FREE TO AIR
Four Corners, ABC, 8.30pm
This extraordinary BBC Panorama documentary investigates the ‘‘supply chain’’ of Apple, the most valuable company in the world. In the wake of a spate of employee suicides in their Chinese factories, Apple made several promises to improve conditions among the million-plus workers who reportedly work long hours and endure appalling conditions to make our pretty iPhones and tablets. Panorama’s Richard Bilton recruits a crew of local reporters to go undercover as workers at the Pegatron factory on the outskirts of Shanghai, which employs 80,000 people. Using hidden cameras these reporters film workers falling asleep on the production line, being humiliated by superiors and sharing tiny, cramped quarters. He also travels to Indonesia and meets children as young as 14 illegally mining for tin, used to solder parts together for phones and tablets. When it screened late last year in Britain, Apple declared themselves ‘‘offended’’ by the program’s allegations. You might think twice before whingeing about your job after watching this.
Simon Reeve’s Sacred Rivers, SBS One, 8.35pm
In the second of British author and TV presenter Simon Reeve’s journeys along three of the world’s major rivers, he travels the length of the sacred Ganges, from its source in the Himalayas to the sea. Travelogue fans will have seen many a doco on the famous Indian river, but Reeve’s journey takes in both the history and spirituality of the river as well as how India’s booming economy has, in some places, had devastating effects on the river – how do Indians reconcile this polluting of their sacred river with their ancient religious beliefs? We also see a few entertaining manifestations of Indian faith, in particular the elevation of cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar to deity status in a small Indian village.
Revenge, Seven, 9pm
It’s astounding that any of the original characters in this trashy soap are still alive in season four, given the double-crossing, abuse and violence that goes on in any given episode. We’re only in the second instalment of season four and Victoria has already escaped from the mental hospital only to be almost immediately captured by her thought-to-be-dead-but-never-was husband David, who takes her – where else? – to his sewer lair. Just another weekend in the Hamptons.
Kylie Northover
PAY TV
Wild Kratts, Discovery Kids, 6.20pm
A strange, ostensibly educational cartoon about two brothers who have a gadget that lets them take on the attributes of any animal they see. Today they’re hanging out with a pride of lions, but they avoid explaining why they have to protect the cubs from a couple of wandering males. Why write such a scenario if you’re not prepared to tell kids that scabby, smelly old lions will tear adorable little cubs to bloody shreds just so they can mate with their mothers? Nature herself is never so coy.
The Walking Dead, FX, 8.30pm
Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and the gang are in a sombre mood as they file into the walled village at Alexandria. After what happened at Woodbury and Terminus, if they can make it to nightfall without having their throats opened up over an abattoir trough they can put today in the ‘‘win’’ column. But lo! Is that a teenage girl that Carl (Chandler Riggs) spies through a window? Could it be time for a Carl love saga? All the Carl haters out there will be thrilled to bits at the prospect. In the meantime, the contrast between the calm, well-fed villagers and Rick’s twitchy, hyper-vigilant group could scarcely be more pronounced. It soon becomes deliciously apparent that some of our old friends are being less than honest with their new hosts.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), Masterpiece Movies (pay TV), 6.45pm
It is 1665 and Griet (Scarlett Johansson), the daughter of an impoverished and blind decorator of Delft tiles, is forced to accept work as a maid at the house of painter Johannes Vermeer (ColinFirth). There, her beauty and intelligence ferment havoc, with Johannes’ wife (Essie Davis) turning into a smouldering wreck of jealousy. Director Peter Webber’s loving adaptation of Tracy Chevalier’s best-selling novel was chastised at the time forits laconic tone and muted drama, but generally admired for the brilliance with which cameraman Eduardo Serra employs Vermeer’s use of light and perspective. Firth looks the part as the troubled genius, but Johansson is the true star, the camera fascinated to the point of obsession with her face and inner glow.
Underworld: Evolution (2006), GO!, 10pm
To the ever-lengthening list of annoying narratives and memes in mass entertainment – senior police officers inhibiting genius detectives below them, any variant of serial-killer, filmmakers who delight in criminal behaviour (an Australian fixation) – one could add vampires. It is no doubt a generational thing, but for those who grew up on the earthy delights of the Hammer films of the 1960s and ’70s, were only mildly engaged by attempts to intellectualise the genre in the 1990s (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) or to use it as an allegory for AIDS (Interview with the Vampire), and were under-whelmed at its morphing into chaste rites-of-passage yarns for the young of life, films like Underworld appear eminently avoidable. Evolution, the second in the Underworld series, follows on directly from the first, with Selene (Kate Beckinsale) still seeking to understand and end the centuries-old war between vampires and werewolves. We hope she succeeds. It is slick, highly stylised, CGI-heavy and not much else. Beckinsale is OK in the lead, but she promised so much earlier in her career – in Much Ado About Nothing, for example. One hopes she is offered something better soon.
Scott Murray
