Celebrity MasterChef

BBC One, 8.30pm

Although each of the three contestants keeps saying how desperately he or she wants to win, in the end the result is totally irrelevant. The standard is so high that the judges might as well just pick a name out of a hat. In the final challenge, the contestants have to produce a signature three-course meal of their devising. Iwan Thomas makes a Thai prawn soup for starters and a classic Eton mess for dessert; Jayne Middlemiss serves up scallops with apple puree and walnuts, and Wendi Peters knocks up a quick roast turbot with lobster sauce followed by chocolate bread-and-butter pudding with prunes soaked in Armagnac and vanilla cream. Even the one dish that didn’t sound particularly appetising — Wendi Peters’s starter of baked goats cheese on beetroot purée — turned out to be a stunner. The fairest result would be to break with tradition and call it a dead heat.

Wild Things

Channel 4, 7.35pm

What happens to children raised in communes by lesbian activists when they grow up? In the 1970s a number of communes sprang up around the country opposed to the nuclear family and Western materialism. The parenting of the children was shared among the members of the commune and, instead of inheriting the parents’ surname, all the children were called “Wild”. Sam Wild, Shelley Wild, Rosie Wild, Maya Wild and so on. Adam Hopkins’s warmhearted film traces some of these children and their parents to find out what became of them. And, truth be told, they could hardly be more normal or pleasant. Not one of the Wild children has chosen to live in a commune or raise their children collectively, but they look back on their upbringing with warmth and affection. An unusual childhood, yes. But not a loveless one.

T in the Park 2009

BBC Three, 8pm

The BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of the festival season continues with live performances from the annual knees-up in Balado Park in Kinross, the biggest music festival in Scotland. Edith Bowman, Reggie Yates and Nick Grimshaw present highlights of the opening acts, including local heroes Franz Ferdinand, who are sure to be rapturously received. They are joined on the main stage by James Morrison and Maxïmo Park, while prog experimentalists the Mars Volta and the Scottish R.E.M., Idlewild, are on the NME/Radio 1 stage. Night owls can catch Dundee’s urchin-rockers, the View, at 1.15am.

Torchwood: Children of Earth

BBC One, 9pm

Tonight marks the climax of this mini-series that has been gathering momentum every night this week. At their best, series such as Doctor Who and Torchwood are able to work like contemporary fairytales, hiding fundamental truths under the guise of fantasy, laughter and excitement. “Underneath the sci-fi and the aliens,” says the writer Russell T. Davies, “I hope there’s something very relevant to the world. We sit in the West and watch footage of atrocities in different countries and imagine it’s all so far away and so impossible here. It’s a nice, comfy lie that we tell ourselves. I wanted to tell a story in which civilisation snaps, in which we turn on ourselves, in which nothing is safe. In this story, it was Britain’s turn.”

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