The Profits of Gloom

BBC Two, 7pm (N. Ireland: 7.30pm)

Every cloud has a silver lining, or at least a chrome-effect one. The Money Programme continues in its valiant mission to bring basic economic literacy to those of us who can’t tell our Footsies from our Nasdaqs with this report on the businesses that are doing well out of the economic downturn. Now, it seems, is the time to invest in thriving bailiffs, business liquidators and pawnbrokers. The reporter Max Flint meets one of the latter holding an unredeemed £78,000 diamond encrusted watch. These are happy times, too, for purveyors of budget goods and services, such as the Home Bargains retail chain, now creeping steadily southwards, and Ryanair, ready to cash in on the falling cost of aircraft.

Alexei Sayle’s Liverpool

BBC Two, 9pm

Once famous for his snappy hats, aggressively sarcastic left-wing stand-up and sketch-shows, Alexei Sayle makes an interesting presenter for this three-part profile of his home town, currently European Capital of Culture. Sayle left for London dreaming of bohemian glory and says that the hip Liverpool of the 1960s, with its distinctive music and sexy, druggy poets, passed him by. His chance remark in 2003 that the city was “philistine” brought a barrage of outrage. He returns to “reconnect”, question old assumptions and find out why they’re so damn touchy. The result is a thoughtful, sympathetic portrait covering the decline of the port, attempts at rejuvenation, Derek Hatton, the Hillsborough disaster and images of Liverpudlians in the media.

Derren Brown: Trick or Treat

Channel 4, 10pm

Derren Brown has sailed very close to the wind in the two series of this mind-bending show, the more alarming stunts drawing flak from the press. Remarkably his volunteers rarely, if ever object: perhaps like us they are fascinated by the depths of their own suggestibility and Brown’s ability to manipulate it. Tonight’s finale breaks from the Trick or Treat fomat by gathering all the previous participants for the end of series wrap party. Channel 4 is keeping its cards close to its collective chest, but apparently the show involves some kind of final twist in which we will all learn something about the power of superstition.

Peep Show

Channel 4, 10.35pm

Channel 4 has commissioned a sixth series of the Bafta-winning sitcom, provoking speculation that it could run for ever, and series five concludes tonight with Jeremy and Super Hans enticed to join a nutty cult as well as a tricksy cliffhanger involving Sophie and . . . but I mustn’t spoil it. As ever it is the texture of the writing that excels. Has anyone rendered the thought-processes of neurotic perpetual-adolescent males with more hilarious precision?

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