Tuesday 29 September 2026. Both home nations are on free-to-air at once: England are in Prague against Czechia on ITV1 and Scotland face Switzerland on BBC Two, both kicking off at 7.45pm. That leaves Blue Lights with a clear run at 9pm on BBC One, and it is the pick of the night. Channel 4 reaches biscuit week in the tent, and Colin from Accounts finishes for good at 10pm. EastEnders is on at 7.30pm.

Page Contents

Quick Picks: Tonight’s Best

See also: Friday's TV Guide | Thursday's TV Guide

Blue Lights BBC One, 9pm. A protest outside a migrant centre becomes a riot.
Czechia v England ITV1, 7pm. Second Nations League group game, k/o 7.45pm.
Scotland v Switzerland BBC Two, 7.30pm. Same kick-off, different channel.
The Three Kings BBC Four, 10pm. Busby, Shankly and Stein, and the coalfield that made them.
EastEnders is on tonight — BBC One, 7.30pm.

Early Evening

House of Games – BBC Two, 6pm

Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lucy Porter, Cariad Lloyd and Miles Jupp take the week, with Strictly: It Takes Two at 6.30pm and then Access All Areas: The Real Strictly Come Dancing at 7pm — which, despite the title, is not about the television show at all but the British National Dance Championships in Blackpool. Same sequins, no celebrities, an 11-year-old competing.

Heartbeat – ITV3, 6.55pm

ITV3 opens with Aidensfield before a feature-length Vera at 8pm and Downton Abbey at 10pm.

The Simpsons – E4, 6pm

Two episodes, then a new Hollyoaks at 7pm and Brooklyn Nine-Nine at 7.30pm on E4.

Taxi – Film4, 7.10pm

The Besson-scripted Marseille comedy about a pizza courier with a heavily modified Peugeot. Film4 follows with Plane at 9pm.

EastEnders – BBC One, 7.30pm

Jack has decided not to see what is going on with his daughter Amy, which is rarely a strategy that survives a week in Walford. Amy has attached herself to Craig Ingram at work, and the search for a stem cell donor for Denise is still the thread holding the wider story together.

Prime Time

Blue Lights – BBC One, 9pm ⭐

Blue Lights has always worked like a fuse burning. Each series starts with something small and you spend the run waiting for it to reach the charge — except this time there is barely any fuse at all.

Tonight’s flashpoint is a migrant resource centre, where a loyalist anti-immigration protest gathers outside: tricolours, flags behind helmets, faces covered, the whole thing livestreamed. Grace (Siân Brooke) and Stevie (Martin McCann) are among the officers sent in, nominally protected by a tactical support group with riot shields, and the protection lasts about as long as you would expect once fists and rocks start flying.

What the programme does better than any other British police drama is show how fast a crowd becomes a different thing entirely — how few people it takes, and how quickly the officers stop being authority and start being a target. It is taken straight from the news of the last couple of years and it does not soften it. Full series on iPlayer.

UEFA Nations League: Czechia v England – ITV1, 7pm

England’s second group game, at the Fortuna Arena in Prague, with coverage from 7pm and kick-off at 7.45pm. After Saturday’s meeting with Spain at Wembley this is the more straightforward assignment on paper, which is usually when it goes wrong. ITV1 stays with it until just after 10pm.

International Football: Scotland v Switzerland – BBC Two, 7.30pm

Scotland’s second fixture, kicking off at the same moment on the other channel. Two home nations live on Freeview simultaneously is unusual and mildly annoying if you care about both — there is no clean way to watch them, and one of them is going on the recorder.

DIY SOS – BBC One, 8pm

A harder watch than the format usually is. Georgie lost her husband Chris suddenly; he had been renovating the family’s run-down house into something they could live in, and she has been left in a building site with three children under ten and no idea how to finish it. Nick Knowles and the team take it on.

The team’s brief here includes preserving what Chris actually built, among it a bed he made by hand for his daughter. That is a more delicate job than knocking things through, and an early mistake by one of the team makes it harder still.

The Great British Bake Off – Channel 4, 8pm

Biscuit week in the tent. Nigella Lawson has grown into the judging chair and is noticeably more willing to disagree with Paul Hollywood than Prue Leith tended to be, which improves the show. Tonight he dismisses one baker’s biscuits as too hard, and the showstopper is a mosaic built around flavours that turn out to include cyanide-adjacent ingredients — Nigella sensibly makes him taste it first. Second Helpings follows at 10.35pm.

Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death – Channel 5, 9pm

Ninety minutes in the operating theatre on Channel 5, after Motorway Cops at 8pm.

