Guitar Star, Sky Arts / Outcast, Fox

The guitar, the "little orchestra" beloved of Andrés Segovia, is an instrument for all seasons, and for venues from salons to stadiums. It isn't exactly the same instrument in all cases, of course. Comparing the traditional acoustic Spanish guitar to the electronic weapons systems used by Radiohead or U2 is like parking an Austin 7 next to a Tesla Model X.

It's one of the loopholes in Guitar Star (★★★) that it seeks, somehow, to throw all known types of guitar and every playing style into a pot, whence (at the end of nine episodes) a winner will be plucked. Logically, it's an impossible ask. On the other hand, that does at least guarantee a zanily wide breadth of styles, and a suitably diverse trio of judges. For this new series, veteran record-producer Tony Visconti lines up alongside smooth-jazzer George Benson and current classical whizz Miloš Karadaglić, and between them they try to assess the merits of jazzers and bluesniks, heavy-metallers and classical players, and bold eccentrics who make up their own styles (below, jazzer Zayn Mohammed).

It doesn't help that the performances have been brutally edited to cram them into the allotted time. The judges were very enamoured of electric hard-rocker Jake Heaton's thrash through Rush's "The Spirit of Radio", but what we heard of it was a misshapen mess. Juan Casals Mendoza (his name belied by his tweed jacket and pork-pie hat) played a flamenco piece called "Tio Arango", and while we saw some amazing technique, we only heard part of the story. The judges commented that Ramon Ruis had sounded very nervous, but he looked fine in the bits they showed us. Still, they were right to pick 14-year-old Billy Watman as one of the successful contenders, because his classical guitar arrangement of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was inspired, even if, paradoxically, it missed out the Brian May guitar solo.

But half the fun is the banter between the judges. George Benson plays the senior statesman and goes off on colourful anecdotes from the long-travelled road (he had a nice one about his idol T-Bone Walker). A tongue-in-cheek Miloš plays the classical purist, complaining about being deafened by feedback and powerchords and breathing a sigh of relief at the arrival of hardcore classical player Sam Rodwell. Visconti, who suffers a little bit from American smarm, can't help behaving like a talk-show host.

Outcast (★★★★) is Fox's nasty but effective new thriller about demonic possession, set in the West Virginia town of Rome. This is not the cradle of imperial civilisation, but rather a creepy rural backwater of shacks, menacing forests full of disembowelled animals nailed to trees, and old-time religion. However, there still isn't enough religion for Reverend Anderson (an authentically crazed-looking Philip Glenister, wielding an impressive Southern accent), who spent much of this episode railing at his sparse congregation and demanding a campaign for "more asses on pews".

Much of Outcast is gradually unravelling as back-story, featuring the ghastly childhood of Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit, pictured above). He was beaten, abused and locked in a cupboard by his mother, Rachel, after she fell under the thumb of the Evil One, and her transformation from radiant blonde motherhood into a grotesque mud-eating ghoul was horrifically depicted. Latterly she has been in a vegetative state in a nursing home, with the demon seemingly driven out... but was it, really? Kyle isn't so sure, and he enlisted Rev Anderson's help to try to exorcise whatever evil might remain.

In last week's opening episode, the pair emerged triumphant from a gruelling struggle with the possessed boy Joshua (this involved being hurled across the room, being levitated, and the final expulsion of the demon as an oozy black blob on the ceiling), but so far Rachel remains blank and inert. However, the late arrival of a sinister man in black (Brent Spiner) at her bedside promises a fresh landslide of spine-chilling hideousness. 

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@SweetingAdam