Collision

ITV1, 9pm

Anthony Horowitz, the man behind Foyle’s War, has come up with a wonderfully simple idea. Following a fatal motorway pile-up, a policeman nursing a personal tragedy (Douglas Henshall) returns to work to head up the investigation. What viewers discover, in a series of flashbacks, is that everyone involved in the accident was up to something, although as yet we don’t know precisely what. Phil Davis’s character may have been about to murder his mother-in-law. There’s a smuggler in a white van, a PA involved in industrial espionage, and a lonely teacher who looks about to implode from sexual misery. It’s very contrived and totally absorbing. “I honestly think,” says Horowitz, “it’s the best work for television that I’ve done.” Based on this episode, he may be right.

Not Forgotten: Soldiers of Empire

Channel 4, 8pm

Ian Hislop pays tribute to the 2.5 million soldiers from across the Empire who fought for Britain in the First World War. It is hard to see how a programme of this sort could be bettered. By focusing on the stories of four individuals, Hislop avoids the deadening impact of incomprehensible statistics. He places their individual stories within the broader context of the war, and illustrates them with remarkable archive footage and extracts from letters and diaries. In the process, the programme sets out to answer a number of key questions. Did they fight willingly? What did they believe was at stake? How great was their contribution and how well were they treated? It transpires that there was no discrimination when it came to suffering.

Miranda

BBC Two, 8.30pm

Oh dear. Miranda Hart is one of the funniest actresses on television. She was brilliant as the cleaner who didn’t clean in No Going Out. She was even funnier in Hyperdrive, playing the Diplomatic Officer on a spaceship who had been brought up by a pony from the Home Counties, and she stole the show as a scary minicab driver in Angelos. So this new sitcom ought to be tremendous. She wrote it herself; she plays the central role and it’s based on Miranda Hart’s Joke Shop, broadcast on Radio 2, which was nominated for a Sony Award. Unfortunately, the first episode is pretty horrible — an endless series of running gags about her masculine appearance and chocolate penises, punctuated by slapstick pratfalls. “This is almost getting ridiculous,” she says at the end. Almost?

The Execution of Gary Glitter

Channel 4, 9pm

Viewed as drama, The Execution of Gary Glitter is a thousand times better than might be expected from its lurid subject matter. The simple premise of this film is that the death penalty has been reintroduced and Paul Gadd (aka Gary Glitter) is the first person to be executed in 46 years for child rape in Vietnam. By presenting most of the drama in the form of a documentary combining contributions from real people (Ann Widdecombe, the journalists Gary Bushell and Miranda Sawyer and Professor Vic Gatrell) with fictional talking heads, it becomes sickeningly plausible, helped along by any number of fine performances, especially Hilton McRae as Gadd. But the morality of making such a film — of trial by television — is another matter entirely.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010