The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family – BBC Four, 9pm

The family’s rapid climb and rather more rapid collapse, before BBC Four gives the rest of the night to football history.

Plane – Film4, 9pm

Gerard Butler lands a crippled airliner on an island controlled by militia, then has to get everyone off it. Does exactly what the title promises and nothing else.

Tempting Fortune – Channel 4, 9.30pm

A dozen strangers two weeks into a trek through the Malaysian jungle, with a £300,000 fund that shrinks every time somebody buys comfort. Tonight there is ice cream, a bar selling absurdly expensive drinks, and a spa at the end of a mangrove hike. Rob Beckett enjoys this far too much.

Gogglebox – E4, 9pm

Two hours of it, before First Dates at 11.05pm.

Late Night

Colin from Accounts – BBC Two, 10pm

The last one ever. A show that took the romcom, ran it over with a car and somehow produced something warmer than the thing it wrecked, and it goes out with the curveballs still coming. Northern Ireland gets it tomorrow at 11pm.

The Three Kings – BBC Four, 10pm

Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Jock Stein were born within thirty miles of each other in Scotland’s coal belt, went down the pits, and between them rebuilt Manchester United, Liverpool and Celtic. This 2020 film makes the case that the mining communities they came from explain the managers they became — Shankly quotable and combative, Busby shaped by surviving Munich, Stein building a European Cup-winning side out of men born within a few miles of the ground.

Malcolm X – BBC One, 10.40pm

Spike Lee’s three-hour biography with Denzel Washington, which remains one of the great American film performances. A serious commitment on a weeknight.

Fatal Lies: True Crime Presents – ITV1, 10.50pm

The murder of Raneem Oudeh, and the repeated warnings that went unheeded before it.

Downton Abbey – ITV3, 10pm

Feature-length, after Vera.

Sport

Unusually, both England and Scotland are live on Freeview at the same time. England are at the Fortuna Arena in Prague against Czechia, coverage from 7pm on ITV1, kick-off 7.45pm. Scotland are away to Switzerland, on BBC Two from 7.30pm, kicking off at exactly the same minute.

There is no way to watch both live, and whichever you pick the other finishes at roughly the same time, so the highlights will not help much either. Elsewhere, the Darts World Grand Prix continues at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester and the Shenzhen Open snooker reaches the second and third rounds, but both are on subscription channels rather than Freeview.

What’s On Streaming

BBC iPlayer — Blue Lights (full series), EastEnders, Colin from Accounts (full series), The Three Kings, DIY SOS.

ITVX — Czechia v England, Fatal Lies, The Assembly.

Channel 4 — The Great British Bake Off, Tempting Fortune, Gogglebox.

5 — Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death, Motorway Cops.

Tonight by Channel

A channel-by-channel breakdown of Tuesday 29 September 2026, so you can jump straight to the one you actually watch.

BBC One

7pm — The One Show
7.30pm — EastEnders
8pm — DIY SOS
9pm — Blue Lights
10.40pm — Malcolm X

BBC Two

6pm — House of Games
6.30pm — Strictly: It Takes Two
7pm — Access All Areas: The Real Strictly Come Dancing
7.30pm — International Football: Scotland v Switzerland
10pm — Colin from Accounts

ITV1

7pm — UEFA Nations League: Czechia v England
10.50pm — Fatal Lies: True Crime Presents

Channel 4

8pm — The Great British Bake Off
9.30pm — Tempting Fortune
10.35pm — The Great British Bake Off: Second Helpings

Channel 5

6pm — The Big Steam Train Adventure
8pm — Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders
9pm — Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death

E4

6pm — The Simpsons
7pm — Hollyoaks
7.30pm — Brooklyn Nine-Nine
8pm — Below Deck Down Under
9pm — Gogglebox

BBC Four

8pm — To the Manor Born
9pm — The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family
10pm — The Three Kings

