TV tonight: how Brief Encounter became the most romantic film of all time

Classic Movies: The Story of Brief Encounter

8pm, Sky Arts
A new series of Ian Nathan’s engaging film histories begins with David Lean’s masterpiece. It is often described as the most romantic film of all time, but did its story of transient, forbidden love strike a chord because of its timing? Released in 1945, it marked the end of fear and uncertainty, but also a return to normality after the second world war. And what role did the hidden sexuality of its writer, Noël Coward, play in its themes? Phil Harrison

Eyewitness to History: Norma Percy on Watergate

8pm, BBC Four
It’s Watergate night on BBC Four as film-maker Norma Percy introduces her 1994 documentary on the presidential scandal that launched a thousand “-gate” suffixes by recalling the challenges she faced in making it. Afterwards, there is a showing of the ultimate Hollywood take on the affair, All the President’s Men. PH

Interview With the Vampire

9pm, BBC Two
This clever, entertaining series manages to have its cake and eat it, leaning into the kitschy, campy vibe of vampires in Paris while raising a wry eyebrow at the genre assumptions underpinning it. Louis’ quiet life is sent into a tailspin by a visit to the theatre. Claudia, however, is enraptured. PH

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

9pm, Sky Max
Most Walking Dead spin-offs feel like the same old ingredients rehashed. But this one – in which Norman Reedus’s dirtbag biker has somehow washed up in zombified France – has a pleasing Gallic flavour. Daryl and his holy ally Sister Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) must deal with a gang of feral kids and some upsetting flashbacks. Graeme Virtue

Live at the Apollo Bites

9.50pm , BBC Two
How many belly laughs can a skilled comic cram into 11 minutes? This week’s mixed bag of standup snacks includes grand gags from Father Ted veteran Ardal O’Hanlon, the fresh and funny perspective of the son of Kurdish-Iraqi refugees, Kae Kurd, and Lou Sanders opening up about her love life. Ellen E Jones

Fantasmas

10pm, Sky Comedy
A double bill of Julio Torres’s digressive oddball comedy that is an autobiographical sitcom and a fever dream. First, Julio learns of a programme that promises to free the mind from the body. But then, in the second episode, he looks as if he has landed a superhero role in a new film. PH

Live sport

Olympics 2024, 8am, BBC One
Katarina Johnson-Thompson starts the heptathlon, plus the men’s 200m final and women’s 400m hurdles final.