FREE TO AIR
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Wonderland, Ten, 8.30pm
Two main thoughts occur after watching yet another angst-ridden episode of Wonderland. One, it must be so exhausting just being them and two, every possible permutation of who could sleep with whom must have been explored by now, surely.
Criminal Minds, Seven, 8.45pm
Big-shot defence lawyer Jack Westbrook goes missing and winds up being held hostage in a grungy warehouse by a couple of young blokes who obviously don’t like him much. BAU’s job is to find him so, as is their wont, they get to digging around in Jack’s past to figure out who would want to have a go at him. There are plenty of twists but it’s all pretty much by-the-numbers stuff here that is not helped by the acting of some regulars (we’re looking at you, Joe Mantegna and Kirsten Vangsness), which is so wooden it would make a nice set of shelves.
8MMM Aboriginal Radio, ABC, 9.30
Times are tough at 8MMM. In fact, the Alice Springs Indigenous radio station is in danger of going broke without some quick thinking and fancy footwork from the staff. But one bloke who is not going to let this existential crisis upset his cosy life is the mercenary Dave (Geoff Morrell). Faced with not being paid and having to hand back his car, Dave isn’t exactly overflowing with sympathy for the black employees. ‘‘These people have survived 60,000 years on virtually nothing,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a proud tradition. We’re not as resilient – we need our creature comforts.’’ And, of course, the point we are asked to consider is that there are plenty of people out there for whom this sort of logic makes perfect sense. One character who is only too aware of this harsh reality is Lola (Trisha Morton-Thomas), who spends most of this episode being bounced from one government agency to another trying to get money for a new water pump. At one point she enlists super earnest Jake to help. ‘‘You gotta help me,’’ she says. ‘‘I need a flash white fella to take me to a flash government building.’’ Later, after Jake loses his cool and they are ejected, she says, indignantly: ‘‘Like I need a flash white fella to get me kicked out. I can do that myself!’’ It’s another one of the many moments where the underlying sadness of Indigenous-white relations floats to the surface adding a bittersweet note to the humour.
Nick Galvin
PAY TV
The Supervet, LifeStyle 9.30pm
Out in the Surrey countryside Irish vet Noel Fitzpatrick provides animals with a standard of medical care that most of the world’s human population can only dream of. Fitzpatrick is a surgical pioneer who has invented various operations to help get injured pets back on their paws. Tonight he has a stream of difficult cases, beginning with a cat whose hind leg was shattered when it was hit by a car, and which was subsequently mauled by a fox. Fitzpatrick’s surgical skills are impressive, but the way in which he pressures a couple to pay £6000 ($11,450) for a hip replacement for their dog is pretty conflicting.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Sunshine, (2007), Action Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm
From his first film, 1994’s sardonic share-house comedy Shallow Grave, director Danny Boyle has done his best work when faced with a confined group of protagonists under threat. He knows how to capture his characters as their flaws crack and magnify, and he has a talent for terrifying audiences when the film calls for it, as 2002’s pungent zombie thriller 28 Days Later showed. Written by Alex Garland (Ex Machina), Sunshine is his take on sci-fi, as 50 years in the future a spaceship heads for our dying sun, hoping to literally nuke it back into blazing life. The set-up gives access to various genre staples: should humanity try to alter the universe’s (or is that God’s) grand design? What is the value of a single life when humanity’s survival is at stake? How macho can an American astronaut (Chris Evans) be? Cillian Murphy’s physicist, Michelle Yeoh’s botanist and Rose Byrne’s pilot find out. Like the mathematician who sees a vast theorem as an extraordinary wonder, Boyle captures the vast loneliness and expressive punctuation of space. Some of the crew are simply overwhelmed by what they witness. The influence of Kubrick’s 2001 is obvious, but never unwieldy, and it would not be a surprise, nor a spoiler, to note that the mission starts to go very wrong. That, Boyle appears to be suggesting, is the nature of humanity – what makes us great (our individuality, our courage) can also be our downfall.
The Thomas Crown Affair, (1968) ABC, 1.15am (Thursday)
In perhaps the most divisive year in 20th-century American history, Norman Jewison’s glossy crime thriller cast Steve McQueen, styled to the nines and occasionally bristling at his plumage, as Thomas Crown, a millionaire playboy businessman who shows his disdain for the system by secretly engineering the heist of a Boston bank and pocketing the seven-figure proceeds. If the part looks dated, then Crown’s adversary, insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway), offers a glimpse of the future, a determined career woman moving through a male milieu, albeit one where she’s sidetracked by a romantic entanglement with Crown and his many toys. The split screen sequences communicate little except a vague urge to be considered modern, but the heist itself is told with visual cohesion and there remains something to be said for the pleasure of two beautiful movie stars circling each other while exchanging playful banter. At the end Crown flies out, not for Vietnam but his personal paradise.
Craig Mathieson