Film4

7.10pm — Taxi
9pm — Plane
11.10pm — Bob Trevino Likes It

ITV3

6.55pm — Heartbeat
8pm — Vera
10pm — Downton Abbey

The Viewing Schedule

Time	Channel	Programme
6pm	BBC Two	House of Games
6pm	E4	The Simpsons
6pm	Channel 5	The Big Steam Train Adventure
6pm	Channel 4	A New Life in the Sun: Where Are They Now?
6.30pm	BBC Two	Strictly: It Takes Two
6.55pm	ITV3	Heartbeat
7pm	BBC One	The One Show
7pm	BBC Two	Access All Areas: The Real Strictly Come Dancing
7pm	ITV1	UEFA Nations League: Czechia v England (k/o 7.45pm)
7pm	E4	Hollyoaks
7pm	Channel 5	Traffic Cops: Elite Squad One
7pm	BBC Four	Canals: The Making of a Nation
7.10pm	Film4	Taxi
7.30pm	BBC One	EastEnders
7.30pm	BBC Two	International Football: Scotland v Switzerland (k/o 7.45pm)
7.30pm	E4	Brooklyn Nine-Nine
7.30pm	BBC Four	Timothy Spall Back at Sea
8pm	BBC One	DIY SOS
8pm	Channel 4	The Great British Bake Off
8pm	Channel 5	Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders
8pm	ITV3	Vera
8pm	E4	Below Deck Down Under
8pm	BBC Four	To the Manor Born
8.30pm	BBC Four	Keeping Up Appearances
9pm	BBC One	Blue Lights
9pm	Channel 5	Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death
9pm	BBC Four	The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family
9pm	Film4	Plane
9pm	E4	Gogglebox
9.30pm	Channel 4	Tempting Fortune
10pm	BBC Two	Colin from Accounts
10pm	BBC Four	The Three Kings
10pm	ITV3	Downton Abbey
10.05pm	ITV1	ITV News at Ten
10.35pm	Channel 4	The Great British Bake Off: Second Helpings
10.35pm	BBC Two	Newsnight
10.40pm	BBC One	Malcolm X
10.50pm	ITV1	Fatal Lies: True Crime Presents
11.05pm	E4	First Dates
11.10pm	Film4	Bob Trevino Likes It
11.10pm	BBC Two	Finding Britain’s Slave Traders with David Olusoga
11.20pm	Channel 4	Gogglebox
11.45pm	ITV1	The Assembly

Frequently Asked Questions

Is EastEnders on tonight (Tuesday 29 September 2026)?

Yes. EastEnders is on BBC One at 7.30pm. Jack is choosing to look away from what is happening with Amy, while the search for a stem cell donor who could save Denise continues.

What time is Blue Lights on tonight?

Blue Lights is on BBC One at 9pm. Tonight a loyalist protest outside a migrant resource centre escalates into a riot, with Grace, Stevie and a tactical support unit caught in it. The full series is on iPlayer.

What’s the best thing to watch on TV tonight (Tuesday 29 September 2026)?

Blue Lights on BBC One at 9pm. It is the most tense hour on the schedule, and this run takes a flashpoint straight out of the news rather than inventing one.

What time is Czechia v England on tonight?

ITV1’s coverage starts at 7pm with kick-off at 7.45pm at the Fortuna Arena in Prague. It is England’s second Nations League group game, and ITV1 stays with it until about 10.05pm.

Is Scotland playing tonight?

Yes. Scotland face Switzerland, live on BBC Two from 7.30pm with kick-off at 7.45pm. Both home nations are therefore on free-to-air at the same time, on different channels.

What time is Bake Off on tonight?

The Great British Bake Off is on Channel 4 at 8pm for 90 minutes. It is biscuit week, and Second Helpings follows at 10.35pm.

Is Colin from Accounts on tonight?

Yes, and it is the last one. The final episode is on BBC Two at 10pm. Northern Ireland viewers get it on Wednesday at 11pm instead.

What film is on TV tonight?

BBC One shows Spike Lee’s Malcolm X at 10.40pm. Film4 has Taxi at 7.10pm, Plane at 9pm and Bob Trevino Likes It at 11.10pm.

What is The Three Kings on BBC Four?

A documentary at 10pm about Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Jock Stein, who were born within 30 miles of each other in the Scottish coalfield and went on to reshape British football management.

What live sport is on TV tonight: Tuesday 29 September 2026?

Two international football matches on Freeview at the same time: Czechia v England on ITV1 from 7pm, and Scotland v Switzerland on BBC Two from 7.30pm. Both kick off at 7.45pm.

Final Verdict

The football takes the first half of the evening and there is no getting round the clash, so pick one and record the other. What it leaves behind is a genuinely strong 9pm onwards.

Blue Lights is the best thing on, and this particular episode is the one people will be talking about — a riot built out of something that happened here, recently, rather than a writers’ room invention. After it, BBC Four’s football double of The Boleyns and then The Three Kings is a quietly excellent way to finish, and Colin from Accounts at 10pm is the last chance to see a comedy that never got the audience it deserved.

Written by

TV Radar Team

TV Radar Team is the byline on TV Radar's automatically generated TV guides — covering BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5 and beyond. Each evening's schedule is built from the published listings (titles, start times, run lengths and episode numbers) and checked against our listings data before publication, so you can decide in two minutes what to record and what to skip. These guides are generated automatically rather than written by hand; a human editor spot-checks them, but not every page is read before it goes live. Based in London, updated every day.