FREE TO AIR
Millionaire Matchmaker, 9Life, 7.30pm
Nine launches its new ‘‘lifestyle’’ channel today and Millionaire Matchmaker is part of its all-new(ish) line-up. Great news for fans of utterly trashy TV. This is the second series following Patti Stanger in her exclusive club that essentially hooks up rich dudes with pretty girls (‘‘No average Annies’’). For a fee of $25,000 to $100,000, Stanger will ‘‘tweak’’ love-seeking millionaires into desirable gentlemen, using ‘‘tough love’’, cocktail ‘‘mixers’’, life coaching and strict rules. Voyeurism (rich men’s cars, apartments, butlers) and Stanger are the stars here. The actual dates are dreary compared to Stanger’s one-liners, such as ‘‘When a man has a Corvette it’s like, ‘Hi, I have a vagina’.’’
The Chaser’s Media Circus, ABC, 8pm
The final in this second series of The Chasers’ news-as-game-show format, Media Circus will be their final pisstake of local and world events for the year, and while it’s been a heavy couple of weeks news-wise, it’s guaranteed Craig Reucassel and ‘‘fake fact checker’’ Chas Licciardello will find a way of generating laughs out of even the most grim current events, or at least in their dissection of the media’s coverage thereof.
Call Me Dad, ABC, 8.35pm
More programming from the ABC about domestic violence, but Call Me Dad takes the unusual step of examining the perpetrators of such violence: men. Specifically those who are fathers. The question at the heart of this film is ‘‘can a violent man change?’’ and we meet several who are taking steps to change their lives, atoning for their pasts and trying to ensure they’re different fathers for their kids in the future. The film focuses on a group taking part in a Men’s Behaviour Change program in Melbourne’s east. The Heavy M.E.T.A.L Group, facilitated by former perpetrator David Nugent, challenges men to take ownership of their abusive behaviour, showing them how to make different choices and break patterns of abuse – physical or emotional.Not all of the subjects we meet in this documentary have instant success with Nugent’s program and many were victims of parental abuse themselves, and at times it’s tough viewing. But Call Me Dad is ultimately a hopeful film about men genuinely seeking to be better men, partners and fathers.
Kylie Northover
PAY TV
When Turkeys Attack, Animal Planet, 8.30pm
Home-video footage, tongue-in-cheek narration and a horror-movie aesthetic make decent idle viewing for those who’ve just stuffed themselves at Thanksgiving dinner. Here, we see a procession of large and exceedingly ornery turkeys attacking practically anything that moves – including roosters, peacocks, snakes, mail trucks and Australians. Americans who work with turkeys in various capacities provide insights, along with their own eccentricities.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Tootsie (1982) Comedy Movies (pay TV), 4.30pm
Tootsie is one of director Sydney Pollack’s most popular movies, about a New York actor (Dustin Hoffman) who is down on his luck, in part because he has a gift for arguing with everyone in sight. One day, out of desperation, he attends an audition dressed as a woman and ... well you know the rest. In a film effortlessly directed by Pollack, Hoffman gives a genuine star turn, Bill Murray’s low-key delivery is never better and Pollack has a superb guest appearance as Michael’s agent, their scene in the Russian Tea Room a classic. This is comedy that never ages. So, please, don’t remake it.
Bad News Bears (2005) ONE, 9.30pm
Fame can sure fade fast, as it certainly did for Michael Ritchie. His first five films (from 1969 to ’76) were all critical and box-office successes: Downhill Racer, TheCandidate, Prime Cut, Smile and The Bad News Bears. Like compatriot Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc and PaperMoon, from 1968 to ’73), it seemed as if Ritchie could do no wrong ... and then almost overnight they were both forgotten. Bogdanovich left his wife for the much younger Cybill Shepherd and made Daisy Miller, so he was an easy target; but Ritchie just kept making quirky comedies with the lightest of touches and offended no one. Yet he too plunged from popular approval with barely a murmur, or even sufficient kind words when he died in 2001. And then fate has more in store for you: an uncalled for and vastly inferior remake of one of your classic movies. Ritchie’s original The Bad News Bears (1976) is the story of a washed-up and alcoholic former baseball player of no particular note, now washing swimming pools, who is corralled into coaching a kids’ baseball team made up of the worst players anyone can find. But the best-laid plans of gods and charlatans don’t always go to plan, especially when the script is by a complete unknown (Bill Lancaster) – which means there’s a chance it’s good and original – and a cast headed by a comic genius in Walter Matthau and one of the greatest child actors ever, Tatum O’Neal (from Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon). Theplot gave Ritchie the chance to satirise his favourite subject: American addiction to competitive behaviour. Richard Linklater’s remake (2005), which drops the ‘‘The’’, has Billy Bob Thornton in theMatthau part – yes, you guessed right, he’s not as good oras funny – while Sammi KaneKraft reminds us just just how great Tatum O’Neal was in the original.
Scott Murray
