TV preview: MasterChef: The Professionals returns and Lego Masters begins

Wareing and co take a bite out of a clutch of new hopefuls and Channel 4 shows off its new kid on the block

Feast for the eyes: Marcus Wareing, Gregg Wallace and Monica Galetti return (BBC)

If you’re suffering from withdrawal symptoms because Bake Off is over for another year (and congratulations again to winner Rahul Mandal) you may be relieved to learn that MasterChef: The Professionals is back. It’s the usual recipe, with Gregg Wallace, Marcus Wareing and Monica Galetti doing the munching and marking. “Professional” means that the contestants actually cook for a living, and, mostly, enjoy a certain level of competence in the kitchen, so their culinary disasters are less dramatic and therefore less amusing than, say, my culinary disasters. This week the wannabe champion chefs must cook tempura squid with a roasted garlic and saffron mayonnaise; a cauliflower steak with two cauliflower garnishes, and a nut butter. I’ll be watching, as per usual, with a bag of pickled onion Monster Munch and a cheese sandwich on my lap. Bon appetite.

I suppose that it had to happen one day: a whole TV series devoted to Lego. In fact, a second series of Lego Masters debuts on Channel 4, and I’m a bit envious really. Who wouldn’t want to have access to practically unlimited supply of Lego bricks, free to create whatever vaguely rectangular vision your imagination can summon up? Actually, these plastic Brunels have to fulfil a given brief for each round – the first task here being to construct a 1.3 metre-long bridge over which a remote-controlled dump truck will be driven. Eight of the “best amateur brick-building duos in the British Isles”, we are promised, will pit their skills, creativity and imaginations against each other. Scientist and engineer Fran Scott joins as regular co-judge alongside Matthew Ashton, Lego’s vice president of design. If I promise to build an accurate scale model of Kim Jong-un, can I join in?

School assembly: a young brick-building duo compete to become ‘Lego Masters’ (Channel 4)

I’m not sure how original it is, but Sky One’s The Heist has an intriguing premise. Ten usually law-abiding citizens of Thirsk, North Yorkshire, are invited to raid a cash delivery van, steal the £250,000 it is carrying and then evade the forces of law and order sufficiently long (two weeks) for them to be judged to have gotten away with it. They then get to keep the lot which, you’d hope, would be craved up between them with a minimum of bloodshed. They’ll also need to remember that they’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off the van.

I’m also curious about Vice’s offering for Monday evening – The Hunt for Trump Tapes with Tom Arnold. Arnold begins his hunt by confronting Howard Stern live on air about why he, Stern, won’t release his past interviews with Donald Trump. Tom also asks Arnold Schwarzenegger for help with his quest, and hears from other (US series) Apprentice cast and crew who witnessed Trump’s bad behaviour first hand. The outtakes are out there, apparently; will we ever get to see them? Will they tell us anything we haven’t already guessed about Trump’s personality?

The 70th birthday of Britain’s longest-serving apprentice falls on 14 November, and national festival of fawning for Prince Charles kicks off in earnest this week with Prince, Son and Heir: Charles at 70. We’re promised a glimpse at the “warm, witty side we don’t often see”, which is nice, but I’d rather know some more about his odd ideas and that business about the footman putting the toothpaste on the brush for him.

‘WW1: The Final Hours’: the Armistice in depth on its centenary (BBC)

The other anniversary that will dominate much of the media over the next week or so is of course the centenary of the Armistice that ended the Great War. Remembrance Sunday falls on the 11 November, fittingly, this year and it’ll be a special one. Highlights include The Last Tommies, eyewitness accounts for the “Old Contemptibles” gathered over the past 25 years; and WW1: The Final Hours, which details the events surrounding the signing of the armistice document, famously in a railway carriage in a forest near Paris. It was, as we know, less an armistice than a ceasefire, and, when he got the chance in 1940, Hitler had the carriage blown up.

Last, I should mention The Little Drummer Girl, the BBC’s well-made adaption of the famous Le Carre novel, and two promising Sky comedy series – Sally4Ever, the brilliant work of Julia Davis at her best, and The Reluctant Landlord, with Romesh Ranganathan. Plenty to keep you going for dark cold nights.

‘The Little Drummer Girl’: another quality Le Carre adaptation (BBC)

MasterChef: the Professionals (BBC2, Tuesday 8pm); Lego Masters (Channel 4, Tuesday 8pm); The Heist (Sky One, Friday 9pm); The Hunt for the Trump tapes (Vice, Monday 10pm); Prince, Son and Heir: Charles at 70 (BBC1, Thursday 9pm); The Last Tommies (BBC4, Monday 9pm); WW1: the Final Hours (BBC2, Thursday 9pm); The Little Drummer Girl (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Sally4Ever (Sky Atlantic, Thursday 10pm); The Reluctant Landlord (Sky One, Tuesday 10pm)