Melissa McBride as Carol in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol

Melissa McBride as Carol in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol. Photograph: Emmanuel Guimier/AMC

Norman Reedus and Melissa McBride return in the Daryl Dixon spin-off. Plus: Hugh Grant discussing his terrifying role in new film Heretic. Here’s what to watch this evening

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol

9pm, Sky Max

The zombie franchise that refuses to die continues with a second season of this France-set spin-off. It picks up with Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) fighting to find an old friend – but does he want to be rescued? Meanwhile, Marion Genet’s (Anne Charrier) movement builds momentum in the fight for France’s future. Hollie Richardson

Gardeners’ World

8pm, BBC Two

It’s autumn, so Monty Don is harvesting pumpkins and getting value for money when buying perennials. Intriguing segments from beyond Don’s herbaceous borders include Rachel de Thame learning how plants communicate with each other (not via gorse code, sadly). Graeme Virtue

Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar

9pm, BBC Two

“It ain’t Chanel No 5, that’s for sure.” That’s Joan Collins’s wicked line on Elizabeth Taylor’s Passion perfume – a scent as intense as her life, which is explored in this gorgeous series executive produced by Kim Kardashian. Episode two starts with the death of Taylor’s husband Mike Todd in a plane crash. HR

The Cleaner

9.30pm, BBC One

Greg Davies in The Cleaner. Running out of rope … Greg Davies in The Cleaner. Photograph: Jonathan Browning/BBC/Studio Hamburg UK

The cameo-packed sitcom is back, and it’s typical of Greg Davies’s crime scene-cleaning creation, Wicky, to find himself seething with envy over the apparently “perfect life” of someone dealing with a gruesome death at home. But that’s the situation when Wicky meets a new client who turns out to be an old schoolfriend. Ellen E Jones

Guy Garvey: From the Vaults

10pm, Sky Arts

The Elbow frontman’s musical retrospective comes to an end with a journey through the sonic output of 1988. Archive performances come from the Fall, the Wedding Present, Everything But the Girl and Pop Will Eat Itself. Plus, the Primitives – whose one big hit, Crash, remains wildly catchy more than 30 years later. Alexi Duggins

The Graham Norton Show

10.40pm, BBC One

Hugh Grant leads Norton’s lineup to talk about playing the villain in new horror flick Heretic . He is joined by the star of black comedy A Different Man, Sebastian Stan, comedian Greg Davies and singer Neneh Cherry. HR

Film choice

Match point? Mike Faist as Art, Zendaya as Tashi and Josh O’Connor as Patrick in Challengers. Match point? Mike Faist as Art, Zendaya as Tashi and Josh O’Connor as Patrick in Challengers. Photograph: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024), Friday, Prime Video
Luca Guadagnino’s love-triangle drama set on and around the tennis court teases and thrills (the game itself has rarely been filmed so creatively), but never quite reaches match point. Zendaya plays the woman in the middle, Tashi, a former player who coaches her husband, Art (Mike Faist), to grand slam success. Art’s former best mate, Patrick (Josh O’Connor, the most convincing of the three) is more talented, but less focused. A challenger tournament match-up provides all three with the chance to replay old entanglements and resolve long-held animosities. A bold, brassy yarn. Simon Wardell

The Color Purple (Blitz Bazawule, 2024), 11.30am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
A film of the stage musical of the book – Alice Walker’s novel has come a long way, but remains a landmark in African American fiction about the early 20th century. In Blitz Bazawule’s new iteration, Fantasia Barrino puts in the hard yards as Georgia girl Celie, who is sexually abused by her father, resulting in two children, then is married off to a man who cheats on her. Taraji P Henson and Danielle Brooks have more fire in their bellies – and the show-stopping numbers – as the friends who try to sustain her. SW