FREE TO AIR
The Block: Triple Threat, Nine, 7.30pm
After the disastrous auction results of The Block last season, the producers have taken measures to try and prevent a repeat performance. This series, three buyer’s advocates have joined our judges in weighing in on the contestants’ rooms. It’s a canny move, the value of which is reflected tonight as judge Shaynna Blaze assesses a painting chosen in one living room. ‘‘It’s such a divisive colour!’’ she says, before delivering her own verdict. It will be interesting to see if the property people respond to it in the same way. Tonight our contestants are coming off the back of a 48-hour living room challenge, and as always in Block-land, some have fared better than others. Still, they remain remarkably cheerful in spite of some serious sleep deprivation, and Ayden from Queensland affirms his place as this season’s most likeable larrikin. Tomorrow night, they’ll kick off the 72-hour bathroom challenge, the results of which will see another couple bite the dust and four become three.
My Kitchen Rules, Seven, 7.30pm
It’s back! Seven’s ratings steamroller announces itself with ‘‘a secret ingredient, a twist that will change the rules and raise the stakes, pushing each team to boiling point’’. Goodie. More instant restaurants have also been promised, as well as a surprise guest ringing the MKR doorbell. The quality of meals dished up last season was pretty high, so we’re expecting some top-notch nosh this year, but we don’t really watch MKR for cooking ideas, do we? We tune in for the drama, for ridiculous characters like last year’s David and to swear at the screen while that perma-grinning, paleo-preaching Pete Evans pretends to enjoy non-paleo food. Let the games begin.
Worst Place to be a Pilot, SBS One, 8.30pm
There have been 128 air crashes in 20 years across Indonesia. It’s a statistic that doesn’t make for a restful flight next time you’re jetting across Asia, but for the pilots featured in this three-part series, clocking up air miles here is the only hope they have of later being able to work for commercial airlines closer to home. It’s a risky job – apart from the increased likelihood of crashing, there are also tropical diseases and tribal disputes to contend with – but our intrepid pilots take on the challenge with gusto.
Annabel Ross
PAY TV
Coast Australia, History, 7.30pm
Neil Oliver and his multi-disciplinary team of presenters put together another interesting grab-bag of stories in Western Australia tonight. Whether they’re talking history, geology or modern technology, they find the right people to explain things and they exude a quiet admiration for the people and natural processes that have made the place what it is today. The aerial photography is pretty spectacular too. Tonight, marine ecologist Emma Johnston looks at a revolutionary wave-power energy project being tested off Garden Island; forensic anthropologist Xanthe Mallett (of History Cold Case renown) goes diving with the Water Police; and landscape architect Brendan Moar uncovers the tragic story of Georgiana Molloy, the settler who introduced Britain to Western Australian wildflowers.
Perception, Universal, 8.30pm
Another absorbing episode of the series in which Eric McCormack plays Daniel Pierce, a schizophrenic neuropsychiatrist who helps the FBI with difficult cases. Tonight, Agent Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) calls him in on an old-fashioned locked-door mystery – the apparent murder of a scientist inside his own highly secure study. The boffin had been trying to find a way to upload human minds to computer hardware.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Blow (2001) Nine GO!, 9.30pm
One of the most fascinating incidents of current affairs journalism occurred in September last year when an episode of the ABC’s Media Watch tore into what it saw as a beat-up in the press over the dangers of crystal meth (ice). The program argued that ice was not a major threat to society and was less of a problem than alcohol. With an aptness only fate can deliver, the next day Victorian Supreme Court Judge Lex Lasry delivered a judgment denouncing ice as being of ‘‘extreme danger’’ to the community. So, there you have it: two disparate views of the same drug, when one would have thought there was not much ground for disagreement.The same is true of how movies handle the issue: there are those that promote drug use and those that condemn it.
Take Ted Demme’s Blow. It is the story of George Jung (Johnny Depp), a working-class American youth who escapes to California in the late 1960s, hangs out with bikini-clad air stewardesses and makes a fortune selling dope. The beach and drug scenes are painted with a rosy glow. Depp makes for a seriously charismatic coke dealer, and the audience never wishes George any harm, even though George’s life is dedicated to helping others harm theirs. Many critics were troubled by the film’s refusal to examine – or even portray – the suffering drugs can cause. Others argued its refusal to take a moral position on drugs was a towering strength. However, Blow goes way beyond being non-judgmental: it actually romanticises villains, including – of all people – the notorious Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis). Director Ted Demme died a year later from a heart attack induced by cocaine use.
Jack Reacher (2012)Ten, 9pm
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote Valkyrie and clearly likes stories with deadly weapons, Jack Reacher is airplane fodder about a man with a gun (Tom Cruise) tracking down a sniper with a rifle.
Scott Ellis
