The Odd Couple, Ten, 7.30pm

There’s a certain predictability about Matthew Perry’s acting. His eyes dart about, he leaps around as if he has ants in his underwear. It’s a manic energy he brings to The Odd Couple, a reboot of the Neil Simon play. The original TV version ran five years, with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall starring as  slob Oscar Madison and neat freak Felix Unger. It was a classic of its time, but nowhere near enough work has been done to give the Perry version a contemporary comedic flavour. Oscar (Perry) is a  sports writer with  dirty laundry issues and plays cards with his buddies. Felix (Thomas Lennon) is the  obsessive compulsive ex-college mate who arrives on Oscar’s doorstep after being dumped by his wife. There are references to Facebook and Twitter in case you’re confused about the era the show is set in; that’s as cutting-edge as it gets.

Parenthood, Seven, 10pm

Wouldn’t you just love to get at Craig T. Nelson with scissors. To trim his hair, obviously. This great series is drawing to a close and all our attention should be on whether his character, Zeek, is going to succumb to his heart condition and fall off his perch. But the hair remains a distraction.  Anyway, Channel Seven is giving us back-to-back episodes of the show that has proven divisive. For every fan who can’t get enough of the Braverman family, there’s another who  feels nauseous because it wallows in sentimentality. With only a few episodes to go, Parenthood’s writers are scrambling to tie up loose ends. Erika Christensen (Julia) and Sam Jaeger (Joel) are great as the characters grapple with the notion of reconciliation, but the powerhouse performances have been delivered by Peter Krause (Adam) and Monica Potter (Kristina) as parents  of a son who has Asperger’s syndrome.

Cucumber, SBS One, 11.55pm

It’s British, so you may  be thinking it’s a food show about sandwich fillings. Wrong. Cucumber is about modern gay life in Manchester and stars Vincent Franklin as middle-aged Henry, who is struggling to get on with life after breaking up with longterm partner Lance (Cyril Nri). Make no mistake, there is nothing pedestrian about this show from Russell T. Davies, the creative genius who gave us Queer as Folk and breathed new life into Doctor Who. There are some brave performances here, but some will find the sexual activity confronting.

Darren Devlyn

PAY TV

The Game, BBC First, 8.30pm

This BBC spy drama created by Toby Whithouse(Being Human) gets off to a decent start tonight. It’s 1972 and young spook Joe Lambe] (Tom Hughes) is on the outer at MI5, reduced to using his charm and good looks to bed the secretaries and forgotten wives of Eastern Bloc types. But he’s soon back in the main game, chasing the apple-peeling KGB villain who murdered his girlfriend in Poland. Joe’s small, motley crew includes a posh higher-up (Paul Ritter) who is dominated by his rather vicious mother (Judy Parfitt); a working-class cop (Shaun Dooley); and an enigmatic spymaster named Daddy (The Straits’ Brian Cox).

The Walking Dead, FX, 8.30pm

It looks as if both Rick and Coral – sorry, Carl – might have love sagas kicking off at the same time. If so, that’ll kick any potential Daryl gay saga down the road a ways. Tonight’s episode has a bit of the potboiler about it, but it ends with a surprise.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Blue Ruin (2013), SBS2, 9.55pm

‘‘I’m not used to talking this much,’’ says a man named Dwight (Macon Blair), sitting opposite someone who cares about him that he hasn’t seen in many years. This stripped-down drama, where violence is common but it would be a mistake to describe the result as an action film, is economical with dialogue, information and, ultimately, hope. An independent production from American writer/director Jeremy Saulnier, Blue Ruin calmly pieces together Dwight’s life, which is defined by a tragedy that he has fled, only to return from his homeless exile when the person responsible is released from prison. Revenge films are a staple of the action genre, but Saulnier distinguishes his by capturing the minutiae of Dwight’s actions and revealing his dread at having to resort to violence. Blair’s anti-hero, who has a bookish demeanour overladen with regret, has to steel himself to follow through on his plan, and his actions only result in further recrimination that threaten what remains of his family. The events, captured by a camera that maintains an interrogatory distance from the protagonist, unfold outside the law, and they show an America where violence is instinctual but dislocating and there’s no pulp humour as gun racks and crossbow wounds punctuate Dwight’s quest. ‘‘You point the gun, you shoot the gun,’’ he’s told by a former friend who gives him a weapon, and the film’s reductive logic – who’s left alive  who is a threat? – acquires a sad, necessary gravity.

Blue Velvet (1986), stan.com.au

This disturbingly focused and emotionally pungent independent film remains a high point of David Lynch’s singular career. Coming off the failed science-fiction extravaganza that was 1984’s Dune, Lynch produced the most unsettling coming of age story ever made, with college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returning home to his genial small town to help care for his father, who has suffered a stroke. Once he discovers a severed human ear while out walking, Jeffrey is plunged into Lumberton’s underbelly, with the locale’s shiny facade and picture-perfect streets revealing a sordid reality. Jeffrey is both proving himself as a man and experimenting with sin, as he’s torn between the innocent, virginal Sandy (Laura Dern) and the damaged, corrupted Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), who is the virtual prisoner of deranged criminal Frank Booth (a memorable Dennis Hopper). The touchstones of Lynch’s work are all here – evocative vintage pop songs, an obsession with intrusion, and multiple identities – but they’re compressed into an astoundingly resonant work.

Craig Mathieson