pay
pay Facing ... Escobar
National Geographic, 6.30pm
Facing ... is a series in which people recall encounters with people as variously intimidating as Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Tonight it's Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord who launched an unprecedented terrorist war against his own country, murdering thousands of people as he fought to establish and maintain his cocaine empire. Some of the people in this documentary never met Escobar, but all are able to provide chilling insights of one kind or another. The Americans include former DEA agents Steve Murphy and Javier Pena (whose stories are told alongside Escobar's in Netflix's Narcos. On the Colombian side there's former intelligence chief Miguel Maza Marquez, who remains haunted by the fact that a bomb Escobar sent to kill him instead killed 50 other people and injured 1000 more; and Escobar's favourite hitman, Jhon Jairo Velasquez, who is a free man despite having confessed to hundreds of murders.
Brad Newsome
How to Cure Alzheimers
SBS, 8.30pm
There is one particularly heart-wrenching scene in this dense, but ultimately hopeful, survey of the war being fought on multiple fronts against Alzheimers. Olga, a 47-year-old Colombian woman who suffers from the disease, suddenly breaks down in tears. Olga has had a sudden, short insight into what Alzheimers is doing to her. Looking into that chasm, however briefly, it seems, is almost more than the human soul can bear. It's devastating to watch as she is comforted by her elderly mother. Was there ever a disease more uniquely calculated to torture the afflicted and those around them than Alzheimers? Implacably working away deep in the brain to steal memories until the essence of the person is totally erased, it's the great curse of our generation. We can be enormously thankful, then, for the positive results coming from a range of therapies around the world. Scientists are confidently predicting that in the next few decades the disease will go the way of polio or TB. In among all the bright spots of research one intriguing notion, in particular, is that getting enough quality sleep can be very important in preventing the onset of Alzheimers. Evidence suggests spinal fluid flushes through the sleeping brain, purging the toxins that build up during the waking hours and potentially lead to memory loss. The researcher described it as being like a "dishwasher". Eating properly – in particular fish and vegies – is also implicated in avoiding the disease. As with most things, it seems, mum was right all along.
Nick Galvin
Vera
ABC, 8.30pm
Set against the background of Thatcher's brutal dismantling of hundreds of mining communities in 1984, the body of a missing teenager last seen during the miners strike is discovered. No nonsense Vera, played by the wonderful Brenda Blethyn as a kind of Geordie Miss Marple, investigates and in the process stirs up the passions connected with that era that even now are barely below the surface in the north of England.
Nick Galvin
movie Creed (2015)
Premiere Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm
Michael B. Jordan, the star of this Rocky spin-off, is a movie star who readily communicates complex emotional states. As Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of the heavyweight champion of the world who anointed Sylvester Stallone's Philadelphia brawler as his challenger in 1976's Rocky, Jordan plays a young man who alternates between swagger and self-hate. He physically articulates his promising boxer's uncertainty both outside and inside the ring, and co-writer/director Ryan Coogler, who paired with Jordan on the impressive 2013 drama Fruitvale Station, proves himself a capable creator of powerful scenes even without the fillip of Bill Conti's familiar fanfare. He tellingly shoots one of Adonis' early bouts in a single take, but more importantly he makes good use of Stallone's weathered bulk to reveal a reluctant mentor without overdosing on the pathos. The many Rocky sequels went to ludicrous extremes, but Creed mostly rediscovers the appeal of the franchise's origins.
Craig Mathieson
