Countdown: Do Yourself a Favour, ABC, 7.40pm

This celebration of Countdown's 40th birthday is as much an homage to Molly Meldrum as it is a recognition of one of the most – if not the most – influential television programs this country has produced. Meldrum was an awkward host who scratched himself as he fluffed his lines, notes spilling all over the studio floor as he asked nonsensical questions and stammered over the top of his guests' answers. The buffoonery was natural but also carefully nurtured, endearing Meldrum to the teens and their parents who watched in their millions. Countdown was unique: it made the most of the new colour technology, it was flamboyant, live and energetic and messy and – being on the ABC – could reach into every lounge room across the country. The show put a cracker up the backside of a local industry that had been lazy and unadventurous, and made Meldrum a power broker. To go on Countdown could kickstart a  career. Well-wishers including Elton, KISS and Suzi Quatro join locals Kylie, Brian Mannix, John Farnham, Marcia Hines and JPY to share the love.

Junior Eurovision Song Contest, SBS2, 7.30pm

Junior Eurovision: child exploitation or a bit of harmless fun? Going on last year's event in Ukraine the kids do enjoy the chance to step up and shine but there's something a little depressing about the whole "junior" trend in television. Can't we let them be children?

Sunday Best: Touching the Void, ABC2, 8.30pm

Few films delve so powerfully into the human condition as Touching the Void; few have such remarkable material to work with. Made in 2003, this feature-length film recounts the story of two British mountain climbers whose  attempt on the Andean peak Siula Grande in 1985 became a feat of survival. Joe Simpson and Simon Yates attempted the climb in the purists'  style – tied together, carrying only backpacks. Returning from the summit Simpson slipped and broke his leg, a death sentence. His account of how he inched his way back to base camp after being cut loose by his climbing partner, who believed him to be dead, delves into the deepest aspects of what it means to be human.

Gordon Farrer

PAY TV

Megalodon: The  Monster Shark Lives, Animal Planet, 7.30pm

Megalodon was an enormous prehistoric shark that has been extinct for, oh, a good 1.5 million years now. But Animal Planet and its parent channel, Discovery, want you to believe  it's alive and well, sinking charter boats off the coast of South Africa and dining on whales in Hawaii. Like Mermaids: The Body Found, this is another of Discovery's contemptible fake documentaries, which get huge ratings but leave scientists and educators tearing their hair out. It involves actors pretending to be scientists and fishermen, with fake photographs and videos used to bolster the cynical fiction. The writing is horrible, too – we're told that this "serial killer of the seas" ate its prey "with extreme prejudice" and "probably showed no compassion". But the artistic atrocity pales beside the program's undermining of science. It assiduously ignores the  good reasons to conclude that megalodon is extinct and paints scientists as idiots for having reached that conclusion. It then makes false analogies to the discovery of modern  coelacanth and the rediscovery of the pygmy right whale and waves them around like trump cards. What it doesn't do is tell us anything much about megalodon – you'll learn more from the Wikipedia article. This whole pathetic thing was such a success in the US that Discovery has made a sequel.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Control (2007), SBS One, 1.10am (Monday)

Joy Division vocalist Ian Curtis committed suicide in 1980 at the age of  23, leaving a concise but perfectly formed body of work that uncomfortably stands as a guide towards his sad fate. For his feature debut, leading Dutch rock photographer Anton Corbijn, who shot the Manchester post-punk quartet in 1979 at the beginning of his own career,  avoids the safety of myth or the satisfaction of celebrity in his study of Curtis' adult life. Photographed with a black and white palette that's mostly about the grim greys of the northern urban landscape, the film calmly collects the various misfortunes – including epilepsy and an impulsive young marriage that he soured on – which combined to depress and ultimately derail Curtis, who is played with sombre clarity by Sam Riley. Joy Division, whose remaining members would go on to form New Order, are little more than hopeful lads, and the band's haphazard journey is a worthy reflection of the music world's mix of the inspired and mundane.

Prisoners (2013), Premiere Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm

Prisoners is a crime film about the terrible risks and palpable costs that come with confronting evil. Lurid and occasionally ludicrous, it wins out with a suffocating intensity that turns a procedural into a battle for the humanity of the protagonists. Those who pursue monsters become monsters, one character suggests, and Denis Villeneuve's movie has a solemn, menacing air summoned by grim American suburban locales and undercut by shaken religious faith. A Thanksgiving lunch becomes a police investigation when two six-year-old girls go missing, but the lead detective, Loki (Jack Gyllenhaal), can find no evidence to hold the suspect, Alex (Paul Dano), so a desperate father, Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) kidnaps the young man with the intellect of a 10-year-old, intending to torture him for answers. The film is lengthy and immersive, with each twist of the plot yanking you further under Villeneuve's spell as he delivers the genre's basic necessities with compelling economy.

Craig Mathieson