Chess Masters: The Endgame

Monday

BBC Two, 8.00pm

Sue Perkins (QI) hosts a new competition to crown a Chess Champion from within the UK scene. That’s right: there’s a scene. Long after The Queen’s Gambit made it okay to obsess over the finer points of Bobby Fischer’s career, interest in the game is thriving.

Those in the know will be aware of the incredible true story that inspired this series. Executive producer Camilla Lewis watched her daughter overcome depression thanks to Chess.com. Her daughter spent months tutoring a boy online, with whom she later fell in love. Lewis was inspired to champion chess in the factual entertainment world, and here we are.

Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney

Wednesday

Netflix

Your girlfriend’s favourite comedian and the crown prince of your For You page returns to upend the talk show genre.

After the success of last year’s Everybody’s in LA, John Mulaney will be hosting four episodes of sit-down interviews, airing on Wednesdays. As the comic told Netflix, he’s taking it very seriously.

“We will never be relevant,” he said. “We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore.”

Adolescence

Thursday

Netflix

From Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (A Thousand Blows) comes a drama about a teenager accused of murder. What follows is a story about family, loyalty and the real-world proliferation of misogyny.

Each of the four episodes were filmed in one uninterrupted shot, which should make it no surprise that the director is Philip Barantini, who was also behind Boiling Point. Look out also for turns from Ashley Walters (Top Boy) and Graham’s A Thousand Blows co-star Erin Doherty.

Dope Thief

Friday

Apple TV+

Two friends in Philadelphia make a living by posing as DEA agents to rob drug dealers. It’s a good racket, until Ray (Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta) and Manny (Wagner Moura, Narcos) pick the wrong house.

Unbeknownst to them, the pair expose a major drug trafficking corridor, putting them on the radar of some very powerful people. Unable to turn to the police, Ray and Manny need to take the law into their own hands, and this time not to turn a quick buck. Can they protect their families?

Protection

Sunday

ITV1, 9.00pm

You might know Siobhan Finneran from playing Sarah Lancashire’s sister in Happy Valley. Now, she’s taking the lead.

In Detective Inspector Liz Nyles’s (Finneran) line of work, discretion is everything, more often than not being the difference between life and death. Soon, there’s a breach. It’s up to Nyles to find who in her unit is corrupt, all while trying to repair her own reputation after an affair with a colleague. For the Detective Inspector, this is all, exhaustingly, just another day at the office.