KEY POINTS:
7.30PM, TV3
TOP CHEF
Nothing like whipping up something tasty from a pile of leftovers. Although, in tonight's quickfire challenge, the chefs have to make something scrumptious with leftover animal parts, including chicken feet and lamb hearts. Pate perhaps?
7.30PM, TV ONE
CORONATION STREET
Molly and Tyrone
try to revive Diggory's business; Steve tries to look to a brighter future and Shelley is offered a new start.
8.30PM, TV3
INSIDE NEW ZEALAND: DYING FOR EVEREST
This documentary investigates what really happened on Everest this year when Kiwi mountaineers Mark Inglis and Mark Whetu found an incapacitated British climber near the summit? This mountain has a strange effect on human nature.
8.30PM, TV2
GREY'S ANATOMY
Nothing like a diverse line-up of patients to keep the ward interesting. Tonight there's a pro chess player, a flirtatious woman, and a couple who have a problem with their daughter's husband.
9.30PM, TV ONE
THE SOPRANOS
Vito starts to pine for his old lifestyle; Bobby Bacala suffers an eye injury while Janice confronts Tony about his treatment of her and Bobby. Meanwhile, Tony takes advantage of Johnny Sack's financial crunch.
10.30pm, TV2
STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP
As you'd expect from West Wing producer Aaron Sorkin, this series about a late-night sketch show features lots of behind-the-scenes action with characters hustling about swapping snappy dialogue.
In this show about a show, art imitates life with Mathew Perry (Friends) and Bradley Whitford playing a difficult but brilliant writer-director team - Matt and Danny - who were fired from the show years ago because of bust-ups with executives and one of them having a drug problem. Of course, Sorkin and his collaborator, director Tommy Schlamme, left The West Wing after Sorkin fought with network heads and battled a drug problem. And Perry, who is making an acting comeback after his pill-popping problems, plays someone with a Vicodin addiction. And just like the West Wing there are lots of in-jokes and barbs aimed at real-life people and institutions. Tonight, Matt and Danny are hired by new network president Jordan McDeere (Amanda Peet) to save Studio 60 after its executive producer (Judd Hirsch) is fired for interrupting a live broadcast to rant about reality shows featuring "worm eating" and "who wants to screw my sister?" - reality TV being another of Sorkin's bugbears. While this show has a top cast - including guest star Edward Asner - and clever writing, audiences in the States never took to it and it was canned after a season. One of the turnoff factors - apart from Sorkin using the show to get a few things off his chest - is the way the work of TV writers is romanticised. And while those walking and talking routines worked well in West Wing's corridors of power, there are only so many hallway scenes an audience can handle.
MOVIES
8.30PM, SKY MOVIES 1
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
Herald rating: * * *
Remake of the cult horror classic about a family on a trailer holiday, who are ambushed and besieged by cannibalistic mutant hillbillies. Succeeds in being extremely unsettling, until the black comedy of the drooling mutant leader kicks in. (2006)
8.30PM, SKY MOVIES 2
BEYOND THE SEA
Herald rating: * * * *
This is the story of Bobby Darin (Kevin Spacey) - pop singer, lounge singer, actor and later, folk singer. It's a musical fantasy with plenty of dream sequences where Darin talks to himself as a child, goes from rags to riches and awakens to find his social conscience. Darin always suffered from the perception of being a manufactured pop star, largely due to hits like Splish Splash and Dream Lover. His goal was not to be a teen idol, but a mainstream entertainer with a broad audience. Spacey gets that message across pretty fast, portraying Darin as a go-getter who firmly believed that his impoverished upbringing and poor health merely meant that he was destined for great things. The supporting cast includes John Goodman, Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn, Greta Scacchi - and Kate Bosworth plays Darin's wife, Sandra Dee. Spacey's performance is fantastic, his singing voice more than able to reconstruct Darin's impeccable delivery of songs like Mack The Knife and Beyond the Sea. (2004)
10.15PM, MGM SKY DIGITAL
MANHUNTER
Herald rating: * * *
Back in his Miami Vice days, Michael Mann adapted Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon, calling it Manhunter. (1986)
10.30PM, SKY MOVIES 2
INTERNAL AFFAIRS
Herald rating: * * *
Andy Garcia plays a cop working for the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police and investigating the activities of a cop (Richard Gere) whose finances suggest he's up to no good. (1990)