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The Block, Nine, 7.30pm
Can you believe you have been watching this series for 48 episodes? As the teams get ready to present an entire two-storey apartment they have all worked on, tensions are mounting. The challenge winner gets $20,000 off their reserve so, in the words of Scotty, "this challenge is a game changer". There is a huge artwork to acquire, double vanities to fit in a bathroom and a hanging chair to install. But with all the teams working together, while trying to keep their special ideas for their own apartments, strategies are at play.
Destination: Flavour Down Under, SBS One, 8pm
MasterChef winner Adam Liaw is living the foodie dream - driving around Australia and New Zealand, meeting growers, producers and provedores and cooking using their awesome ingredients. Tonight, Liaw zips around New Zealand's South Island. With cider from the Invercargill Brewery, he hits the tarmac for Gore, famous for brown trout fly fishing. Liaw's cider and lemon trout with puy lentils looks delicious, and easy to make. Later, he stops at a PYO strawberry farm and whips up an amazing strawberry jelly with Pernod served with roast strawberries. Who knew? Further north, Liaw acquires an Otago pinot noir and wild meat from Dutchman Hans, who feeds his family of 10 by shooting in the hills nearby. Liaw prepares a sensational-looking hunter's pie, overlooking Queenstown's Lake Wakatipu. Watch after you've eaten to avoid excessive drooling.
Undeniable, ABC, 8.30pm
As a seven-year-old, Jane Philips witnessed her mother's murder. The event led to a mental breakdown. More than two decades later, Jane is married and pregnant. An ante-natal appointment reveals Jane has abruptly stopped taking her anti-depressants, a move her midwife warns could lead to paranoia and anxiety. Leaving the hospital, she sees the man she believes killed her mother - a senior consultant oncologist. The doctor is arrested and the detective who worked on the original case 23 years earlier takes up the case again. Who will the police believe; a woman with a history of mental illness or a respected medical professional? However, even when all is revealed, I challenge you not to find yourself shouting at the television: "But why? What was the motive?" Infuriating.
Kate Duthie
PAY TV
Snack Off, MTV, 9pm
It's the stoner version of MasterChef. Or, as host Eddie Huang offputtingly puts it, "the show that impregnates you with food babies". Each week three young Americans compete for a $1000 prize by making snacks out of ingredients typically found in near-empty fridges and pantries. The task is toughest in the initial "Dorm Room Challenge", in which the contestants are restricted to using a single electric hotplate and a microwave and are encouraged to incorporate leftover takeaway into their dishes. Tonight the judges - chef Jason Quinn, model Chrissy Teigen and comedian Yassir Lester - find themselves confronted by an array of inventive but unappetising dishes. These include French toast topped first with breakfast cereal and then with melted ice-cream mixed with instant coffee.
Comedy Underground with Dave Attell, Comedy, 9.30pm
Here's some adults-only stand-up from the scummy side of the street. Tonight New York comedy legend Dave Attell gets Joe DeRosa, Jermaine Fowler and Jay Oakerson on stage at a boozy basement club. They talk a stream of filth about sex, drugs and pornography but mostly avoid the hacky misogyny peddled by the likes of Anthony Jeselnik and Daniel Tosh. It goes to show that you can be putrid without being vile.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
The Candidate (1972), SBS One, 2am (Friday)
Bill McKay (Robert Redford) is a lawyer running for the US Senate. He is handsome, intelligent, young and charismatic. The son of a former governor of California, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas), Bill has everything anyone could want from a would-be politician - a new John F. Kennedy in the making, if you will. However, rising to the top with one's principles intact - and it's nice to see a film assume some pollies begin that way - is a difficult road. What chance has Bill inside a machine that grinds people to dust? The Candidate was a revelation in its day, a documentary-style look at dirty politics that was intelligent and witty, and didn't drag around its Democratic Party beliefs like an anvil on a chain. That's because director Michael Ritchie, an incisive satirist, was at the peak of his game. He had come out of television to make Downhill Racer, using Redford's stardom to unsettling effect, and Prime Cut, an overwrought crime thriller that at least added colour and verve to a genre largely down on its knees. But it was The Candidate that stopped the presses, Jeremy Larner's script winning an Oscar and the film being embraced by audiences and critics alike. Today, despite the 1970s ugliness, The Candidate still looks and feels like one of the best political movies ever made in Hollywood. It even pre-dates the scalpellic wit of The West Wing, having been made when West Wing's creator, Aaron Sorkin, was still in short pants.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Fox Classics (pay TV), 8.35pm
Of the classic madcap-race comedies, with their endlessly silly titles -Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes; Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies - Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is the granddaddy of them all. Sparked by the last words of a thief who may have hidden his loot for anyone to find, this is a madcap race across America with various motorists out to claim what they think will be a great treasure. A true ensemble cast, with at least a dozen well-known Hollywood stars including Spencer Tracey having a ball and Milton Berle eating up the scenery.
Scott Murray