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David Olusoga in Bristol for A House Through Time
If walls could talk ... David Olusoga in Bristol for A House Through Time. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon/BBC/Twenty Twenty
If walls could talk ... David Olusoga in Bristol for A House Through Time. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon/BBC/Twenty Twenty

TV tonight: David Olusoga explores Bristol's slave-holding past

This article is more than 3 years old

The historian examines the city’s former role as a human trafficking hub. Plus: pastry pros face off in Bake Off. Here’s what to watch this evening

A House Through Time

9pm, BBC Two

The historian David Olusoga sets his sights on another British house, the history of which will be uncovered over the course of this documentary series. He is in Bristol at No 10 Guinea Street, a road named after the Guinea coast in west Africa – a hub of the international slave trade. Olusoga discovers how the house was built by a prolific 18th-century slave trader, Edmund Saunders, and learns of Bristol’s role as one of the world’s biggest slave-trading ports – a history with which the city has an increasingly uncomfortable relationship. Ammar Kalia

Life and Birth

8pm, BBC One

This is a muted conclusion to the maternity ward documentary, but, even if the most compelling stories were in other episodes, these subtler heartbreaks still provide drama – whether from expectant mothers with mental health problems or a newborn with a hole in her heart. Jack Seale

Bake Off: The Professionals

8pm, Channel 4

Sweet relief ... Benoit Blin, Liam Charles, Cherish Finden and Tom Allen on Bake Off: The Professionals. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon

Benoit and Cherish are back with their notebooks and suspiciously small forks to examine the best baked goods the country’s pâtissiers have to offer. Today’s teams must create 24 identical mini strawberry tarts before reinventing the pineapple upside-down cake. AK

Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild

9pm, Channel 5

The adventurer Ben Fogle returns for a second series, meeting previous contributors who dropped out of the rat race to live off the grid in some of the most remote locations on Earth. How has life changed for the Long family, who set up home in Gorge River, off the remote coast of New Zealand? Ali Catterall

Rob & Romesh Vs Cricket

9pm, Sky One

Messrs Beckett and Ranganathan conclude their banter-fuelled trip to South Africa. It feels more like a jolly than a serious documentary, but the pair are good value and the cricket itself adds considerable drama – the conclusion to the Test match they attend will feel poignant to anyone yearning for a fix of live sport. Phil Harrison

Unprecedented

10pm, BBC Four

Just as ITV’s Isolation Stories tackled lockdown through physically distanced TV drama, this new BBC series explores our collective quarantines through a collection of shorts created by some of the nation’s finest playwrights. Together they tell the stories of NHS workers, families and couples from home. AK

Film choice

Language barrier ... Amy Adams in Arrival. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016), 9pm, Film4
Ever since ET, meeting extraterrestrials has involved searching inwards as well as outwards – and so it is with Denis Villeneuve’s handsome sci-fi drama. Amy Adams is a linguistics expert, Dr Louise Banks, called on to help communicate with aliens who arrive in 12 huge, threatening spacecraft around the world. Paul Howlett

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