FREE TO AIR
Restoration Man, ABC, 8.30pm
Architect George Clarke has carved out his own little patch of the Grand Designs territory, shaping his show to focus on historic, often crumbling, buildings and the people who resolve to revive them. At the start of the fourth series, he’s following the efforts of Alison and Matthew Grey who’ve bought a Victorian pumping station and hope to restore it on a relatively modest budget. Along with a brief history of irrigation and sewage in the area, there’s considerable attention devoted to the building’s admittedly impressive windows. One can’t fault the dedication of the Greys. But the palaver about The Windows does get a bit tedious.
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Seven, 8.30pm
This emergency visit by profanity-spewing saviour Gordon Ramsay to a failing restaurant conforms to the now-familiar recipe: its first ingredient is a deluded and defiant owner overseeing a disastrous eatery and urgently needing assistance from the swaggering hero. The business requiring emergency intervention is Yanni’s Greek Cuisine in Seattle, Washington, a family concern run by Peter, his wife Karen and their daughters, Alyse and Tariya. Founded by Peter and his father, Yanni’s is losing thousands of dollars a month, but Peter is unwilling to change anything. ‘‘Chef Ramsay’’ eats his way through a predictably unsatisfying menu featuring greasy moussaka and excessively garlicky pumpkin hummus, a house creation that he pronounces to be ‘‘hideous’’. True to the formula, there’s a lot of yelling and swearing, copious tears, and, eventually, declarations of love and appreciation.
The Book Club’s Five of the Best, ABC, 9.20pm
This hour-long edition of The Book Club focuses on the best books of the year, with each of the panellists offering a title for consideration. Host Jennifer Byrne has Magda Szubanki’s acclaimed autobiography, Reckoning: A Memoir, while regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger bring Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread and The Whites by Harry Brandt (aka Richard Price). The guest panellists are 7.30 host Leigh Sales and Michael Williamson. The show also features viewer votes for the best of the year, as well as nominations from children and booksellers.
Debi Enker
PAY TV
Indochina’s Wild Heart, Nat Geo Wild, 7.30pm
A wonderful instalment looking at the remarkable recovery of much of Vietnam’s wildlife after the destruction wrought by the Vietnam War. Scientists in Vietnam are now finding dozens of previously unknown species every year – including mammals as big as antelopes. The many amazing animals profiled here include the curious arboreal predator known as the binturong, the adorable pygmy slow loris and the industrious bamboo rat, which spends most of its life underground gnawing on roots.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)Family Movies (pay TV), 7.30pm
Perfectly designed to inhabit a faux-Dickensian world of tottering mansions, tattered waistcoats and triumphant English eccentricity, Brad Silberling’s adaptation of Daniel Handler’s much-loved novels about three orphaned children relentlessly pursued by their wicked relative proved to be an astute and enjoyable adventure. Smarter and more resourceful than the numerous adults who get in their way, the Baudelaire children – Violet (Emily Browning), Klaus (Liam Aiken) and baby Sunny (Kara and Shelby Hoffman) – are shuffled off to relatives after their parents die in a mysterious fire, soon discovering that a distant family member, Count Olaf (a bony, desiccated Jim Carrey) wants to take their lives and their money. As part of the year he was in absolutely everything, Jude Law voices the mournful narrator, Lemony Snicket, whose pessimism and touches of melancholia foreshadow the film’s mood after a fake opening sequence that makes clear the lack of frolics in the forest contained by the material. Handler’s skill is to not only make black humour work for an adolescent audience, but to celebrate the trait; his readers become co-conspirators against the uplifting goodness pressed upon young minds to the point of creative stagnation. Silberling manages to translate that, aided by the painterly sets and a whimsically malevolent performance from Carrey, whose evil is confirmed by his profession: he’s an actor. There’s much to enjoy here, and of the many hopeful franchises adapted from successful children’s novels the failure of this one to take flight is the most disappointing.
Crossfire (2008) SBS, 11.40am
This French policier is more concerned with firepower than the flaws of fraternity. Beginning with a crime boss, Abel Vargas (Gerald Laroche) being busted out of police custody when an entire convoy is blasted to pieces, it applies a Gallic fury to the staples of the action movie. While it doesn’t have the excess of a Luc Besson production, the bookend action sequences from veteran television director Claude-Michel Rome are capably composed as they accumulate a serious body count. In between, the focus is Vincent Drieu (Richard Berry), a detective sent to a moribund rural precinct to take over the investigation of Vargas. Met by apathy, disdain and corruption, he works against adversaries on both sides of the law, slowly drawing in several of his fellow officers to what becomes a cause instead of a case. What endures, between the gunfights and gruesome coercion, is a vision of a nation without a centre to hold it together.
Craig Mathieson
