FREE TO AIR
Sammy J and Randy in Ricketts Lane, ABC iView, from midnight
Sammy J is a lawyer, a loser, a loner. Randy is a recent divorcee and a puppet. They are housemates in a little slice of mid-century blonde-brick suburbia (think Howard Arkley) where they play hide and seek spiced with the addition of high-voltage tasers. They compete to see who can tick most boxes on the census form. They try to undermine each other’s best efforts to get a life. They are, in short, the latest variation on the odd-couple format that arguably started with, well, The Odd Couple and had its most fruitful flowering locally with The Adventures of Lano and Woodley in the late 1990s. But Sammy J (real name Samuel Jonathan McMillan) and Randy (puppeteer Heath McIvor) also offer plenty that’s new in this small-screen adaptation of their 2010 live stand-up show. There are musical numbers, a visual style that places the happenings in some sort of 1970s-flavoured time warp, and a gently absurdist style of comedy. That’s typified by having Sammy work out of a stationery cupboard in the law office of the sleazy Borkman (Nathan Lovejoy), where he is occasionally forced to lick the boss’ boots (literally). Whether it’s a savvy move to build word-of-mouth or a lack of faith it’s hard to tell, but the ABC is making all six episodes available on iView ahead of an October slot on the main channel. Stick with it; it starts well enough and gets even better.
New Adventures Of Figaro Pho, ABC3, 5pm
The return of the award-winning animated series about a kid with a dictionary-load of phobias, the first of 39 new short episodes, has our hero competing with prickly Prudence for an ice-skating trophy. Of course, he’s first got to conquer his fear of the ice. Or skating. Or maybe it’s just a fear of losing. Or winning. Frankly, I’d be more afraid of running out of phobias before the season is done.
The Blacklist, Seven, 9.30pm
In the season two finale FBI agent Liz Keene (Megan Boone) is on the run, framed for the assassination of a US senator. Of course, the murder was orchestrated by the Cabal, and though Tom Connolly (Reed Birney) is US Attorney-General, he tells Liz he is but a lowly apparatchik in this axis of evil. ‘‘Shoot me,’’ Connolly says, ‘‘and someone at least as powerful will take my place. You just won’t know who.’’
Karl Quinn
PAY TV
Octopus Volcano, Nat Geo Wild, 3.30pm
A fascinating documentary about the octopi that live a pretty cruisy life in the shallow waters around Italy’s Stromboli volcano. The volcano erupts all the time and, as we see, the boulders that are forever barrelling down its slopes into the sea act as giant crab crackers, leaving a buffet of fresh-killed crabs and lobsters for our eight-armed friends to feast on. What intrigues scientists, however, is the fact that the octopi always seem to know when Stromboli is going to blow – they skedaddle in time to avoid the rolling rocks and then come back only when it’s safe to have a feed. Could the volcano be emitting low-frequency warning sounds that the octopi can hear but humans can’t?
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Seven Days in May (1964) TCM (pay TV), 8.30pm
The Cold War is morphing. Tired of the cost and stresses of their ever-escalating nuclear programs, the United States and the Soviet Union decide to sign an armaments-reduction treaty. Free-market capitalists aren’t keen because they are making fortunes from the nuclear race, while the average American citizen is just plain terrified the Soviets won’t keep their word and will soon attack a weakened America. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March), who has championed the treaty and asked citizens to put aside their fears and trust good intentions, has seen his approval-rating plummet to 29 per cent. The hyenas are gathering, ready for the kill. Some plan to do this democratically, via an election; others think a military takeover is the best way to go. And the go-to man for that is four-star General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster). His only problem is that he has working for him someone (Kirk Douglas) who rates the Constitution just a little higher than military might.
John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964) is an acclaimed Cold War thriller that is often paired with Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe (about misunderstandings potentially leading to a nuclear strike), from the same year. Both put most modern thrillers to shame, because the action and thrills are always secondary to an intelligent exchange of philosophical and political ideas. These are films from master filmmakers working at time when it was not uncommon to ask audiences to think, question and reassess. Frankenheimer is a superlative director whose opening sequence outside the White House looks like real television coverage of political protests from the late 1960s and early ’70s. As always, Frankenheimer was ahead of the stylistic zeitgeist. As for scenes of political machinations in the White House and Senate, these prefigure The West Wing by 35 years and are just as good, crisp and dramatic. Arguably the film’s only flaw is a stagey speech from the president near the end, but as an analysis of how some people deal with their fears by establishing new authority figures, only to later turn against them, is brilliant. But, then, so is the acting, the script by Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone), the moody and elegant compositions, and a score from Jerry Goldsmith that set the standard.
No Country for Old Men (2007) ONE, 9.30pm
A bleak and miserable adaptation from Joel and Ethan Coen of a modern-day neo-western from novelist Cormac McCarthy, about three criminals falling out and facing gruesome death, all recreated with sadistic relish by the Coens.
Scott Murray
