9pm, BBC FourWhen Joe Biden decided it was “time to end America’s longest war”, he set in motion a tragic and shameful train of events, dramatised in this gripping thriller. As Americans withdrew from Kabul the Taliban moved in, which meant hell for women, dissidents and anyone who had collaborated with the occupiers. Through the eyes of the Nazany family – trying to decide whether to stay or flee – Kabul illuminates the human dilemmas behind the geopolitics.
Phil Harrison 7.30pm, BBC Two A barely believable 40 years have passed since the release of Paul Simon’s remarkable album Graceland. As befitting their prominence on the original record, South African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo will be at the heart of the action at this Royal Albert Hall concert. They’re joined by Laura Mvula and James Bay.
PH 8pm, Channel 4 Historian Hughes concludes her journey across ancient Anatolia with a whistlestop tour of Neolithic sites. Amid the ruins of Karahantepe, she marvels at life-size human statues dating back 12,000 years, before travelling to Gordion to untangle some knotty myths about King Midas. Graeme Virtue Four back-to-back episodes open the fifth series of this American reimagining of the hit comedy – including a Halloween special involving an Egyptian ghost who is accidentally summoned.
It’s zippy enough, with the spoilt Hetty, camp Issac and ditzy Flower being as watchable as their UK counterparts – even if the main couple are no match for Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe. Priya Elan 10pm, Channel 4 The 2000 Concorde crash in Paris wasn’t just a tragedy for the 113 people who lost their lives. It also marked the end of an era in terms of supersonic passenger flight.
This fascinating one-off documentary explores the circumstances around the crash and asks if it could have been prevented. PH 11pm, ITV1 If you didn’t know it was based on a celebrated true-crime documentary, the revelations in this tense family drama might seem implausible. But after a lengthy trial, novelist Michael Peterson (Colin Firth) has finally been jailed for the death of his wife Kathleen.
Will it give his shattered clan closure? (Short answer: no.) Graeme Virtue Signal One (Jonathan Sobol, 2026), 3.05pm, 10.20pm, Sky Cinema PremiereOne for fans of Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival and the Netflix thriller 3 Body Problem, Jonathan Sobol’s science-fiction puzzler also digs into the complexities of first contact with extraterrestrials. Dennis Quaid’s tech billionaire Sam lures computer genius Annika (Isabelle Fuhrman) to his Caribbean island, where David Thewlis’s physicist Perry is on the verge of communicating with aliens. But how do you talk to them?
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