, but this ITV Tonight special brings it to a mainstream audience with Lewington testing the science on herself and speaking to people who’ve made dietary changes specifically to address their mental health. The timing — mid-week, post-clocks-change — probably isn’t accidental. Catch up via ITVX.

EastEnders — BBC One, 7:30pm

EastEnders airs at its usual slot of 7:30pm tonight on BBC One. The soap runs Monday to Thursday, so Thursday 2nd April is a standard episode night. Catch up via BBC iPlayer if you miss it.

Prime Time

Race Across the World ⭐ — BBC One, 8pm (NEW SERIES)

The sixth series of the BBC’s most straightforwardly addictive travel show kicks off tonight and the premise is as stripped-back as it’s always been: five pairs of travellers, a fixed budget, no mobile phones and no aeroplanes, racing from one end of the world to the other. This time the starting gun fires in Palermo, on the island of Sicily, and the endpoint — 12,000 kilometres away — is the remote shores of Lake Khövsgöl in northern Mongolia. In between there are eight countries and as many cultures, languages and logistical headaches as the teams can handle: Italy, Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia.

The five pairs this series are best friends Jo and Kush, siblings Katie and Harrison, father and daughter Molly and Andrew, cousins Puja and Roshni, and in-laws Margo and Mark. In the first episode, teams immediately diverge on their routes to the first checkpoint at Kefalonia in Greece, and the pairing of Jo and Kush makes early headlines for reasons that have more to do with geography than travel — working out which direction Finland is in proves briefly problematic.

Margo and Mark — a sister- and brother-in-law who appear to have about as much in common as a seaside postcard and a tax return — make an instant impression in the opening episode, and the contrast between them is already doing the job that all good odd-couple casting does: making you wonder how far they’ll get before something gives.

Race Across the World has been remarkably consistent across five series. The format’s refusal to add complications, twists or dramatic interventions means it lives or dies on the people it casts, and the casting has been good again here. If you’ve never watched it, tonight is as good an entry point as any — each series is entirely self-contained. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

All About Eve — BBC Four, 8pm

Mankiewicz’s 1950 film about ambition and backstabbing in the theatre is still one of the sharpest scripts ever filmed. Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a stage actress with talent and ego in equal measure, whose life starts unravelling when a quiet, apparently devoted young fan called Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) works her way into Margo’s inner circle. What Eve actually wants, and how far she’ll go, is what makes the film tick. It’s full of wit, spite and real malice.

Davis lost her voice three days before shooting after a row with her estranged husband. Mankiewicz decided the resulting rasp was perfect for the character. Fourteen Oscar nominations — a record that stood for decades. Rated PG. A Terry Wogan interview with Davis follows at 10:15pm. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

This Farming Life — BBC Two, 8pm

On the Isle of Arran, Callum and Zara Lindsay get bad news during a routine cattle check. This Farming Life is at its best when it doesn’t flinch from the hard parts of agricultural life, and this sounds like one of those episodes. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Yorkshire’s Poshest Hotel: Inside Grantley Hall — Channel 5, 8pm

More behind-the-scenes at the five-star North Yorkshire hotel. Table-laying, kitchen precision, a marriage proposal — the usual. But the real draw is ambience manager Marek planning the hotel’s first Halloween bash: bespoke coffin, skeletons everywhere, costumes meant to actually scare the guests. Whether people paying thousands a night want to be frightened is a question the show doesn’t hang around to answer. Catch up via Channel 5 streaming.

Queens of Mystery — U&Drama, 8pm (Series Two)

The cosy crime series returns for its second run with a casting change at the centre. Florence Hall steps into the role of DS Mattie Stone, taking over from Olivia Vinall who played the character in series one. It’s the kind of recasting that a show like this can survive, largely because the real draws are the three eccentric aunts who exist in a constant state of cheerful interference with Mattie’s investigations. In the opening episode of the new series, all three aunts check in to a luxury spa for a spot of rest. They find a murder instead, when the establishment’s wellness guru meets an end that is anything but serene. Hot-stone massages make way for cold-blooded suspicion, and Mattie is called in. Series one and two are available on U.

Vera — ITV1, 8:30pm

Brenda Blethyn fans who don’t have Channel 4 streaming will note that tonight ITV is running the penultimate episode of Vera — first shown at Christmas 2024 — with the finale following tomorrow. This particular episode plants DCI Vera Stanhope at a professional crossroads, with a new opportunity presented to her within the force. Given that the show has now confirmed this is its final series, there’s an added weight to watching Vera weigh up what comes next, even if many viewers will have already seen it. Available on ITVX.

