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The Block: Triple Threat, Nine, 7.30pm
Nine episodes into the latest incarnation of The Block and it’s clear the producers are sticking to a formula that has served the show well over its previous outings. There’s the playful banter between contestants and by-the-book foreman Keith, the spectacle of renovation plans that will lead to either gags or applause from the resident judges, and relationships under the pressure of deadlines and intrusive cameras. For the three ‘‘all star’’ couples, there’s also a looming elimination which will see two of them adding the words ‘‘Block also-ran’’ to their CVs for a second time. Regrettably, there’s also an overload of chauvinistic sneers as the ‘‘ladies’’ pound the pavement and credit vouchers while the blokes do the hard yards on site. But perhaps the greatest feat that The Block pulls off is the ever-present expectation that monumental drama will erupt at the very next story beat. Just watch what happens when ‘‘newbies’’ Ayden and Jess get pulled over by the police. This could be an interesting development, one thinks. It isn’t, but the ruse served its purpose.
NCIS: Los Angeles, Ten, 9.30pm
US procedural dramas don’t come more cookie-cutter – or downright trite – than this spin-off, despite the shift of scenery and characters from the long-running original. ‘‘Traitor’’ sees the special ops team on the case of an internal mole who is poisoning workmates. Given how little we have invested in the culprit it’s hard to care, while the rom-com banter between the agents is too cute by half.
House of Lies, Eleven, 11.35pm
One sometimes gets the feeling watching this dramedy, which airs on US channel Showtime, home of the in-your-face Californication and Shameless, that it’s striving a bit too hard to offend or to at least shake up the sensibilities of any wowsers who might accidentally stray upon it. Though its raciness may signal a modicum of street cred, it’s never quite as outrageous or irreverent as it suggests itself to be. And so tonight the crack management consultants are called in to help the manufacturer of sex aids, which leads Jeannie (Kristen Bell) to an unlikely meet-cute with Adam Brody, while Marty (Don Cheadle) deals with the aftermath of a rough encounter with the police which his militant brother insists on seeing as racially motivated.
Paul Kalina
PAY TV
Show of the Week
Euros of Hollywood, Tuesday, Arena, 9.30pm
The absence of mainland Europeans from the tawdry reality shows that clog our cables is rather conspicuous. So conspicuous, in fact, that you might have come to imagine that our continental cousins are above such spectacles. That they have an innate sophistication and decorum that keep them from behaving like us appalling anglophones. Luckily, that isn’t the case. And anyone who thinks it is might want to acquaint themselves with Gandia Shore and Warsaw Shore, the Spanish and Polish versions of Geordie Shore.
Euros of Hollywood isn’t that kind of hard-drinking, rampant-shagging train wreck, but it does lend weight to a bunch of stereotypes and it quickly becomes a guilty pleasure.There’s something almost childlike – and very European – about the uninhibited oversharing of fashion designer Sascha. ‘‘I’m the German Tank,’’ he explains. ‘‘I’m very sexual. Forme, two or three-hour sex is normal.’’ Then there’s the sweetness of Italian actor Massimo, who will happily spend all day fussing over a hot stove preparing a banquet for a friend’s dinner party. And who will then spend the whole meal hovering over people’s shoulders in the hope that someone will want him to grate a little bit of cheese onto their plate. And then there’s a real Godzilla in the form of Albanian singer Bleona, who treats her family and everyone else like servants.
All these ‘‘Euros’’ – from Austrian pop star Fawni to Danish jewellery entrepreneur Jannik – seem to have had success in their chosen fields, but they all have their vulnerabilities and blind spots. Tonight Fawni falls to pieces upon learning that some people think it’s her and not Bleona who’s the loose cannon. The assiduous Massimo works on his terrible American accent and takes lessons in pretending to be punched and strangled.
The Affair, Showcase, 7.30pm
The fact that different people can remember the same events in dramatically different ways has rarely been as central to a TV series – or as strikingly portrayed – as it is in this Golden Globe-winning drama. The series, created by playwright Sarah Treem (House of Cards) and Hagai Levi (In Treatment), unfolds from the contradictory perspectives of schoolteacher and novelist Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and beach-town waitress Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson). Noah is a priapic family man who is still very much into his wife, Helen (Maura Tierney), but whose kids are a constant case of interruptus. Alison is a woman racked by a tragedy that has thrown her own marriage onto the rocks. Whatever is about to happen between them ends badly – flashes forward have them giving conflicting accounts of events to a detective, True Detective style. Like In Treatment it’s low key but absorbing, with fine performances from a terrific cast. It also reunites West and John Doman on screen for the first time since The Wire. Well worth a look.
Fast N’ Loud: Demolition Theatre, Discovery Turbo Max, 10.30pm
The guys and gal from the GasMonkey Garage chortle at viral videos of vehicle-related mishaps. One for the Funniest Home Videos crowd.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
The Watch (2012), Eleven, 9.30pm
Much of the pleasure in Ben Stiller’s comedy, honed by television sketches and followed through Zoolander (see Wednesday) and then Tropic Thunder even as he pursued a parallel career in comic children’s adventures such as the ongoing Night at the Museum franchise, had soured by the point he starred in this sci-fi in the suburbs stumble. A neighbourhood watch organisation made of misfits and belittled by the community stumble across an alien invasion plan in a film, directed by Akiva Schaffer and co-written by Seth Rogen, which takes all the pleasure out of Ghostbusters and replaces it with aggressive homophobia and jokes that suggest Stiller and co-star Vince Vaughn felt like they’d lost the attention of teenage boys and desperately needed to get it back. The racial implications of frustrated white men in Ohio who want to police their community are put aside for expensive digital effects and an obsession with the male genitalia.
Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Masterpiece Movies (pay TV), 6.45pm
Twenty years after announcing himself with the grit and gusto of My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, veteran English director Stephen Frears returned to the mean streets of London, where the underclass is no longer the social outcasts of the Thatcher era but the illegal immigrants required to silently service the machinery of Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia. Nominally a thriller about a pair of lowly hotel employees, Nigerian doctor Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Turkish seamstress Senay (Audrey Tautou), who find themselves caught up in an organ harvesting scheme being run out of their place of employ, the picture works best as a study of the survival instinct. In a life stripped of basic rights, they belong to an amorphous community that’s required yet not tolerated. Each day requires a decision on the value of dignity versus the need to endure and Ejiofor is outstanding, bringing a tortured watchfulness to each scene as the plot moves from suites to sweatshops.
Craig Mathieson