TV tonight: our highlights for Thursday 20th May

Saved By a Stranger is just one of the gems on today...

Two final remarkable tales of being Saved By a Stranger, who will be taking Greg's head home as Taskmaster champion, and a terrible scandal in the British education system is explored in documentary Subnormal. Here’s what you shouldn’t miss on TV tonight.

Our hand-selected recommendations for what's on TV tonight include three TV shows, live sport, a film and the latest trending need-to-binge-on-now box set
Keep up to date with the latest soap spoiler storylines on TV tonight with our daily soap synopsis
For more information about what’s on TV tonight see our TV Guide

What's on TV tonight

Our expert TV journalists have picked the best things on TV tonight...

Best TV shows on TV tonight

Taskmaster, 9pm, C4

TV tonight Taskmaster — Greg and Alex can’t wait to give out that trophy

Another series of entirely pointless (but very, very funny) challenges concludes tonight as Greg Davies prepares to award the golden rendering of his majestic head to this year’s winner, while the other four contestants prepare to call their agents and hope they haven’t damaged their careers too much by their failure to make a balloon hover untethered for 10 seconds, or make an impressive uniform for a bee. In a final bid to get their hands on some precious points, Charlotte Ritchie stumbles into some sand, Jamali Maddix staggers around, and Sarah Kendall stacks fish fingers.

★★★★ SP

Saved By a Stranger, 9pm, BBC2

The horrors of Nazi Germany are recalled in this emotional final episode as we follow 87-year-old Jewish twins Peter and George, who are desperate to find the family who lent them money to escape Berlin in 1939. We also meet Clare, who took in 21 ‘orphaned’ refugee children from war-torn Bosnia. But it was only when schoolgirl Petra arrived as a translator that she found out that none of them were actually orphans and they all had families back in Bosnia. Clare made it her mission to reunite the children with their parents and now wants to find Petra to thank her.

★★★★ HD

Subnormal: A British Scandal, 9pm, BBC1

TV tonight Subnormal: A British Scandal — Maisie Barrett’s dyslexia meant she was labelled ESN

Small Axe creator Steve McQueen is executive producer of this documentary exposing one of Britain’s biggest educational scandals. Hundreds of black children in the 1960s and 1970s were sent to schools for the ‘educationally subnormal’ or ESN; children like Maisie Barrett, who had dyslexia but was told she was ‘backward’, and Anne-Marie Simpson, who was sent to an ESN school for bad behaviour when she was simply experiencing trouble at home. The scandal was eventually exposed, the term ESN banned and the education system changed forever.

★★★ HD

Best box set to watch

The Nest, one season, BBC iPlayer/BritBox

TV tonight The Nest — Martin Compston, Sophie Rundle and Mirren Mack star

Line of Duty's Martin Compston (using his natural Scottish accent) and Sophie Rundle play a wealthy couple unable to conceive, who ask an 18-year-old stranger to carry a baby for them. But can they trust her? A twisty, smartly scripted Glasgow-set thriller.

Best film to watch on TV tonight

Tea With Mussolini, 10.05pm, BBC4

Director Franco Zeffirelli uses his own childhood experiences as the inspiration for this touching story about an illegitimate Italian boy raised by a group of elderly Englishwomen (Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright) in Florence during the war. Also starring Cher as an American showgirl and Lily Tomlin as an archaeologist, there are more leading ladies than you can shake a stick at, and although you feel each deserves more screen time, this story of ‘civilised disobedience’ is charming and engrossing all the same.