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Party Tricks, Ten, 8.30pm
Asher Keddie and the producers of this new drama will be hoping that viewers put some distance between this and the recently wrapped Offspring, where Keddie played flighty obstetrician Nina Proudman. Stern and principled politician Kate Ballard is a marked departure from Nina, even if the show's opening gambit - a stand-off with political foe David McLeod (Rodger Corser) which is reminiscent of a screwball comedy - suggests that it's dispatching her on a similar romantic rollercoaster. However, Party Tricks has different ambitions. Years after that first meet-cute with McLeod and now state premier, Ballard finds her motherless status under attack when the blokey McLeod, who is widowed with a feisty 16-year-old daughter, opposes her in a state election. With nods at recognisable politicians and zeitgeist debates, the opening episode deftly sets itself up as a sharp parody of populism and political manners. Meanwhile, there's an unravelling mystery surrounding Ballard and McLeod's shared history.
The Island with Bear Grylls, SBS One, 8.30pm
Trumped-up as this reality-adventure show is - a handful of men are stranded on an isolated Pacific island to survive on their own resources - it's impossible to not get sucked in. Ostensibly the lads are entirely on their own (three have been trained to operate cameras), surrounded by crocodiles and creepy crawlies, and have only one day's supply of water. The premise is to determine if "British men have lost the practical skills that were once passed down from father to son", which is a load of tosh; what we're really here for is to see a 70-year-old former copper break down as hunger sets in. From the sidelines Grylls offers helpful commentary about the imminent threat of dehydration and sunstroke.
Homeland, Ten, 9.30pm
The riveting spy thriller returns for its fourth season with aplomb and renewed vigour, the new storyline centring on the brilliant, tormented and medicated Carrie (Claire Danes) left to clean up a botched mission that will have grave repercussions. While key characters have been ditched for the post-Brody Homeland era, new ones emerge and "old faves" - Mandy Patinkin's Saul, Rupert Friend's Peter Quinn, F. Murray Abraham's Dar Adal - remind us of the show's brilliant origins. And promising future.
Paul Kalina
PAY TV
Life in the War, History, 8.30pm
This series about life in Britain during World War II is made by one of those outfits that turns government film archives into documentaries with scant regard for the fads and fashions of modern television. So what you get is a slightly old-fashioned production that's light on froth but full of fascinating images and context. Tonight's episode looks at the years leading up to the war - in particular the British government's less-than-stellar efforts in establishing volunteer civil defence institutions and in impressing upon Londoners the seriousness of the impending danger.
Bloody Tales of Europe, History, 9.30pm
Here's another product of the wrong-headed notion that no settled fact can ever be half as interesting as any mystery. Each of the historical events in this series has been chosen primarily because there is uncertainty about what happened. Was Attila the Hun killed by Roman agents, by his wife, or by a nosebleed he got while drunk? Was Juan Borgia killed by the Orsinis, or by his brother Cesare? Did Richard III murder the nephews he imprisoned in the Tower of London, or did one of them survive to spend decades toiling as an anonymous bricklayer? We will probably never know. Nor can we form an educated opinion in the 15 minutes or so spent on each story.
MOVIES
Pale Rider (1985), Gem, 9.30pm
As a signing off after destroying the camp of a group of settlers hoping to mine gold, a group of thugs working for a gold baron shoot the dog of a 14-year-old girl, Megan (Sydney Penny), and when she buries the animal in the 1880s' Californian wilderness she prays aloud for a miracle to bring salvation. Soon after a stranger rides into town, ghostly calm and coming to the aid of the vulnerable community with decisive violence. Add the clerical collar he takes to wearing and the scars from six bullet holes in his back, and Clint Eastwood's western is really a religious allegory, with his character "Preacher" as a spectral instrument, who is remembered by other characters as being someone who once died. But Eastwood never overplays this angle, and by allowing it to soak through the frontier violence until his final confrontation with the thugs and a crooked marshal hired to kill him takes place, the lean masculinity of the genre attains an otherworldly resonance.
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), TCM (pay TV), 10.35pm
Timely in its depiction of how xenophobia and fear can metastasise into violence, John Sturges' tense mystery, a film noir amid the setting of a western so that the usual shadows are banished by the sun, begins with the arrival of a stranger in a tiny settlement looking for a man no one wants to acknowledge. John J Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) is a one-armed World War II veteran, whose life was saved by the late son of the Japanese-American man he's looking for. What he discovers are ruins, both physical and mental, as the outlines of the conspiracy to kill the farmer are revealed in bitter, guilt-plagued conversations with the locals, who all bow down - including the hapless sheriff - to a local heavy, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), and his offsiders, played by Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. Literally trapped amid threats and craven collaborators, Macreedy is revitalised, fighting to stay alive in a film with a harsh moral vision.
Craig Mathieson