The Apprentice — BBC One, 9pm

The pet toys task. If you needed a brief that would separate the candidates who’ve ever actually owned an animal from those who just think they know what animals are like, this is it. One team’s entry into the feline furniture market produces a climbing frame of such scale that it would require a dedicated room in a reasonably sized house. The other team takes a technology-led approach with a talking dog bed — a concept that is either ahead of its time or simply something no dog has ever wanted — and while the initial idea has some merit, the execution raises questions, including at least one about whether anyone checked the spelling on the product name.

Neither team emerges from this with particular credit, and the boardroom aftermath is predictably tense. Series 20 has had some strong tasks but this one may be the most entertainingly shambolic. Karren Brady and Tim Campbell continue to watch proceedings with the weary equanimity that comes from having seen this many times before. Lord Sugar’s verdict will not be gentle. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Kegworth: Flight to Disaster — BBC Two, 9pm

On 8 January 1989, British Midland Flight 92 departed London Heathrow for Belfast International Airport. It never arrived. At cruising altitude, one of the Boeing 737-400’s engines suffered a serious failure — and in the chaos that followed, the pilots shut down the wrong engine. The aircraft limped towards East Midlands Airport on the damaged engine before it failed completely, sending the plane into the motorway embankment just short of the runway. Of the 118 passengers on board, 47 were killed. All eight crew members survived.

What makes the Kegworth disaster still worth examining more than 35 years on is the specific nature of what went wrong: the pilots weren’t negligent or untrained, but the 737-400 was a newer variant of an aircraft type they knew well, with a key difference in the engine air-conditioning system that contributed to the confusion. Passengers describe the moment the engine let go — one account compared the noise to someone attacking the fuselage with a hammer — and the archive footage of local Kegworth residents rushing to help forms a central and moving part of the documentary. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

A Woman of Substance — Channel 4, 9pm (SERIES FINALE)

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s novel is essentially a wish-fulfilment saga about a working-class Yorkshire woman who starts with nothing and ends up owning everything — including, eventually, the house where she was once a servant. Tonight’s finale brings Emma Harte back to Fairley Hall for that reckoning, and it arrives in three stages.

The first is set in 1915, when the Fairleys — the family who once employed Emma, dismissed her, and then spent decades underestimating her — offer a business partnership that was clearly not conceived in good faith. The second and more satisfying confrontation is set in the 1970s, when the older Emma returns to Fairley Hall ostensibly to celebrate a birthday but really to make clear where the power now sits, and to deliver whatever news will cause maximum discomfort to the scheming members of her own family who’d rather she stepped aside.

The finale does feel slightly rushed — there’s a lot of story to resolve and some of it gets compressed in ways that don’t entirely satisfy — but the central premise of the series, that Emma’s drive was forged by specific injustices and specific people, gives each confrontation its own emotional logic. Brenda Blethyn brings a quiet, controlled fury to the older Emma that is the opposite of melodrama, and the suggestion at the end that the feud isn’t entirely resolved is honest about how these things usually work. Full series boxset available on Channel 4 streaming.

The Teacher — Channel 5, 9pm (SERIES FINALE)

Drama teacher Helen (Victoria Hamilton) and her pupil Cressida (Alice Grant) have spent the series locked in a feud that has spiralled well past the point where either of them could convincingly claim the moral high ground. In the finale, the confrontation arrives properly. Helen has been told she’s out of touch with her students; she’s also been too slow to acknowledge the impact of Cressida’s campaign on her vulnerable son Sam (Olly Rhodes). The showdown comes with a partial admission from Helen — “I failed you … but I see you now” — which may be genuine or may be a last attempt to defuse something that’s already gone too far. Alice Grant, who has been quietly unsettling throughout the series, is particularly good in the closing scenes. There’s a sting in the tail. Full series available on Channel 5 streaming.

Late Night

Harry Clark Goes to Rome — BBC One, 10:40pm

Harry Clark won The Traitors in 2024 at 23 years old and found himself, overnight, rather more famous than an army engineer from Slough might reasonably have expected. He’s since been clear about his Catholic faith, and this one-hour documentary — which follows an earlier appearance in the faith-based BBC Two series Pilgrimage — sends him to Rome with an ambitious goal: to secure an audience with Pope Leo XIV.

The Vatican access Clark gets falls short of a direct meeting with the Pope, but he does sit down with a senior Cardinal with close ties to the pontiff, which is not nothing. Alongside the Vatican strand, the film is an honest examination of what practising Catholicism actually looks like for a young British man in 2026 — including the fact that it’s been years since Clark’s last confession, which the Mouth of Truth sequence at Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin is apparently invited to adjudicate on (legend says the ancient marble face bites the hand of anyone who lies). Whether Clark gets his hand back is one way to watch the film; the more interesting strand is his conversations about what his faith means to him now, held with his girlfriend, his family and his childhood priest. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Click to Kill: The AI War Machine — Channel 4, 10pm

A Dispatches investigation into the role of artificial intelligence in modern warfare: whether automated systems make conflict more targeted or simply more frequent, and what the development of AI-assisted weapons programmes means for the future of international security. For anyone who’s been following the debates around autonomous weapons, the territory will be familiar — but Dispatches tends to bring enough original reporting to make it worth watching. Catch up via Channel 4 streaming.

