TV tonight: Jack Rooke’s Big Boys are really good TV | Television

big boys

10 p.m., Channel 4

Based on creator Jack Rooke’s coming of age, this marvelous six-part comedy-drama will have you laughing and then bawling within the first two minutes. It follows Jack (a superbly cast Dylan Llewellyn as “a locked up mama’s boy with a newly dead father and a shitty perm”). Although he doesn’t want to leave his mother, he hops on to college, where he shares accommodation with Danny (Jon Pointing) – a mature student who wants a wingman to shoot “fit birds”. Cue an unexpected friendship between the two as they support each other while navigating grief, sexuality and mental health issues. With Rooke’s narration, it really is beautiful television. Hollie Richardson

The stewardess

9 p.m. Sky Max

Kaley Cuoco returns as the trouble-prone Cassie for a second season of this dark comedy-drama. Cassie is now sober and well placed as she continues to serve heaven. She also moonlights as a CIA agent in Berlin. Beginning with a double bill tonight, she soon finds herself entangled in yet another murder – and the tension of it all could send her back to drinking. HR

Prince’s Trust Awards

8:30 p.m., TVI

Last year, this ceremony – celebrating the extraordinary achievements of young people – was so moving it brought tears to tears from celebrity ambassadors such as Hugh Dennis, Richard E Grant and Kate Garraway. Expect equally moving accounts of this year’s event – televised for the first time in 17 years and hosted by Ant and Dec. HOUR

The art that made us

9 p.m., BBC 2

In the final part, the lesser-sung British pop artist Pauline Boty is among the profiled post-WWII creators who turned the old order upside down. Lesley Sharp reads A Taste of Honey, Liv Wynter greets Tracey Emin and we meet photographer Charlie Phillips, who documented the changing 60s community in Notting Hill. Ali Catterall

The staircase

9 p.m., Atlantic Sky

We go back to 2001, and Thanksgiving has made unhappy Kathleen anxious. Five tumultuous years later, editor Sophie (a brilliant end-of-season entry by Juliette Binoche) is beginning to follow her own lead. If you’ve been following the multi-layered structure of this true crime, the narrative richness really starts to pay off. Henry Wong

ERP

10 p.m., BBC 3

After last year’s pilot, this restless sitcom, set in a student reference unit, returns for a four-episode series. Unstable fashionista Belle (Pia Somersby) and restless Halil (Jaye Ersavas) are among the outcast children schooled by bullied teachers. The result is plausible in your face, but with real smoothness under class aggro. Graeme Virtue

Choice of movies

Suspicion, (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941), 9 p.m., BBC Four
Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller was the first of four successful collaborations with Cary Grant, though it’s the only one where his leading man plays a bit of a bad role. Grant’s Johnnie is an eligible bachelor, if a bit “wild” – but for General Lina’s daughter (Joan Fontaine), he represents the excitement she can’t find in her comfortable, rural life. However, after they flee, she realizes that he is a gambler and an inveterate liar, heavily in debt and, she suspects, capable of murder – for financial gain. Fontaine won an Oscar for her role, oscillating convincingly between happiness and fear. Simon Wardel