FREE TO AIR
The Bachelor Australia, Ten, 7.30pm
Poor Bachelor Sam Wood must be thoroughly exhausted by now after spending months – or is it years? – putting his lovely ladies through their paces while trying not to shriek every time host Osher Gunsberg materialises out of thin air. The quest to anoint one lucky filly as Mrs S. Wood before retiring to a shared life of beach sunsets and Instagrammed abdominals is not one to be entered into lightly, and Bachelor Sam is determined to be the anti-Blake, going to the trouble of arranging ever more and more elaborate dates for his stable of Ms Possibles, or at least turning up at the time pre-arranged with the producers. He seems like a decent enough bloke, although one really has to wonder at someone who’ll play tonsil hockey with a group of women on national TV. As for the women who accede to such behaviour – well, Sandra was as annoying as a fly at a picnic but with her despatched to the Bachelor afterlife, the rest of the women are a thoroughly bland lot possessed of not a modicum of wit (except Heather, who the other girls don’t like because she has a sense of humour). In fairness to them all, it must be devilishly hard to appear spontaneous in an empty restaurant with a camera shoved in your face as your try to eat fettucini alfredo without spilling it down your front. But then it doesn’t do to think too deeply about The Bachelor. Really, it doesn’t.
The Weekly, ABC, 8.30pm
So Charlie Pickering came in for some flack over The Weekly bearing a little too much resemblance to John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight when it debuted a few months back but, as the series draws to a close, we can only lament more shows aren’t modelled on it, if indeed the allegations are true. The Weekly is, quite frankly, one of the best things going, either on Aunty or anywhere. And it’s over. So watch it this week, then weep into the void.
Legends, ONE, 10.30pm
Sean Bean puts in a fine turn as Boromir, son of Denethor – sorry, as Martin Odum, a very confused sort of chap nonetheless still allowed to carry on covert operations for the FBI despite not being quite sure who he is. This week’s espionage hoo-ha involves a Saudi prince, a scorchingly hot feminist critic of the Saudi prince, and an idealistic young writer drawn to the scorching feminist’s scorching polemic.
Larissa Dubecki
PAY TV
Good Buy Girls, Style, 8.30pm
There’s lots of high-spirited hijinks as home-shopping spruikers Tara Gray and Brook Roberts try to put American viewers together with the kind of products that you simply can’t buy at the store. Tonight Gray (a former Miss Alabama) and Roberts (a former Miss Oregon) are excited about a line of ‘‘menopause pyjamas’’ designed to wick away night sweats. The problem is they’re too young to get night sweats, so they cheekily ask their on-air rival Marlene to road test them. Will Marlene find a way to turn the tables on them? The script says ‘‘Yes!’’
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) TCM (pay TV), 8.30pm
The body of a man is washed up on the banks of the Bosphorus in Istanbul. A label inside his jacket identifies him as Dimitrios Markropoulos, a mysterious criminal, a man whose death will be celebrated across Europe – and especially by Colonel Haki (Kurt Hatch) of the Turkish police. That evening, Haki goes to an elegant soiree at a mansion overlooking the Golden Horn. He is excitedly introduced to his favourite crime writer, Dutchman Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre), in whom Haki soon confides the fascinating but gap-ridden story of Dimitrios. This inspires Leyden to seek out more information, travelling to Athens, Sofia and beyond to meet those few people with anything to tell – and the courage to tell it. But the search is complicated by Leyden being shadowed by a corpulent figure who calls himself Mr Peters (Sydney Greenstreet). What is his interest in the dead Dimitrios? Modern viewers – and especially those adept at deciphering such films as The Usual Suspects – will be fairly confident from the soiree onwards that Leyden is Dimitrios, a villain cleverly using the guise of a mystery writer to help find out what incriminatory evidence others have and then taking action to cover his tracks, much like Gregory Arkadin does in Orson Welles’ 1955 Confidential Agent (aka Mr Arkadin). But once Mr Peters appears, audiences may not be quite so sure. And what of Haki himself? Then again, perhaps Dimitrios really is dead and this is all just narrative trickery to ensnare the over-enthusiastic.The Mask of Dimitrios, from the novel by Eric Ambler, is in many ways the granddaddy of espionage conundrums. And, like most studio pictures of the early 1940s (including Casablanca), it rarely leaves the studio lot, using brief glimpses of famous landmarks out windows to create an exotic foreign ambience (though a surf beach near Big Sur is a poor substitute for the calm waters of the Bosphorus). Directed by Romanian Jean Negulesco, who does a superb job of evoking threatening alien worlds, this is lessa game of thrills than of intrigue and narrative playfulness. Its many obvious charms (the cast is sublime) have not diminished over time. It is a gem that still glitters.
Paris Blues (1961) ABC, 1.15am (Thursday)
This is a revered Martin Ritt movie about two American jazz musicians (Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier) in Paris, at a time when the music was everything and social issues stopped outside the door. Like all Ritt’s films, it is sparse, moody and intelligent.
Scott Murray
