FREE TO AIR
Upper Middle Bogan – season final, ABC, 8.30pm
This slow-burn, cultural-clash comedy resolves its second season of misadventures and misunderstandings with a gentle, feelgood plot revolving around themes of marriage and ageing. Propelled by cultural references and sight gags, the rivalry between posh couple Bess (Annie Maynard) and Danny (Patrick Brammall), and the midlife crisis of bogan couple Julie (Robyn Malcolm) and Wayne (Glen Robbins), fail to hit the benchmark set for this kind of Australiana prop-comedy by Kath & Kim. Save for Robyn Nevin's glorious Brighton matriarch, Upper Middle Bogan too often comes across as a two-dimensional all-white Love Thy Neighbour.
Ink Master, 7mate, 9pm
Is this what could happen if you donate your body to science? A tattoo artist competing for cash in a reality show might engrave your skull in a sudden-death challenge? At least the owners of the skulls can rest in blissful ignorance. The "human canvasses" in the next challenge are not so lucky. Comic- book enthusiasts bare their flesh for an exercise in "consistency and accuracy", then vote on who got the worst tattoo. The artists relish the competition, hurling vicious barbs and fervently hoping their opponents permanently disfigure someone with a dreadful tatt. The critique of the work is interesting, and the artistry impressive. But the ridiculous time restraints and endless self-reflection detract from what might otherwise be a visually stimulating program.
It's a Date – season final, ABC, 9pm
This often brilliant series, which gave us memorably poignant moments between the likes of Kate Ritchie and Nadine Garner, and Justine Clarke and Phil Lloyd, ends its second season on a slightly less lustrous note, with a double date at a wedding. Nervous, closeted gay man Mark (Tom Ballard, Reality Check) invites Tom (Joel Creasey, Gaycrashers), who nurses his grandfather (superbly played by Shane Jacobson's father, Ron) to his brother's wedding to (shock!) a Chinese woman. Mark's sister, Natalie (Malorie O'Neill), invites an annoying political activist. What ensues is a pleasant comedy of errors and ideological confrontations. The mushy ending is justified for its refreshing portrayal of homosexuality. Excellent performances and writing by Peter Helliar, which stretches the boundaries of awkwardness, also make the journey worthwhile.
Bridget McManus
PAY TV
The Divide, SoHo, 8.30pm
As law student Christine Rosa (Marin Ireland) and The Innocence Initiative desperately try to stop the impending execution of Jared Bankowski (True Blood's Chris Bauer), they touch on another ugly aspect of American capital punishment – experimental lethal injections. Many European companies now refuse to supply chemicals for executions, so state governments are turning to untested cocktails. Rosa hopes that the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment will give her time to prove Bankowski's innocence. D.A.Adam Page (Damon Gupton) is determined to see him die. Gripping stuff.
Strip the City, Discovery, 9.30pm
This enlightening series uses CGI to peel back the skins of major metropolises, revealing the infrastructure and geology beneath. Tonight it's New York, and while it's groovy to see Lower Manhattan being rolled back off its bedrock, the show isn't just eye candy. It also looks at the engineering involved in meeting the demands of New York's human population and the daunting challenges posed by rising sea levels and more extreme storms. Elsewhere, the program looks at the innovative design of the new World Trade Centre tower, and a design for a harbour flood barrier to protect from storm surges.
BRAD NEWSOME
MOVIES
Up in the Air (2009), Eleven, 9.30pm
For what now plays like his best feature, and the follow-up to a little too adorable Juno, Jason Reitman turned the idea of a romantic comedy upside down and placed it inside the dog days of the Global Financial Crisis. The backdrop is firing people, something that George Clooney's Ryan Bingham does with professional ease, travelling from city to city with carry-on luggage and the ability to briefly project focused empathy for those he'll never see again. In such circumstances the idea of turning a fling with fellow frequent flier Alex (Vera Farmiga) into something genuine can only end in heartbreak, and amid the film's considerable charm – Clooney and Farmiga are well matched – it manages to take Bingham to the point of no return, where he helps those around him, such as his unwanted offsider Natalie (Anna Kendrick), even as he prepares to abandon his own hopes for a kind of corporate anonymity the star suggests with understated regret.
Paranoia (2013), Premiere (pay TV), 10.15pm
A lax, cliched corporate thriller about a young hopeful forced into an act of subterfuge amid the battle between two moguls, Paranoia can at best be charitably described as a nostalgic corporate thriller, a throwback to the early 1990s when putting on a suit and tie – see Tom Cruise in The Firm – meant making sure the American Dream hadn't been corrupted. Hemsworth the Younger, that's Liam, plays Adam Cassidy, a young electronics engineer with a sick father (Richard Dreyfuss),who is used by his employer, business titan Nicolas Wyatt (Gary Oldman), to infiltrate the organisation of his rival, Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford); Amber Heard, in another ineffectual performance, is somehow involved. Australian director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde) has no instinct for this genre, and the dramatic cliches unfold against a laughable take on tech culture that imagines hardware in New York instead of software in California as being the centre of the equation. Hemsworth's Hunger Games credits are disappearing fast.
Craig Mathieson
