Brooklyn Nine-Nine, SBS2, 8pm

Seriously off-the-wall, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is so silly it rarely makes sense, but it matters little when the cast make it so much fun to watch. The “Jimmy Jab Games” are a classic example of this – the detectives pitting themselves against each other in a series of crazy dares when the bosses are out of the office. The acting is uniformly terrific but guest star Kyra Sedgwick deserves special mention tonight. Her Deputy Chief Madeleine Wuntch is at once wildly inappropriate and utterly hilarious.

How to Get Away With Murder, Seven, 9pm

The plot is thickening on HTGAWM.  Defence attorney Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) really has a bee in her bonnet about the fact that her husband, Sam (Tom Verica) was having an affair with the murdered college student, whose story arc run through the series. But her outrage seems a bit misplaced, given Annalise had a lover of her own, Detective Nate Lacey (Billy Brown), at the same time. Her scorned-woman act is getting a bit tiresome, but it’s a good opportunity for Davis, the show’s biggest drawcard, to show off her acting chops. HTGAWM is still a few rungs above your average legal drama, even if tonight’s subplot – every week, there’s a fresh case for Keating and her student apprentices to defend in court – is a bit ho-hum.

Mammon, SBS One, 10.30pm

This chilling Norwegian psychological thriller has much in common with Cordon, the excellent Belgian series that recently aired on SBS. Like Cordon, Mammon revolves around conspiracy theories and treachery, and there are more twists in each episode than you’d find in a packet of pretzels. Journalist Peter Veras is trying to get to the bottom of an economic scandal that implicated his brother, who then took his life. Five years on, more crooked businessmen are following the same path, but the stakes are higher for Veras now that his nephew’s life is in danger, and the baddies are doing their best to frame Veras himself. Even if you have been watching from the start, it’s likely you’ll find the show hard to follow – plot developments unravel at a rate of knots – but Mammon is gripping nonetheless, with some genuinely shocking moments, and it’s easy to understand why Fox has snapped up the rights to a US adaptation.
Annabel Ross

PAY TV

Tom Kerridge’s Best Ever Dishes, LifeStyle Food, 9pm

The Michelin-starred pub chef has a bunch of ideas for lunches that will leave your mates ‘‘well happy’’.  But be careful – there are some pitfalls that can result in your grub turning out ‘‘ropey’’ or, even worse, ‘‘well ropey’’. Today’s menu includes a spicy tomato soup, a ham and mushroom pie and an Asian-inspired crispy duck salad. The most interesting segment, however, has Kerridge visit a Yorkshire steelworks to see whether it really is possible to cook nice big hunks of beef on great big hunks of glowing-hot metal. Worth a look, if you can cope with Kerridge’s relentlessly laddish chatter.
Brad Newsome

MOVIES

The Craft (1996), Eleven, 9.30pm

In Andrew Fleming’s astute take on the teen flick, a quartet of outcasts at a private Los Angeles high school – newcomer Sarah (Robin Tunney), trailer park resident and abuse victim Nancy (Fairuza Balk), lone African-American Rochelle (Rachel True) and the disfigured by burns Bonnie (Neve Campbell) – take refuge in witchcraft and forge a collective bond that gives them the confidence to assert themselves. Their powers, growing in impact, rearrange the prevailing power cliques in the classroom and cafeteria, as they punish mean girls and narcissistic boys in ways Lindsay Lohan’s Cady Heron could only imagine. It’s a vision of adolescence with terrific metaphoric intent, and the young cast give juicy performances that show how teenage life exists on a series of fault lines that can shift in unexpected ways. Exiting a bus, on their way to test their abilities, the driver gently warns them, ‘‘You girls watch out for those weirdoes’’. Replies Nancy triumphantly, ‘‘We are the weirdoes, mister.’’

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Stan (stan.com.au)

Built on a potent strain of paranoia that mixes drugs and national security, John Schlesinger’s film, adapted by Steven Zaillian from Robert Lindsey’s non-fiction book, is about two young friends, from affluent Californian families, who end up selling state secrets to the Soviet Union in the second half of the ’70s. Chris (Timothy Hutton) is disillusioned by the classified cables – including references to the CIA’s role in the sacking of the Whitlam government – he sees as a government-vetted employee, while Dalton (Sean Penn) is a failed drug dealer looking for cash. Naive and unprepared, they somehow operated for years. A riposte to the Reagan and Rambo era, the movie is ultimately about the need for faith. A failed seminary student, Chris needs something to believe in and decides that if his country is tarnished, then his country’s enemy must be worthy. Penn’s performance, all jittery and splenetic, is a minor masterpiece of young method acting intensity.

Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Action Movies (pay TV), 2.50pm

At the end of this automotive assault the good guys stop the bad guys taking off in a transport plane by tethering their cars to it. As the adversaries – The Rock and Vin Diesel versus Chris Evans and some hulking goon – rumble, the plane keeps taxiing down the runway.The sequence runs approximately 12 minutes, which might leave you wondering how long thatrunway is. Vulture website calculated that it was 46 kilometres long. Forty-six kilometres.Yet that’s one of the lessoutlandish parts of this blockbuster.
Craig Mathieson