FREE TO AIR
Australian Story: The Hancock Dynasty, ABC, 8pm
That the ABC managed to get the famously litigious Gina Rinehart to agree to be interviewed is extraordinary. Perhaps she was keen to have her say, especially in a year marred by her trust-fund battle with her children, which she recently lost. The first five minutes available to preview promise a respectful overview of the mining magnate – her work ethic and determination to carry on the legacy of her pioneering ancestors – delivered by her friends, including John Singleton and Imelda Roche, and of course herself.
Pan-American Road Trip with Dara and Ed, SBS, 8.30pm
It’s indeed fortunate that Irish comedians and sworn besties Dara O’Briain and Ed Byrne have so much footage from reporter Sullivan C. Richardson’s 1942 pioneering road trip from Arizona to Panama along the Pan American Highway to intercut with their own. At the outset, at least, their journey appears to be another celebrity travelogue. It’s the history of the road, of political and social relations between north and south, and the iconic places revisited that justify the whole exercise, which brings into focus the dramatically changed landscape and times. As they head into drug-cartel territory, there looks to be decidedly less to laugh about.
The Blacklist, Seven, 9.15pm
Returning after a mid-season hiatus, this action-thriller James Spader vehicle picks up with its anti-hero being hooded and frogmarched through the bowels of a US government ‘‘secret detention’’ facility. The outlook may be grim but Raymond ‘‘Red’’ Reddington has acquired a few tricks over the decades he has spent as a fugitive spy. A terrifying, complex and grotesquely violent plot unfolds, involving extremely distressing torture scenes and seriously macabre machinations. Spader brings his magnificent dignity and eloquence to the role, but it is still a shock to see the Boston Legal star striding through corridors and opening fire on people, even if they are the worst kind of baddies. There also seems something not quite right about so graphically dramatising a war as it happens, especially a war as insidious as this one on terror. As fine as this production is on every level, the relentless display of sadism is difficult to take, and its overall purpose is not always apparent.
Bridget McManus
PAY TV
True Detective, Showcase, 3.30pm, 7.30pm
Having become probably the first show ever to end one episode with a Bobby Bland number and start the next with a Conway Twitty track, True Detective isn’t so much thickening the plot tonight as it is broadening the canvas. Gangster turned businessman Frank (Vince Vaughn), having lost several million dollars, is now losing his horizontal mojo in a way that has never, ever happened to him before. Perhaps a return to his roots as a standover man will help straighten things out. In the meantime, state copper Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) visits the mansion of the corrupt mayor and finds his dysfunctional household exceedingly colourful. That much is interesting, but the mystery around brooding former soldier Paul Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) is less so. Did he kill a group of civilians out in the desert, or is he just gay? It’s about time we were told. Otherwise, things are humming along nicely and it’s great to see Deadwood’s W.Earl Brown playing precisely the dishevelled, apathetic burnt-out detective he was born to play.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
The Bank Job, (2008)GO!, 9.30pm
Cinema is peppered with entertaining bank-robbery yarns. They generally serve two purposes: as revenge fantasies for those who feel deprived and undervalued by society, and like seeing the indolent and corrupt rich taken down; and for the delight of watching the human brain devise devilishly clever ways of breaking into unbreakable spaces. Roger Donaldson’s film (based on the 1971 Baker Street robbery) opens with a ragbag of London’s East End criminals wielding crowbars like truncheons, taking blackmail snaps of a British royal in a Caribbean menage a trois, and extorting a landlord by putting him in a metal slave collar and defending his torture as retribution for past wrongs.
They are an unremittingly unlikeable lot – except, of course, for our car-dealing thief, Terry Leather, because he is played by action star Jason Statham. Terry we are supposed to like, which isn’t all that hard as most of the time he is the best of a very bad lot. And he has a seemingly great girl in Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), who is a sweetie and has a sure-fire way into a Baker Street vault. Meanwhile, the toffs running MI5 and 6, intent on foiling the robbers’ plans, are sent up as public-school onanists who deserve their comeuppance. Period revenge fantasies (and this was written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, famous for such fluff) rarely play heed to believability or elevating messages. Still, Statham and Burrows work well and that, plus the light and irreverent tone, may prove enough.
The Manchurian Candidate, (2004) ONE, 10.30pm
John Frankenheimer’s superb The Manchurian Candidate was shown a few weeks ago and, in an act of scheduling kindness, ONE is showing Jonathan Demme’s excellent remake. Richard Condon’s source novel was about Manchurian Chinese capturing American soldiers in 1950s Korea and brainwashing them to assassinate a presidential nominee, but Demme’s modern retelling gets rid of the foreign bad guys and hones in on the enemy within. It has great fun filling the narrative with references to almost every controversial election and shadowy political figure since J.F.Kennedy’s assassination. But even in his darkest, saddest films (Philadelphia), Demme remains optimistic that there exists within America a still-breathing conscience and enough brave people prepared to fight their subjugation by political and corporate dictators. Demme has assembled an extraordinary cast, from a brooding Denzel Washington to a stunning Meryl Streep and solid Jon Voight. But the film belongs to Liev Schreiber: his is a stupendous, subtle and very moving performance.
Scott Murray
