TV tonight: Paris and the Seine star in the Olympics opening ceremony | Television

Olympics: Paris 2024 – Opening Ceremony

5.45pm, BBC One
One hundred years since the games were last held there, Paris is hosting the greatest sports tournament in the world for a third time – and the city is pulling out all the stops for the opening ceremony. Stage director Thomas Jolly is the man behind the ambitious event, which takes place along the Seine rather than inside a stadium. Clare Balding and her team will present all the coverage as more than 10,500 athletes parade down boats on a 6km route that passes the Grand Palais and Eiffel Tower. Performers for the evening haven’t been confirmed, but Sabrina Carpenter has appeared in an advert for the event – will she add a shot of Espresso to the night? Hollie Richardson

Gardeners’ World

8pm, BBC Two
Before heading off on his jollies, Monty Don tackles some last few jobs to get the garden “holiday ready”. He also plants phlox and sows seeds for late-summer salads. Also, Adam Frost visits the Mediterranean without leaving the country – in an Italian-inspired garden in Devon. HR

Lake District Rescue

8pm, Channel 4
Another report from the Cumbrian wilds, dealing with visitors whose problems go some way beyond wishing they had brought a cagoule. A paraglider has crashed, leaving the fliers with potentially paralysing neck injuries and stuck on top of Great How Crag. Jack Seale

Verdi’s Requiem at the Proms

8pm, BBC Four

Even if you are not all that nerdy for Verdi you will certainly recognise at least one slice of his stirring setting of the mass for the dead: the Dies Irae section is a choral and symphonic whirlwind that sounds both cinematic and apocalyptic. Ryan Bancroft, conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, two choirs and a team of soloists, will doubtlessly give it some welly. Graeme Virtue

Champions: Full Gallop

9pm, ITV1
Broken collarbones, detached retinas and crashing into a hedge at 40mph – it’s all the fun of horse racing. This week, we follow a pair of main jockeys, Sean Bowen and Harry Cobden; Bowen’s injury provides a golden opportunity for Cobden, “who comes across as so laidback and mild-natured that he’ll be absolutely ruthless”. Ali Catterall

Terror at 30,000 Feet

9pm, Channel 5
Back to 2010 and an incident on an Airbus A380 travelling from London to Sydney. A manufacturing fault caused an engine blowout just after a refuelling stop in Singapore, sending debris on to homes below and presenting the pilot with a problem: having only just taken off, his craft was theoretically too heavy to safely land. JS

Film choice

It (Andy Muschietti, 2017), 1.45pm, Sky Cinema Greats

If you didn’t have coulrophobia (fear of clowns) before watching Andy Muschietti’s 2017 horror, you may well after. Being the first in a two-part take on Stephen King’s novel (plus a major influence on Stranger Things) means it can take its time building the atmosphere of dread that seeps through the Maine town of Derry in 1989 as a series of kids go missing. And it’s that sustained chilly mood that impresses most, even when it gets gory for the young friends creeped out by child-snatching clown creature Pennywise (a Joker-like Bill Skarsgård). Simon Wardell