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Gourmet Farmer Afloat, SBS One, 7.30pm
Matthew Evans has been having a brilliant time in Tasmania for years now, doing awesome stuff with fresh produce and making us all envious of his self-sufficient lifestyle. We’ve met some of his friends along the way, notably Ross and Nick, and in this new series the three of them leave the green and pleasant land and hit the water to travel around the Apple Isle in the wake of Abel Tasman and other explorers. It is a nice premise: three friends discovering history and great food under sail, via scuba and kayak.
I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here, Ten, 7.30pm
This British TV phenomenon (filmed in Australia) has reached these shores with two main differences – the Australian version is filmed in South Africa, and is a little light on what you would actually call celebrities. That said, viewers loved its opening weekend, all 1.199million of them. Dr Chris Brown and Julia Morris steer the ship as the celebs under go the physical and emotional challenges inflicted on them in the jungle. In Britain, everyone’s favourite episode of the five that screen each week is the ‘‘Bush Tucker Challenge’’ when the ‘‘celebs’’ are forced to eat creepy crawlies. For some, this will sound like television hell, for others it will be compulsive viewing. Well, would you eat that?
Louis Theroux’s LA Stories, ABC, 9.30pm
Louis Theroux has been roaming the world telling the stories of those who live on the fringe since 1998. His subjects have included born-again Christians, swingers, survivalists, neo-Nazis, body builders and Thai brides. He is unfailingly kind and never, ever judgmental. In this three-part series, Theroux heads to Los Angeles – not to immerse himself in the glamour of the city but to focus on those who live just out of view. In this final episode, he meets sex offenders released on parole and asks whether they deserve a second chance. Among them is Amy Beck, a teacher who had an affair with an under-age pupil and spent a year in jail. “We are all blanketed into this one heinous group,” she says of her title as sex offender. “This isn’t a life. You can’t release someone from prison and then set them up for failure.” Theroux asks great questions with compassion, but gets the best information while staying silent and letting his subjects talk.
Kate Duthie
PAY TV
One Minute Wonders, Discovery Kids, 7.35pm
What happened in the last 60 seconds? Worlds were born, stars exploded and 225 million people picked their noses. It’s just that kind of universe. This fast-paced and informative show crams an enormous amount into each episode, thanks to the fact that no story lasts more than a minute. And, with a droll cartoon robot with a British accent dishing out the info, it’s all quite entertaining too. Some of the subjects covered in tonight’s episode include advances in self-replicating robots, conflict resolution among Galapagos giant tortoises, the world record for eating brussels sprouts (in one minute, of course) and why many Japanese people pretend to fall asleep at work. Oh, and the fact that armadillos spend 75per cent of their lives sleeping while giraffes are awake for 92per cent of theirs. You won’t have time to get bored.
The Art of ..., Bio, 8pm
Tonight’s art is animation, and a bunch of American animators are more than happy to demonstrate how it’s done, on paper, in stop-motion and using motion-capture CGI of the kind used to make Ted. One female animator offers a sad insight into how women tend to get squeezed out of the industry: male bosses tend to assign them static family scenes, so female animators’ folios end up being less exciting than those of their male colleagues.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Sixteen Candles (1984),Eleven, 9.30pm
Channel Eleven’s John Hughes festival continues unabated, which is great news for all those who believe fun films about children can be as riveting and thoughtful as those made by Ingmar Bergman or Carl Th. Dreyer. Sixteen Candles has the classic opening gambit of the teen genre’s master writer-producer-director: family members awake one morning so concerned with personal issues that they overlook something far more important. In Home Alone, for example, everybody is so happy about flying to Paris for Christmas that they forget to take Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) with them.
In Sixteen Candles, everyone is so excited by an upcoming wedding that they forget to wish happy birthday to poor Sam (Molly Ringwald). At school, Sam’s day gets even worse, Hughes satirising once again what he sees as the dubious (or worse) aspects of formalised education. Back home, wildly eccentric relatives arrive, one grandmother remarking in front of Sam: ‘‘Fred, she’s got her boobies!’’ Another of the hundred dazzling (and many unprintable) one-liners is Sam’s immortal, ‘‘I can’t believe I gave my panties to a geek’’, preceding the Deleuzian scene examining male desire for – and capitalist exploitation of – a teenage girl’s underpants. Even though this is Hughes’ first film (he was previously a joke writer for famous comedians), all of Hughes’ films are recognisably his, including the few he wrote but didn’t direct. His stamp of auteur is as strong as that of Orson Welles, John Ford or David Lynch. If you are a fan, that is as reassuring as glimpsing a favoured star in the night sky. Despite being in some ways an apprentice work (it’s a bit awkward and gauche at times), Sixteen Candles is agonisingly funny, sweet and tender, a pioneering jewel from the maestro.
Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard (2003), ABC, 12.30am (Friday)
A near-perfect documentary from Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn about guitarist Rowland S. Howard, dazzlingly shot by Andrew de Groot. An Aussie gem.
Scott Murray