Sport

Darts: Premier League — Night 9 at the AO Arena in Manchester, from Sky Sports Main Event at 7pm.

Cricket: IPL — Kolkata Knight Riders v Sunrisers Hyderabad, T20 action from Kolkata. Live on Sky Sports Cricket from 2:50pm, Sky Sports Main Event from 3pm.

Men’s Golf: Valero Texas Open — Day one in San Antonio. Live on Sky Sports Golf from 1:15pm, then Sky Sports Main Event from 11pm.

The Viewing Schedule

What’s On Streaming

BBC iPlayer: Race Across the World, EastEnders, The Apprentice, This Farming Life, Kegworth: Flight to Disaster, Harry Clark Goes to Rome, All About Eve
ITVX: Vera, Diet: Can You Eat Yourself Happy? Tonight
Channel 4 streaming: A Woman of Substance (full boxset), Click to Kill: The AI War Machine
Channel 5 streaming/My5: The Teacher, Yorkshire’s Poshest Hotel: Inside Grantley Hall
U (UKTV Play): Queens of Mystery (Series 1 and 2)
Sky Sports: Premier League Darts, IPL Cricket, Valero Texas Open Golf

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Race Across the World Series 6 starts on BBC One at 8pm tonight (Thursday 2nd April 2026). This is the premiere of the new series, which follows five pairs racing 12,000km from Palermo in Sicily to Lake Khövsgöl in northern Mongolia through eight countries — without mobile phones, flights or much of a budget. The five pairs are best friends Jo and Kush, siblings Katie and Harrison, father and daughter Molly and Andrew, cousins Puja and Roshni, and in-laws Margo and Mark. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Is EastEnders on TV tonight?

Yes, EastEnders should be on BBC One at 7:30pm tonight (Thursday 2nd April 2026). EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday on BBC One as standard, so Thursday 2nd April is a regular episode night. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

What time is The Apprentice on tonight?

The Apprentice is on BBC One at 9pm tonight (Thursday 2nd April 2026). The candidates take on a pet toys task, producing a cat climbing frame the size of a small shed and a talking dog bed that raises more questions than it resolves. Neither team has a smooth run. Catch up via BBC iPlayer.

Is A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 tonight?

Yes, and it’s the series finale. A Woman of Substance concludes on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight (Thursday 2nd April 2026). Emma Harte returns to Fairley Hall for three confrontations spanning 1915 and the 1970s. The full series is available as a boxset on Channel 4 streaming.

What’s on BBC Two tonight?

BBC Two has This Farming Life at 8pm, with difficult news for Callum and Zara Lindsay on Arran during a cattle check. At 9pm, Kegworth: Flight to Disaster examines the 1989 British Midlands crash on the M1 that killed 47 of 118 passengers, just short of the East Midlands Airport runway. Both are available on BBC iPlayer.

What’s the best thing to watch on TV tonight?

Race Across the World Series 6 on BBC One at 8pm is our top pick — it’s the premiere and the new cast looks strong. A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 at 9pm is the finale and worth staying up for if you’ve followed the series. BBC Four’s All About Eve at 8pm is as good as film gets. The Apprentice on BBC One at 9pm is dependably entertaining when the task is this chaotic.

What’s on BBC One tonight?

BBC One tonight (Thursday 2nd April 2026) has EastEnders at 7:30pm, the Race Across the World Series 6 premiere at 8pm, The Apprentice pet toys task at 9pm, and Harry Clark Goes to Rome at 10:40pm.

Final Verdict

Race Across the World is the one tonight. Series 6 opens with the longest route the show’s attempted — Palermo to Mongolia through eight countries — and the new cast looks good. If Margo and Mark deliver half as much as the first episode suggests, it’ll be a strong series.

A Woman of Substance wraps up on Channel 4 at 9pm. The finale is slightly rushed but it earns its confrontations because the show spent the previous seven episodes building Emma Harte properly.

All About Eve on BBC Four at 8pm is 76 years old and still lands every line. If you haven’t seen it, tonight. If you have, it’s one of those films that gets better each time.

The Apprentice pet toys task at 9pm is the kind of brief where confidence and competence go in opposite directions. And Kegworth: Flight to Disaster on BBC Two at 9pm is a sobering, well-made piece about one of the worst air disasters in British history.

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