What's on TV this Easter? Best shows to watch on Easter Sunday 2018

Ordeal by Innocence, 9pm BBC1

The Argyll family lives in luxury at the sumptuous Sunny Point, though the house is anything but. It’s a cradle of vipers, a place of dark corners and even darker deeds.

Sarah Phelps’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s story writhes with greed and suspicion after the murder of cruel matriarch Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor), bludgeoned with a decanter and left to die messily on the carpet. Her son Jack is accused of her killing, although he protests his innocence.

But time moves on and Rachel’s husband Leo (Bill Nighy) is about to marry again, though none of his children likes his bride to be, the brassy Gwenda (Alice Eve). As the preparations are under way, a pale stranger with a bloody hand arrives to drop a bombshell.

It’s a terrific melodrama, camp without being silly, and packed with exactly what you want from a Christie adaptation – suspense, poisonous glares and loads and loads of suspects.

The Generation Game, 8pm BBC1

The theme music is (sort of) the same, the conveyor belt packed with prizes to be memorised, the jokes are as bad, the challenges as messy and the contestants enthusiastic but, of course, there’s no Brucie. Instead Mel and Sue take the reins of the show that was regularly watched by 21 million viewers back in the 1970s.

The games, for those too young to remember the original, are designed for maximum embarrassment, double entendres and hilarity, so we see contestants attempt to work a pottery wheel (under the surprisingly competent eye of Johnny Vegas), make sausages and do a Bollywood routine. By the time two teams of family members try plate-spinning, everyone’s having a smashing time. Yep, that’s the level of it.

The Durrells, 8pm ITV

Louisa and Larry are holed-up in rain-sodden Bournemouth for the funeral, although not for long. They soon decamp to rain-sodden London to stay with writer Henry Miller and his artist friends. Drably provincial versus wildly bohemian makes for some entertaining situations, but you still yearn for the sunshine of Corfu.

Luckily, we do spend some time on the Greek island, where Gerry rescues a donkey from an abusive farmer, Margo sees Zoltan against her mother’s precise instructions and Leslie – of all people – is offered a job as a policeman. However, very little is done on the domestic front, judging by the appalling state of the Durrells’ kitchen.

The Big Painting Challenge, 6pm BBC1

The amiable art contest stretches its canvas for another run. Richard Coles and Mariella Frostrup return as the lightly bantering hosts, with ten amateur artists putting themselves through painterly challenges.

This week the theme is still life – literally in the case of rendering the copper stills at a Glasgow spirit makers onto canvas. The hopefuls learn about the difference between shape and form and the technique of reductive painting. They also get a masterclass in patronising: “Well done for your energy,” is Mentor Diana Ali’s comment on one effort. “It’s very punchy,” adds Coles, kindly.

Revolution, 6.30pm Sky 1

Revolution isn’t for the faint-hearted. The Ninja Warrior-style show sees 50 fearless BMX bikers, rollerbladers and skateboarders taking on terrifying stunts and challenges (they have ominous names like The Cull and The Reckoning) to see ultimately which street sport is the best. The premise might be a bit fluffy, but the spectacle is anything but. It’s just as well those paramedics are on hand – actual blood gets spilt on the course.

The Good Karma Hospital, 9pm ITV

Gabriel joins Ruby on an outreach programme to a tea plantation, but discovers that she has not been completely honest about her reasons for wanting to go there. Back at the clinic, Lydia tries to help a patient who she believes is a victim of domestic abuse.

Best film: Selma, 11pm BBC2

Director Ava DuVernay's sweepingly staged history lesson avoids the episodic pitfalls of the biopic by eschewing Dr Martin Luther King's whole life story in favour of a single flashpoint. She focuses on the three marches led by the civil rights beacon in 1965 from Selma in Alabama to the state capital, Montgomery, demanding equal voting rights for blacks.