Michael Mosley: Should I Eat Meat? SBS One, 7.30pm

Eating  should be simple, but thanks to science, it's never been so confusing to know what's good and what's bad. Along with almost everything else delicious, meat is now on the uh-uh menu. Journalist and host Michael Mosley explores whether sausages are actually evil and steak is Hitler in this interesting documentary. This is a bit like Super Size Me, but more British. If you're not squeamish, watch with a meat pie in one hand and a bacon sandwich in the other. Hmmm, bacon.

Party Tricks, Ten, 8.30pm

Amid all the talk of troubles plagueing Ten, it can be easy to forget that they screen some fantastic television. This political drama is riveting viewing and nicely timed just before Victorians vote on November 29. Unfortunately, our political leaders aren't as good-looking as Kate Ballard (Asher Keddie), Labor premier, who once knocked boots with David McLeod (Rodger Corser), Coalition leader and rival. The tension has reached fever point and the beans of their secret are about to spill   as they  prepare for the televised leaders' debate. Both  unravel as they  try to minimise the  damage. Keddie excels as Ballard, the politician who seems to have eyes in the back of her head but also has a  naivety that can be exploited. Keddie and Corser have fantastic chemistry and the more flashback scenes, the better. Vote 1, Party Tricks.

The Goldbergs, Seven, 10.35pm 

Remember the golden days of the early 1990s, when you couldn't flick on the television without stumbling upon a sitcom? The Goldbergs fits nicely in that genre and offers an innocent but still universal insight into the family. Set in the 1980s, it  is a classic family set-up including three pesky kids and grandpa, who lives with them. There's big hair, Star Wars references and Tetris – also known as a perfect world. Daughter Erica experiences the highs and lows of first love and eldest son Barry becomes addicted to arcade games. The show is based on thechildhood of creator Adam F.Goldberg, who is recreated in the guise of youngest child and narrator of the show, Adam. The series doesn't have the intelligence or irreverence of 30 Rock or Community, but it's fun to watch and has more heart than Big Bang Theory. It's also great to see Wendi McLendon-Covey (Bridesmaids) get some recognition for her talent.

Alana Schetzer

PAY TV

Discovery Kids, New channel

Discovery Kids is setting out to provide educational programming for children of all ages. At the younger end of the spectrum there's the gentle British series We're Talking Animals (4.15pm). Today's episode looks at seals and turkeys, providing some basic info, examining some interesting features (seals' whiskers, turkeys' snoods) and dubbing human voices on to the animals in a way that kids might find charming. At the end of each segment a cartoon spider drops down from the top of the screen to ask multiple-choice questions about what you've just seen. Older kids will enjoy Head Rush (4.40pm), which is mostly a repackaging of segments from MythBusters, but which also has MythBusters' Kari Byron doing some new demonstrations. Such as what happens when you put a beach ball in liquid nitrogen, and how a pickled cucumber lights up when you run an electric current through it. Then there's the British series Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom (5.30pm), in which presenters Richard McCourt and Dominic Wood look at great minds of the past. Today it's Archimedes, so the pair of them start off in a bathtub (how could you not?) and proceed to learn about the Greek genius' many breakthroughs and inventions. Among these is the wonderful water-raising device known as Archimedes' screw – something that we see is still hardat work at a white-water rafting centre.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Live and Let Die (1973), Go, 9.30pm

Roger Moore was 45 years old when the eighth James Bond film was released. He took over the role after the Sean Connery era and the George Lazenby addendum, making him roughly the same age as Daniel Craig in 2012's Skyfall. The sagging torpor of his latter efforts as 007 had not yet taken hold, but his broad-chested vigour is not served by a story whose take on voodoo and Blaxploitation movies, with the MI5 agent in pursuit of a Caribbean drug lord (the great Yaphet Kotto) looking to move vast quantities of heroin, retains the vestiges of white colonial disdain. The skillful elan of the original Bond adventures was replaced by wide lapels and narrow concepts, with a redneck sheriff (Clifton James) and a virginal psychic (Jane Seymour) as supporting players. Moore's tidy commitment to the role rarely suggested a psychological persuasiveness, and audiences would discover that dry humour was the best they could hope for from the next incarnation of Her Majesty's spy.

American Dreamz (2006), Romance Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm

A tone-deaf satire that makes its targets look innocent by association, American Dreamz was a misguided attempt by filmmaker Paul Weitz (About a Boy, In Good Company) to critique America's military-entertainment complex. Changing little but the names, he positions a new season of an American Idol-style talent quest as the country's economic and cultural centrepiece, complete with a visit from a folksy president (Dennis Quaid). The film rarely tells us what we don't already know and its brief allusions to the real world, including a soldier wounded in Iraq (Chris Klein) and a Middle Eastern terrorist cell that infiltrate the show through a show-tunes loving cadre (Sam Golzari), are embarrassingly inept. Hugh Grant does a riff on American Idol's acerbic  judge, Simon Cowell, while Mandy Moore plays a conniving young entrant desperate to win. The brief sexual union of the two narcissists is the picture's one genuinely incisive moment: both are bewildered by having a connection to another human being.

Craig Mathieson