FREE TO AIR
Poh & Co, SBS One, 8pm
Poh Ling Yeow is an unusual cooking show host. She exudes none of the brazen confidence of her peers, except in her knowledge of food. All awkward enthusiasm and too-hard laughter, she’s still the fresh-faced MasterChef runner-up she was in 2009, seemingly unable to quite believe she’s on television, despite this being the fourth series to bear her name, following three seasons of Poh’s Kitchen on ABC. In this episode, while assembling an “Asian picnic” of pork meatballs, noodles, pickled vegetables, coriander and Vietnamese mint, she reflects with disarming candour on her schoolyard experiences as the only child to have chopsticks in their lunchbox. She also builds a wood-fired pizza oven with husband Jono in their backyard, and, demonstrating one of the many other strings to her bow (she is also an actress and fine artist), triumphantly etches flying ducks onto her stainless steel refrigerator door.
Downton Abbey, Seven, 9pm
With the entire household in London for the wedding of Lady Rose MacClare (Lily James) to Jewish banker’s son Atticus Alderidge (Matt Barber), everyone is thrown into their own personal chaos. Upstairs, a Machiavellian plot is cooking to stop the wedding, Robert Crawley (the adorable Hugh Bonneville) questions the paternity of his granddaughter Marigold, and the wheels of progress begin to slowly turn inside this microcosm of the times, as the families reluctantly merge. Downstairs, Daisy (Sophie McShera) is seduced by the cultural pleasures of the city and questions her future as a servant much to the despair of maternal head cook, Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol). And the law is closing in on housemaid and murder suspect, Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt).
The Super-Rich and Us, ABC, 9.30pm
British broadcaster Jacques Peretti presents this fascinating two-part series looking at the benefits to the working poor of the UK’s non-dom tax loophole that allows billionaires to pay comparatively less tax than everyone else. Not surprisingly, he finds very little. Peretti makes no pretence of impartiality. It is satisfying to watch him try to force the “super-rich” and the economists (including economic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, Arthur Laffer) he interviews to admit that the concept of “trickle-down economics” doesn’t work.
Bridget McManus
PAY TV
Australia’s Next Top Model, Fox8, 7.30pm
When Tyra Banks pops up at the start, rabbiting on about how many seasons of America’s Next Top Model she’s made and how many different countries she’s sold the format to, you might think the old Tyra ego is randomly flaring out of control. But she’s actually here to dedicate this season to the memory of Charlotte Dawson, without whom the show will never be the same. It’s a nice touch, but it would also have been nice if Jennifer Hawkins, Alex Perry and others who worked with Dawson on the show had been given a chance to pay their respects on the screen as well. Perhaps that will happen in a coming episode. In the meantime, there’s another gaggle of gangly ingenues to herd into a harbourside mansion and send out on challenges and photo shoots. They’re as young and excited as ever, and they seem like a nice bunch. The first challenge is a runway show and there’s drama straight away. Sudanese-born Ayieda has a painful-looking struggle to walk in heels, and tractor driver Brittany has an anxiety attack out the back. As the episode progresses it seems clear that Brittany’s anxiety is a persistent problem for her, and one that requires thoughtful handling -- Perry practically barking that she has "gotta sort it out" isn’t helpful. It would have been better -- especially in the wake of Dawson’s death -- to take the opportunity to explain to contestants and viewers alike that anxiety and depression are real problems, that they are nothing to be ashamed of, and that they can be greatly alleviated through proper treatment.
Brad Newsome
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MOVIES
Movie of the week: Swing, (2002) SBS One, 3.25am
The transition process whereby children imperceptibly evolve into adults is often attended by confusion and frustration. It seems such a waste for the beguiling vitality and optimistic exuberance that have ripened over a dozen or more years to be becalmed in the mire of uncertainty that accompanies emergence from the chrysalis. This superb film from Tony Gatlif charts the last summer of childhood shared by Max, a 10-year-old city kid on holiday in rural Andalucia, and Swing, an illiterate gypsy girl he meets while exploring the town. Max is transfixed by the wondrous manouche music played by local Romanies. Overwhelmed by the vibrancy in the music, he buys a battered old guitar and begs the group’s leader, guitar virtuoso Miraldo, to teach him how to play. They strike a bargain whereby the youngster receives tuition in return for writing letters for the illiterate Miraldo to expedite his claims to social security. But even Max’s passion for the music cannot compete with his attraction to the free-wheeling, barefoot Swing – a spirited, child woman with a boundless appetite for life’s spontaneity. A cerebral attraction to feral spirits. Gradually he dissolves into the Gypsy subculture and his affection for the wild and tempestuous girl creates tumultuous adventures. Their friendship is lovingly illuminated in ways that will resonate strongly with many an inner child. Hope, innocence and desire compete for supremacy. The girl is so young and yet so old already – destined, it seems, to become a commodity at the disposal of her family’s (or tribe’s) imperatives. Max’s mother, seen only in the closing sequences, is a single parent – an executive who knows which way is up and who accords slender significance to the mellowing potential Max has found outside her rather tight frame of reference. There is no shortage of films concerning rites of passage in familiar urban situations. This one is not simply wistful. It cuts to the bone.
In & Out, (1997)Eleven, 9.30pm
It seems as if every time an actor wins an Academy Award for a performance in a gay role there are post-award mutterings about the actor being gay. These whispers are intensified if the actor dares acknowledge his friendship or collaboration with a homosexual, as one winner did by thanking designer Tom Ford or another his high-school drama coach. Frank Oz’s In & Out riffs off this phenomenon, with Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon) winning an Oscar for playing a gay soldier and, at the academy ceremony, thanking his English Literature teacher, Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline), before adding ‘‘and he’s gay’’. Given Howard is living with his fiancee (Joan Cusack) in the quaint Indiana town of Greenleaf, this ‘‘outing’’ is not what Howard was hoping for. He is as outraged as the town’s residents, but not so outraged that he doesn’t fall for an entertainment reporter, Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck). This is a well-meaning and relevant comedy, but tiptoes far too cautiously through the PC minefields that it loses much of its dramatic force. However, it received laudatory reviews for openly portraying homosexuality in middle America, which reviewers had failed to notice – or point out – Hollywood had been doing for well over a century. Take almost any Doris Day comedy from the 1950s and there’s a gay man in it, let alone the screwball comedies of the 1930s. In fact, one can actually go back as far as 1895 and The Dickson Experimental Sound Film. By all means condemn Hollywood for its many failings, but never accuse it of denying gayness.
The Princess of Montpensier, (2010) SBS One, 2.35am (Friday)
Bertrand Tavernier is one of France’s most important directors. He is an elegant and thoughtful filmmaker, even if he has surprised many with radical changes in style, moving from epic historical reconstructions (The Judge and the Assassin) to intimate dramas (Daddy Nostalgia) and post-modern futurism (Death Watch). If he has a personal obsession, it is probably for period stories where young and beautiful women take on the norms of the day in pursuit of love or selfhood. The Princess of Montpensier, Tavernier’s 31st feature, is an adaptation of a Madame de Lafayette novella about the war between Catholics and Protestants in 16th century France. Marie de Mezieres (Melanie Thierry) is in love with cousin Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), but her father insists she marry Philippe de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet). No good can come of this. This is a glorious film to behold, with political court dramas that are never less than riveting. It is a true pleasure.
Scott Murray
