FREE TO AIR
AFL Grand Final, Seven, from 9am
When two tribes go to war in Melbourne in the last week of September, the nation doesn't exactly stop, but much of it does slow down considerably. At the time of writing, we don't know which teams will slug it out, but we do know that Seven's coverage will start early and go late. It will featuring colour and movement, reminiscences of past glories, countless tears for the losers and boundless joy for the winners. For lovers of our home-grown game, it's the day we live for. For everyone else, there's always a garden to weed, a dog to walk or fingernails to trim.
Bondi Vet, Ten, 6.30pm
Tonight Dr Lisa deals with a young bulldog bitch with severe breathing problems. The solution: an operation to remove part of her soft palate and a spot of rhinoplasty to open the airways. Having been there and had that done, I feel for the poor thing.
If You Are The One, SBS Two, 7.30pm
Chinese dating show If You Are the One trades in brutal honesty, public humiliation and the genuine desire to find love. It's an oddly addictive mix, delivered on a grand scale with a particular kind of Sino pop-culture sensibility. Each show starts with 24 eligible young women marching on stage in a visual cacophony of short skirts, glittery dresses, cowboy boots, hats and heels, stockings, leather and lace. The would-be male suitor is introduced by bald and bespectacled host Meng Fei. Affable and adored by all, Meng looks like a Shaolin monk moonlighting as a librarian. To this point, it looks like the classic sexist dating show set-up: the prize bull has his pick of the ladies and let's watch them scratch and claw to win his affection. Except that's not the set-up at all. Thanks to China's one-child policy and the gender imbalance that has created, women have their pick of the gene pool. After a brief quizzing, some videos about the male hopeful and (often) a song written for the occasion, the women offer their opinion. They are not kind. "He's too skinny." "He doesn't have a commercial mind." "You are too full of yourself." If rejected – the most common result – the man slinks away, dragging his dreams of romance behind. If he scores a date, he gets a trip to the Aegean Sea and a gift package of digital gadgets. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need? Nup. In China, supply and demand rule, even in romance.
Gordon Farrer
PAY TV
Hungry Brothers, TLC, 8.30pm
Note to aspiring TV chefs: when you find yourself eating raccoon stew on camera you really must make an effort to explain what it tastes like. You see, we viewers are going to have to spend hours watching you tell us stuff we already know, so when you leave us out of the loop about the one thing we'll never taste, we want to throttle you. Anyway, Hungry Brothers' titular siblings are cheerful Brits Tom and Henry Herbert, the duo formerly known as the Fabulous Baker Brothers. Rebranded and dispatched across the Atlantic, they're sampling US food and devising dishes for Americans. Tonight Tom (the baker) and Henry (the butcher) are in Kentucky, where they try that raccoon stew and various bourbon-flavoured foods. Their own creations include a bourbon-flavoured bread-and-butter pudding. Eminently missable.
Killer Karaoke, Comedy, 9.30pm
Killer Karaoke isn't the same without Jackass' Steve-O. He was the perfect totem for the goofy masochism of the contestants, and he was a hoot when he took part in their ordeals. Sadly, his replacement, singer Mark McGrath, has the personality of a microphone stand. But it's still fun watching people try to sing while being zapped with electricity, or while trying to navigate a cactus maze in a balloon suit.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Full Metal Jacket (1987), SBS One, 8.30pm
For decades, Stanley Kubrick was accorded revered status in recognition of the great films he had made during a half-century-long career. The sad truth, though, was that the final films were a little less wonderful. The diminishment is partly traceable to Kubrick's fear of flying, which intensified his penchant for shooting films in inappropriate locations: the English countryside masquerading as Vietnam in tonight's Full Metal Jacket, and London as New York in Eyes Wide Shut. There was also the crippling angst he had experienced over the copycat violence inspired by A Clockwork Orange, leading to his withdrawing the film from circulation. Already a shy and wary man, Kubrick retreated further into himself. Based on the novel The Short-Timers by former marine Gustav Hasford, Full Metal Jacket promised to be a defining view of the Vietnam War, perhaps surpassing even Apocalypse Now (which, truth be told, is a magnificent mess, with only moments of narrative clarity and insight). Full Metal Jacket has two distinct halves. The first is set in a South Carolina training camp where a foul-mouthed senior drill instructor (R. Lee Ermey) brainwashes his charges into Army-sanctioned killers. The obsessively excremental language dazzled and shocked at the time, but as a profane Beat-poet riff it quickly palls. The second half moves to Vietnam, and to the lengthy and bloody Battle of Hue. It is here that Kubrick the master stylist comes to the fore. However, it is ultimately let down by the fact most of it was shot at London's Beckton gas works. It feels as if the Viet Cong has invaded Britain. Still, as the light fades to the golden glow of a torched Hue, the film does conjure a powerful and haunting sense of waste.
Mission: Impossible II (2000), Ten, 9.15pm
John Woo's sequel to Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible (Friday) abandons all the lessons previously learnt for an overwrought, comic-book approach. Woo prefers candyfloss to gravitas.
Scott Murray
