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Dancing With The Stars, Seven, 7.30pm
Once the button on the ejector seat was pushed on blow-in Bruno, this season of DWTS improved out of sight. The remaining three judges made a great team, and there was a terrific mix on the dance floor, including some real surprises. The elegant Samantha Harris never managed to shed her nerves, or her ‘‘blue steel’’ catwalk face. Meanwhile dorky Jude Bolton proved that sheer enthusiasm can get you a long way in a comp like this. Perhaps most impressive was paralympian Kelly Cartwright: not only could she really dance, there was never a whiff of condescension about her participation. She was a standout. We have no idea who’ll be dancing for their lives in tonight’s finale, but entertainment is guaranteed.
Melinda Houston
Humans, ABC2, 8.30pm
What makes this science fiction drama so compelling is that, for better or worse, it doesn’t seem so far removed from reality. Sure, we’re not likely to see synths (robotic humans) roaming the streets in the near future but in 10, 20 years’ time, who knows? This expensive-looking, impressively acted series imagines a scenario where the computerised hired help might turn out to be more human than first thought. So we have synths sleeping with humans and seizing weapons and turning on their host families. Humans is more than a cautionary futuristic tale though, and as we near the finale, the human element is heightened. Tonight, Laura (Katherine Parkinson) finally reveals her dark secret to daughter Mattie (Lucy Carless), Max (Ivanno Jeremiah) makes a dramatic sacrifice, and Leo (Colin Morgan) relays the story of his late father, who created ‘‘conscious’’ synths. Expect an action-packed fortnight ahead as the series comes to a close.
House Husbands, Nine, 8.40pm
In recent weeks, House Husbands has attracted half the audience it did during its debut season, and this episode is a fair indication of why. There are some excellent actors, among them Rhys Muldoon and Justine Clarke, but it’s all rather humdrum and neither very funny nor engaging. Gemma (Julia Morris) has her work cut out for her tonight – acting as mediator in Justin’s (Firass Dirani) custody battle while attempting to become a surrogate mum for Kane (Gyton Grantley), Alex (Darren McMullen) and Eve (Clarke).
Annabel Ross
PAY TV
Episodes, BBC First, 9.30pm
This criminally underappreciated comedy returns for a fourth season in typically fine form. At the end of last season screenwriters Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) were back home in Britain, happy to be done with obnoxious manchild Matt LeBlanc (Matt LeBlanc) and Pucks, the abominable American adaptation of their acclaimed British comedy. But now the network is exercising its right to make another six episodes of Pucks – just to stop LeBlanc going to NBC – so everyone is being thrown back together in a miserable, unexpected reunion. And then worse happens. Created by David Crane (Friends) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You), it crackles with dark wit and finely judged performances – LeBlanc’s not least among them. A must-see.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
The Rainmaker (1997) One, 10.30pm
In the third act of Francis Ford Coppola’s long, strange and intermittently brilliant career, which began after he gave in and committed to making The Godfather: Part III in 1990, there have been unexpected films, some close to baffling, but perhaps the least likely is this: a solid commercial thriller, adapted from a John Grisham novel, that offers juicy roles and courtroom confrontations. Coppola, who knows a thing or two about industries where corners are cut and retaining legal counsel, shows the law as a home of hypocrisies both funny and savage. Matt Damon, in an early leading role, plays Rudy Baylor, a law school graduate who, after a secondment with ambulance chasers (played by Mickey Rourke and Danny DeVito), takes up the cause of a dying leukaemia patient,whose family has been shortchanged by an insurance company. In a cleanly assembled drama, Rudy, with youthful conviction, takes on the establishment and helps a battered wife (Claire Danes) find safety.
The Queen of Versailles (2012) Netflix
At the beginning of Lauren Greenfield’s incisive documentary, David Siegel, a time-share holiday apartment mogul from Florida who built and rented out vast resorts, is asked why he is building a vast, 8000-square-metre mansion with 30 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a roller rink and a baseball field. ‘‘Because I could,’’ is the 74-year-old’s magnanimous reply, and thus work starts on the largest private residence in the United States. Soon after, the global financial crisis also begins, which is the end of debt-based financing for both Siegel and his thousands of clients, leaving his company on the brink of insolvency and his unfinished palace on the market for a mere $US75 million. Siegel and his wife, 43-year-old Jackie, along with their of children, have to downsize, and the scale is so vast that the psychological effect is magnified. The clan, with David retreating to his darkened study like a Watergate-era Richard Nixon, are a study in American excess and the belief in perception, but as much as there is great folly in their actions, Jacquie, despite her caviar-tasting extravagances, turns out tobe a character of genuine dimensions, trying to keep her family together even as dog droppings befoul their home because they no longer have the servants to clean up after them. The belief in the property market’s endless bounty even extends to their chauffeur, who had 19 mortgaged investment properties, before it all came crashing down.
Craig Mathieson