Stargazing Live, BBC Two, 8pm/Stargazing Live: Back To Earth, BBC Two, 9pm

There's a solar eclipse on Friday morning and to mark the event, the BBC is presenting two nights of programming about things celestial in the run-up to it, live coverage of the eclipse itself and another programme on Friday evening wrapping the whole thing up. You'll need to be in the Faroe Islands to witness the total eclipse but don't worry if you're not because Stargazing Live presenters Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain will be filming the whole two minutes 46 seconds of it from 30,000 feet up. Before that, they'll be based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, which is where tonight's first programme comes from. It's followed by another programme in which the pair is joined by none other than Buzz Aldrin to answer viewers' questions.

The King's Speech, Film 4, 9pm

Tom Hooper's 2011 film was nominated for 12 Oscars and won four, including Best Film, Best Actor (for lead Colin Firth) and Best Director for Hooper himself. The Academy was probably a little too in thrall to the film's ultra-British credentials - it's a costume drama about royalty that isn't directed by Madonna: what's not to like? - but it's a pretty good watch nonetheless. Firth is George VI, whose stutter becomes an issue when his brother, Edward VIII, abdicates and he's forced to take the throne. Geoffrey Rush is Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who helps him, and the whole thing builds brilliantly to a finale in which the King delivers a stutter-free radio address to the nation at the outbreak of war in 1939. Fair brings a tear to the eye.