The X Factor – season finale (part one), Seven, 6.30pm

While we read about the in-fighting and bitchiness of the X-Factor contestants in their exit interviews, it's hard to be as gripped by their off-stage antics when we're not privy to them first-hand, Big Brother-style. Lucky then, that to amp up the excitement of the finals, we have betting agencies giving us the odds on who's a likely winner. Is there room for another sibling boy band with a crappy name (Brothers 3), as one big agency is predicting? Or will we have another crooner in the charts for the next few months? Tune in tonight and tomorrow for the answers.

Gotham, Nine, 8.30pm

This much-hyped (and most illegally downloaded this US TV season) new Batman prequel is the ultimate in origin stories, charting the back stories of not only the teenaged Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) and the young Commissioner Gordon (Ben McKenzie) but also of fave villains including young Penguin (a brilliant, nervous-looking Robin Lord Taylor), Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) and Catwoman (Camren Bicondova). Last week's pilot set the scene for the origin story of Bruce Wayne, and Gotham city itself, caught in a violent crime wave that saw the 12-year-old Wayne's millionaire parents murdered in front of him. Tonight is all about the young Selina Kyle (more Tank Girl than Catwoman at this stage) whose story is woven in with more tales of Gotham's twisted inhabitants.

Sunday Best: Chicago 10, ABC2, 8.30pm

A corker of a Sunday Best tonight with this edgy, unusually styled doco about the Chicago Seven, a group of anti-Vietnam War protesters – most famous among them Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale – who were charged with conspiracy after massive protests at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. Director Brett Morgen mashes up archival footage with motion-capture animation and uses court transcripts from the subsequent trial. A great mix of contemporary rock, a stellar voice cast – including Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo and Roy Scheider – and some amazing footage (a newscaster of the day trying to explain poet Allen Ginsberg's chanting is a highlight) bring history to life in an unconventional take on the documentary format.

Kylie Northover

PAY TV

Fashion Bloggers, Style, 8.30pm

The thing about print journalism is it doesn't naturally lend itself to TV. You can't put the product on the screen in the way that you can show off an artist's painting or a baker's cake. You can show maybe part of an interview and then a shot of someone pounding away at a keyboard. When it comes to fashion blogging, you don't even have the option of throwing in an old-fashioned spinning-headline shot – or an old-fashioned editor in a green eyeshade threatening to reassign people to the gardening column. And if your fashion bloggers aren't going to make a proper effort to explain what they're thinking and to share their critiques, nobody's going to learn much about fashion, let alone blogging. Do the five Australians featured in this series provide much in the way of insight? Not in the frustratingly abridged preview made available for this episode. A bunch of them fly to New York for last month's fashion week, but with their critiques of Australian designer Dion Lee's collection barely extending past "I'm loving all the black" in one instance and "I want it to be silly" in another, it's left to Lee himself to provide a short soundbite explaining his inspiration. Brief encounters with other designers (including Diane von Furstenberg) provide nothing of great value to the viewer. The real winners are the bloggers themselves and the folks who get plugs for giving them freebies. One for the fashion tragics.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Eden is West (2009), SBS One, 11.40pm

In his latter movies the pointed politics of Greek-born filmmaker Costa-Gavras have acquired a queasily satiric air, pummelling the media in 1997's Mad City or using an unemployed white-collar worker turned hitman to send up capitalism's selective opportunity in 2005's The Ax. ForEden is West he follows the darkly comic plight of an illegal immigrant, Elias (Riccardo Scamarcio), who jumps ship for the shores of Europe one night and wakes up on a nudist beach at a holiday resort. As a newcomer to the European Union, the handsome young man becomes a servant in various forms, whether carrying bags or sexually servicing a bored German tourist (Juliane Kohler), and the veteran director paints most of those who encounter the hardy young man as exploitative predators of one kind or another. But by avoiding giving the young man a nationality or religion, Costa-Gavras leaves him as a really, really, really ridiculously good-looking movie star chasing a fruitless dream.

Short Term 12 (2013), Premiere Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm

American writer/director Destin Cretton spent two years working in a residential care facility for at-risk or troubled teens, and his experience informs much of Short Term 12, a film that displays vivid nuance in examining how people respond to physical and emotional trauma. That includes those in charge, particularly Grace (Brie Larson, in a career-making performance), a counsellor who gives everything in trying to aid her charges because it allows her to avoid thinking about her own past as an abused child. Most of what could easily succumb to a cliche doesn't come to pass in the movie, with humour often proving crucial to those at the coalface, even as Grace deals with Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), who keeps everyone at a furious distance. The idea that Grace might start a family with her partner and fellow counsellor, Mason (John Gallagher jnr), scares her into venturing deep into Jayden's life, crossing a line while facing her own demons.

Craig Mathieson