What's not to like? ... The Aquabats! Super Show!
Free to air
The Aquabats! Super Show! ABC3, 8.40am
What's not to like about the Aquabats? As the first musical, crime-fighting supergroup in history, they proudly occupy a niche of their very own making.
Under the fearless leadership of M.C. Bat Commander, the Aquabats - Crash McLarson, Ricky Fitness, Eaglebones FalconHawk and Jimmy the Robot - are committed to battling the forces of evil, all the while pumping out their own particular brand of new-wave pop-rock. The show's ethos is an amalgam of Thunderbirds and early Batman with a dash of The Banana Splits thrown in.
This week, they come up against Manant, a pinstripe suit-wearing half-man, half-ant with serious issues. Having captured Crash McLarson, the evil Manant extracts his ''grow juice'' in order to create an army of super ants.
Will our heroes save the day? Will M.C. Bat Commander get to have lunch? Will the group finally realise that lycra shirts are a brave fashion choice for the middle-aged?
Sydney Weekender, Seven, 5.30pm
Sydney Weekender's clown prince, Mike Whitney, has clocked up 750 episodes on the show, which amounts to 18 years' worth of amiable buffoonery and cheesy scripts for the indefatigable host.
Here, he celebrates his milestone by joining the good folk of Bingara (north of Tamworth) on their annual horse muster. You wouldn't want to bet against Whitney still hamming it up on the cheap-and-cheerful travel show in another 18 years.
Outnumbered, ABC2, 7.30pm
This episode of the innovative British sitcom is from the fourth and final series and it is clearly beginning to run out of steam.
Much of that can be blamed on the trio of actors playing the children, who have aged alarmingly, as kids tend to do. Even Karen (Ramona Marquez) has lost much of the fresh, spontaneous charm from the early episodes.
One of the things that originally made the show stand out was the partially scripted structure that relied on the youngsters to react to lines from the adults around them, but this episode feels much more heavily scripted and thus more conventional. The plot revolves around Sue and Pete being unexpectedly left alone in the house, apart from a friend's labrador they are looking after.
There are some funny lines wrung from the situation but they are few and far between. Despite all this, Outnumbered, even in its later incarnation, remains head and shoulders above much of the sitcom dross that occupies our screens.
How To Build: A Super Jumbo Wing, SBS One, 7.30pm
I'm still trying to decide whether this makes perfect viewing for nervous flyers or if it's probably best avoided. On the one hand, it's comforting to know that so much care and attention to detail is lavished on building the wings of the Airbus A380.
But on the other hand, did you really want to know there are some half-a-million parts in each wing, meaning there are potentially half-a-million things that could go wrong? Especially when you consider, as one of the engineers helpfully points out, ''there's no hard shoulder at 35,000 feet''. Contemplate that next time you're unscrewing your miniature of scotch in cattle class.
This show will definitely appeal to those who spent hours assembling plastic model aeroplanes in their youthful bedrooms. Disappointingly, the folk at the Airbus factory in Broughton in the West Midlands don't wield giant tubes of Airfix glue as they assemble each of the myriad parts that go to make the vast wings, but the whole thing does look disconcertingly like a model kit, albeit made from different and larger materials.
At times, this comes across as an uncritical advert for the Airbus company but it nevertheless presents a fascinating look at the people who carry off such a spectacular piece of engineering.
Nick Galvin
Pay TV
Secret Life of the American Teenager, Fox8, 6.30pm
This teenage sex-and-pregnancy edu-soap has become quite the baffling parody of itself. The teenage characters spout incredibly corny lines such as, ''He had a horrible death because I had incredible sex,'' and ''We're all gonna get kicked out of school all because of oral sex gone bad.'' Some of their parents behave in bizarre ways that defy easy description but provide a rich vein of clips for Joel McHale to mock on The Soup (E!, Sunday, 7pm). It's hard to work out whether all this is intentional or simply the product of extraordinarily bad writing.
There's nothing hugely Soup-worthy in tonight's episode but it still seems more like a spoof on the genre than anything else. Amy (Shailene Woodley) is considering having sex with Ricky (Daren Kagasoff) but she wants him to take an STD test first. Ricky doesn't want to take the test and thinks he can get out of it by ringing up all his ex-girlfriends and saying things like, ''You don't have any sexually transmitted infections or HIV or anything, do you?'' After half an hour of this storyline, the whole thing inexplicably starts all over again when Grant (Grant Harvey) suggests that Grace (Megan Park) has an STD test before they have sex and Grace turns out not to be keen on the idea.
Meanwhile, Tom (Luke Zimmerman), who has Down syndrome, is working as vice-president of human resources at a big company, despite a complete lack of experience in the field, because he somehow prevents lawsuits. Go figure.
Brad Newsome
Movies
Spaceballs (1987) ABC2, 8.30pm
Mel Brooks attempts to push back the envelope and slip the surly bonds of reason in his quest for box-office whammo. Sadly, Brooks doesn't succeed with his Blazing Satellites rehash of Blazing Saddles. Characters such as Dot Matrix, Pizza the Hutt and Princess Vespa provide plenty of fun, but as a space western, it's never as good as the films it parodies.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Ten, 8.30pm
It wouldn't be hard to improve upon the 1951 version of this classic story but Robert Wise's Cold War fantasy still has plenty going for it. Keanu Reeves turns up as Klaatu, with Jennifer Connelly, Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Kathy Bates and John Cleese also appearing. Dr Benson (Connelly) is among scientific bods summoned to a US military facility to assist when a humungous spaceship arrives in the sky over New York. On board is a human-like alien traveller, Klaatu, and his sidekick, an enormous robot of immense power. Pentagon brass and top government boofheads don't believe Klaatu when he says he has come to save our planet and, showing the Guantanamo mindset still prevails, they decide to subject him to an ''intense interrogation''. Dr Benson intervenes unilaterally to set Klaatu free, then asks him what he really means by ''saving'' the planet. The weakness of the performances suggests the actors weren't chosen for their theatrical finesse. Klaatu barada nikto y'all!
Torremolinos 73 (2003) SBS Two, 12.45am (Sun)
This stilted but enjoyable comedy follows the fortunes of Alfredo in the waning days of Franco's Spain. Alfredo is a weary encyclopaedia salesman who finds himself obliged to move with the times. Door-to-door selling is dying and the ranks are thinning - like his hair. He and his wife become involved in making soft-porn home movies (ostensibly for a Scandinavian weekly encyclopaedia about - er - reproduction) and make a fair fist of it, enjoying the sudden wealth that ensues. Alfredo begins to see himself as a director in the Ingmar Bergman mould but Carmen just wants to have a baby. Nature has conspired to make this impossible and when Alfredo discovers the nature of their fertility problem, he swallows his pride and accepts a situation that requires Carmen to have it off with a Scandinavian actor. Director Pablo Berger probably overdoes the coyness but genuine warmth is evident.
Doug Anderson
