The Fall, SBS, 8.30pm

Here we go again, season two of the gripping series wrongly described as a ‘‘cat and mouse thriller’’ with detective superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) tracking serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan). Why wrongly? Because that implies one of these is a hunter and the other the prey. Make no mistake, this is two hunters, circling each other looking for a weakness that will see them win the lethal game they’ve been playing. This double ep kicks off with the stalemate of last year still hanging and Stella facing three problems: Spector has apparently stopped killing; the only victim to have survived his attacks can’t remember a thing and the investigation’s about to be closed down. But there’s hope. Paul’s cover story of an affair is unravelling and an unlikely ally may prove vital.

Gogglebox, Ten, 8.30pm

This season the Goggleboxers are undoubtedly more self-aware and some of the lines sound rehearsed, but who cares? This is still the funniest show by a country mile. For example: The night animal advocates Angie and Yvie were playing foster parents to yet another homeless dog, this time one with a serious and persistent cough. Yvie turns and casually says they should call the dog Julian Assange. You know, because he’s a hacker. I will admit to laughing tea out my nose at this point, even if the line came to her long before and was held in reserve.

Car Crash TV, Seven, 9.30pm

Hang on, isn’t The Verdict on Nine??? Boom tish! No this is the other kind of car crash TV, where cars actually crash. After extensive research (looking at YouTube’s most-viewed lists) Seven has realised that after cats, what people like to watch most is clips shot from dash cams showing the myriad ways people mess up when they get behind the wheel. It is, as Chris Barrie, British actor and comedian once best known as Rimmer in Red Dwarf and now clearly in need of better management if doing voice-overs for this kind of thing is all he can get, says in his cheery intro: ‘‘A treasure trove of stupidity!’’. If this is your thing, settle back, I gave up counting how many cars, buses, trams, trucks, motorbikes and pedestrians were totaled in this, but it would have to be close to 100. And nobody, Barrie insists, was seriously hurt. Sure. 
Scott Ellis

PAY TV

Robson Green’s Australian Adventure, Discovery, 8.30pm

This is no armchair tour – at least not for Robson Green. Tonight the British actor has a bruising time of it while helping to catch crocs in Darwin and round up ornery wild  camels in the desert.  At least a visit with actor Tom Lewis and the Jawoyn people of Arnhem Land proves restorative.

MOVIES

Reversal of Fortune (1990) Masterpiece Movies (pay TV), 8.35pm

‘‘This was my body,’’ observes the heiress Sunny von Bulow (Glenn Close), a coolly detached narrator commenting on her still life from the other side of a coma. It’s a gambit typical of Barbet Schroeder’s subtle, piercing biographical drama, which turns stories and sympathies inside out as Sunny’s aristocratic husband, Claus (Jeremy Irons), appeals his conviction against attempting to murder her with an insulin overdose in 1980. Set amid a marriage of American wealth and European manners, the film refuses to supply definitive answers, instead crossing back and forth across key moments as motivations are queried and qualified. Even Claus’ appeal lawyer, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) doesn’t want to know the truth – it limits his options in defending a client who needs to repair both legal and public opinion. Flaring his cufflinks and giving his crisp enunciation a devilish edge, Claus swears to his innocence but revels in the attention; he horrifies Dershowitz’s team with self-mocking jokes. Flashbacks show the state of the couple’s marriage, which took in her unravelling despair and his mistress, and Schroeder (Barfly, Kiss of Death) has a sharp eye for the rituals and proclivities of the wealthy: ‘‘Be a man,’’ Sunny yells at Claus, ‘‘I already have a butler.’’ Mordant humour keeps the tone above a simple mystery, as narratives are made and remade as a supporting cast of unlikely figures enter the case’s orbit. The real Sunny von Bulow passed away in 2008, having never woken, and Reversal of Fortune extends her life instead of merely explaining it.

Shaft (2000) One, 9.30pm

A 1971 B-movie directed by Gordon Parks, the original Shaft had a pulpy pleasure to the dialogue, the realism of the milieu above 110th Street and the underlying notion that all the major black characters – be they political activists, drug cartels or the private eye at the centre of it all – were fighting each other at the behest of the white establishment. The remake from John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood)  comes from a different era, when the idea of a black hero no longer intrigued white America (every suburban hip-hop fan already dreamed of being Jay-Z) and it made do with the prodigious attitude of Samuel L Jackson, who Singleton had to cast after he couldn’t convince the money men to take his first choice, Don Cheadle. But there’s no carnal pleasure in Jackson’s performance, just righteous fury signified by that booming voice.
Craig Mathieson