It made TV culinary showdowns fun – and it shows no signs of stopping. From the spinoffs to new rounds, there’s no danger of this televisual institution going off the boil

Recently, at a friend’s house, I was given the remote control and told to “put something on”. This is a big responsibility and the sweaty-palmed pressure might explain how I ended up on a channel they didn’t know they had, with no idea of what combination of buttons I pressed to get there. More importantly, it’s how we all ended up watching several episodes of a series of MasterChef from at least five years ago. Note “several episodes”: we might have arrived there by accident, but we stayed by choice.

MasterChef is about to enter its 20th season, and the BBC is, rightly, in a celebratory mood. In 2005, the format was revived, jazzed-up and modernised. The Loyd Grossman days, from 1990 to 2000, were fussier and far more formal. In 2005, Gregg Wallace and John Torode came along. Over almost two decades at the helm, they’ve made “buttery biscuit base” happen and competitive TV cooking fun again. I say fun. I’m not sure how much fun the contestants are having when they serve a sloppy collapse that was supposed to pay homage to their mother’s cherished recipe to three tight-lipped former champions, but if they aren’t having fun, at least the viewers are. The tension is palpable. Give me a scrappy, raw talent who can’t plate-up for toffee but makes exceptional-tasting food and I’m all in.

Best known for her work in 1950s sci-fi, the actor also took supporting roles in films including Bigger Than Life and Magnificent Obsession

Barbara Rush, the female lead of 1950s sci-fi horror It Came from Outer Space, has died aged 97. Her daughter Claudia Cowan, a reporter for Fox News, told Fox News Digital : “My wonderful mother passed away peacefully at 5:28 this evening. I was with her this morning and know she was waiting for me to return home safely to transition.”

Born in Denver in 1927, Rush grew up in Los Angeles and, after studying theatre at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was signed to Paramount Pictures . After making her screen acting debut in The Goldbergs – a big-screen spinoff of the popular radio and TV series – Rush’s breakthrough role came in 1951 in the Oscar-winning sci-fi picture When Worlds Collide , as the daughter of an astronomer attempting to warn humanity they are doomed by a rogue star on a crash course with Earth.

They kick off a new series with a gnocchi challenge. Plus, the penultimate episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Here’s what to watch this evening

What a shambolic piece of nothing. What dismal filler. This reality series about a magician playing practical jokes makes zero sense in any way – and is downright tasteless at points

They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. They are, of course, as so often, entirely wrong. The prank, or practical joke, is the lowest form of wit. If, indeed, it counts as wit at all. It is more often cruelty disguised as humour, bullying cast in a form that makes it even harder for the victim to object to it. Even at their mildest and least malicious, practical jokes depend on upsetting someone, catching them out, making them look stupid. And if they are at their mildest and least malicious they are also anticlimactic and deeply boring. That is why there is no such thing as a good prank. I don’t know if you remember Game for a Laugh? Beadle’s About? Candid Camera? Rejoice in your good fortune if you do not.

And make sure you do not tune into The Magic Prank Show with Justin Willman. Willman is comedian, magician (with three series of Magic for Humans on Netflix under his belt) and television presenter who in this new show turns his hand to constructing elaborate pranks, involving elements of trickery and illusion, to deliver “karmic justice” on behalf of people who feel they have been wronged. The result is bizarre yet dismal.

The Magic Prank Show is on Netflix .

Steven Knight’s six-parter about the formation of an 80s new wave band is intelligent, ambitious and anarchic. But be warned: it can feel oppressive at first

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear about a film or drama series about a band getting together, the spirit quails within. I prepare for “Let’s put the show on right here!” vibes and the equivalent of poor Billy Zane’s line in Titanic – “Something Picasso? He won’t amount to a thing!” So it is with a heavy heart that I approach This Town, the new offering from Steven Knight (of Peaky Blinders fame). It’s about the formation of an 80s new wave band, influenced by the preceding popularity of ska, reggae, two tone and punk, with the tracks the characters write created by record producer and songwriter Dan Carey and poet Kae Tempest. I am exhausted before it even starts.

Which just goes to show how very stupid one should try not to be. This Town is an ingenious piece of work, with such intelligence, ambition and heart – shot through with a borderline anarchic spirit – that it can and should overcome all resistance. It does take a bit of getting used to, as anything innovative will. There is – and there’s no easy way to say this – a lot of poetry going on, especially in voiceover, especially at the beginning, and the opening couple of episodes occasionally feel a bit oppressive. But it is compelling from the off, and certainly by episode three it has found the confidence to open up a bit, take a breath and even admit a few welcome comic moments as the tensions among the characters mount, the stakes rise and consequences build towards potential catastrophe.

At times, this night vision-heavy look at swooping bats and fornicating armadillos is borderline creepy. But it’s full of drama, stunning visuals and the joy that is the broadcaster’s voice

The Etruscan shrew is a tiny, furry time machine. Earth’s smallest mammal weighs less than a ping-pong ball and finds food by feeling for it at night, mimicking the very first mammals 200m years ago. They lived in darkness for one simple reason: during the day, dinosaurs roamed.

Two-thirds of mammals are still nocturnal now, so Mammals – the latest David Attenborough nature extravaganza – begins with an episode dedicated to lives lived in the dark. The Etruscan shrew is joined by mole rats, coyotes and a host of others, all hunting under black skies, most of them requiring the latest film-making technology to be seen.

Andrew Scott is devastating and magnetic in a beautiful new version of the Patricia Highsmith classic, while Colin Farrell is a slick LA PI in a tantalising noir

An affecting documentary sees the likes of Graham Norton and Ian McKellen delve into the life of the famous drag queen. Plus: the tunes of Terry Hall. Here’s what to watch this evening

This charming period drama about a 1920s Russian aristocrat being kept in a hotel by the Bolsheviks sees McGregor on sparkling form. He’s an intoxicating, swaggering figure of delight

Some books are difficult to film, and TV is a fool to attempt them. Others, however, perch on the shelf poised and preened, all dressed up and ready for the small screen. Amor Towles’s 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow could have been designed as a handsome, charming period drama, of the kind that once slid smoothly on to BBC One or ITV1 on a Sunday evening. It’s actually on Paramount+, but is handsome and charming and Sunday-ish still.

It remains to be seen whether Paramount takes advantage of the fact that the novel’s early chapters create a setup that could run on TV indefinitely, or whether it renders roughly the same amount of narrative as the book then bids us adieu. But that setup is this: in Moscow in 1921, four years after the revolution, the country’s disfranchised aristocracy face summary trials and executions. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (Ewan McGregor) – Sasha to his friends, “Your Excellency” to the dwindling minority of Russians who still recognise honorifics – seems to be next, but is saved from death by the surprising fact that he is the credited author of a seminal revolutionary poem.