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Maximum Choppage, ABC2, 9pm
This terrific little chop-socky effort from comedian Lawrence Leung is a gem. Leung plays Cabramatta local Simon Chan, who returns from a stint at a prestigious martial arts school in Beijing to a suburb harassed by karaoke owner and gangster Kai Le (Felino Dolloso). He’s expected to take him down with his fighting expertise but he has a terrible secret: he was, in fact, at the Marshall Art School and wouldn’t know a Crouching Tiger punch from a Flying Crane kick. Hilarity ensues.
Grey’s Anatomy, Seven, 10pm
Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) have hit a rough patch in their marriage and try to reconnect with a trial separation – while living in the same house. No talking or touching allowed, all the while sharing the care of their daughter. Not fun. After 11 seasons the operating theatre metaphors still abound, the dialogue is still drenched in medical terminology and the personal and professional are as entwined as ever ... so business as usual at Grey-Sloan Memorial.
Mammon, SBS One, 10.30pm
Even if traditional newspapers are an endangered species, the world of the old-style investigative newspaper journalist still makes for great drama. Power will always need to be scrutinised and in the battle to expose its corruption or other crimes, the journo who gets a story between his/her teeth and won’t let go is a hero. In this Norwegian take on the industry the news terrier is Peter Veras (Jon Oigarden). He doesn’t research Twitter trends to find clues, or brainstorm listicles, or keep an eye on the online comments on the seven three-paragraph stories he uploaded that morning while working on the most effective SEO terms to tag the 17 he’s working on now. He’s old school, out on the street, asking hard questions, getting bashed up and being in the wrong place at the right time. In last week’s series opener we saw him sniff out corruption in a multinational company five years earlier, the investigation ending with the suicide of his brother. Veras is determined, driven by the desire for truth (does Veras mean ‘‘truth’’ in Norwegian?); his filial connection adding emotional fuel to his drive. This week the corruption story resurfaces and takes a biblical twist as Old Testament names Daniel and Abraham surface and start to click.
Gordon Farrer
PAY TV
Euros of Hollywood, Arena, 9.30pm
It’s impossible not to adore Italian actor Massimo. He’s such a gentle, generous soul. An island of sweetness, if you will, in a maelstrom of ego, vanity and self-obsession. If any of this motley bunch of ‘‘Euros’’ chasing their dreams in Los Angeles deserves to succeed, it’s him. The problem is Massimo’s American accent remains terrible, despite the countless hours he’s spent working on it. Tonight his failure to land a dog food commercial reduces him to tears. But wait – the phone rings again and he’s landed an even better job! ‘‘This is a major action movie,’’ he assures the camera. ‘‘It’s going to be on DVD and Netflix.’’ Massimo is to be playing a Russian thug, but he might want to butch up a bit – as he sets about packing his bags he turns the conversation to Liz Taylor’s hats. Elsewhere, the feud between Austrian pop singer Fawni and Albanian pop singer Bleona rages on.
MOVIES
Can’t Hardly Wait (1998), Eleven, 9.30pm
The Hollywood team of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont would go on to write some truly terrible movies – Saving Christmas, which was the nadir of Ben Affleck’s career, and Amy Adams’ failure Leap Year – but this teen movie from 1998, which comes with an excruciatingly exact soundtrack to the post-grunge era, draws some merit despite being deeply in debt to John Hughes’ 16 Candles. At a graduation party reality sets in for a group of high school archetypes: the princess (Jennifer Love-Hewitt) wonders if popularity was worth it, the dweeb (Ethan Embry) secretly desires her, his quirky best friend (Lauren Ambrose) offers advice, the football star (Peter Facinelli) realises it’s all downhill, and the white suburban kid who thinks he’s a homeboy (Seth Green) has to accept cultural truths. The outcome is manufactured, but the journey isn’t, and it’s worth noting this is the American generation that would face 9/11 and the globalfinancial crisis as twentysomethings.
Sleeping With the Enemy (1991), Thriller Movies (pay TV), 10.10pm
A young Julia Roberts plays Laura Burney, the scared, secretly battered wife of a wealthy investment banker who controls her life in their gleaming dream house with meticulous rules, raging jealousy and domineering sexual congress (Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique is the soundtrack to his seduction); Patrick Bergin just powers through every cliche the screenplay can offer up, delivering a maniacal turn as the husband from hell. Laura fakes her death and flees, settling under a false identity in the kind of rustic small town only Hollywood can find. The coltish energy Roberts had at the time is well-suited to a woman who is unsure at every turn, but there’s pure sap in the veins of Ben (Kevin Anderson), the kindly drama teacher next door who gallantly pursues his mysterious neighbour with the big hair. Joseph Ruben directs the thriller with workmanlike ease, but the film can only ever have one ending and it gets there without any thematic disturbances.
Craig Mathieson