MasterChef, The Shadow Line, Five Days and Two on the Great Divide among week's top TV

MASTERCHEF returns, The Shadow Line's finale shocks, Five Days intrigues and Tim Flannery talks catastrophe in the week's best TV.

The Shadow Line

DIANNE Butler reviews the TV week ahead including Missing, Five Days and New Tricks.

WEDNESDAY

LAID

ABC1, 9pm

Two and a half stars

IT'S like a 14-year-old boy wrote this. The title, the theme song (please, the theme song) and of course the Benny Hill premise.

Doing their best to save it are these stoic actors and their brave performances. Roo (Alison Bell), watching the men around her die post-coitally. Her practical friend E.J.

Her self-absorbed parents. Her gynaecologist G-Bomb (Shaun Micallef), with his speech about a 20 cent piece. A "healing" stranger named Marcus the Queen.

PRIVATE CHEFS OF BEVERLY HILLS

Lifestyle

You, Foxtel/ Austar, 7.30pm

Three and a half stars

THEY'RE chefs who cater for functions, so it's the jobs they have to do that make this show. Such as Hannah's 17th birthday party. Hannah wants a circus. Literally. Whatever you want, Hannah. Just don't look too closely at the cake. Also tonight: a Ducati launch and a "Hollywood" soul food dinner. (The guy's aunty, unconvinced, brings her own fried chicken.)

WILD LIFE AT THE ZOO,

ABC1, 8pm

Three and a half stars

IT'S not like Hunter's inexperienced (nine kids from who knows how many encounters), but he hasn't met any of those fast LA koalas yet. They could eat him alive. Too late now, his crate's packed.

Relationship problems for Jumilah, too, every time she goes to have sex with Satu. He's just not that into her. Do it for your species, dude! Nothing more adorable than a Sumatran tiger kitten.

THURSDAY

celebrity apprentice

THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE AUSTRALIA

Channel 9, 8pm

Three stars

I LOVE Caitlin as the fake secretary at the fake reception area outside Mark "Mr" Bouris's fake boardroom. What's she typing there?

Nothing? A combative episode tonight, due to people repeatedly referring to Aker as a maverick. Didn't he play an elite-level team sport for years?

They're all on a cruise ship tonight, but sadly it's less Poseidon Adventure and more SS Minnow. No shipwreck though. Or none that goes to air. Nathan and Dicko are running the teams, and Dicko has ideas of iron fist: "The best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship," he says.

HOW TO COOK LIKE HESTON

SBS One, 8pm

Three stars

HOW many times have you looked into the eye of a potato and just been completely bewildered? OK, none. But Heston doesn't know that.

He thinks all chips are flaccid and need to be cooked not once, not twice, but thrice so that they end up looking like hideous battered logs. I'm sorry but they do. His mash, however, looks heart-attacky but scrumptious. Don't bother with the potato doughnuts.

SILK

ABC1, 8.30pm

Three stars

MARTHA and Clive (Rupert Penry-Jones) are barristers trying to become QC. He's a horrid toff, she's not. Their chambers are young, scrappy and run by a passionate clerk named Billy.

Martha gets two cases tonight, a young pregnant drug mule, and a repeat offender up for assaulting an 85-year-old war hero. The emotion is laid on thick, and everyone's a clich aac, but it's an absorbing BBC melodrama.

FRIDAY

The Shadow Line

THE SHADOW LINE,

ABC1, 9.30pm

Four stars

A SUITABLY shocking ending to a series that hasn't relented from the start. I haven't seen a drama from the UK like this since I don't know when.

Tonight it all comes together and at the same time falls horribly apart. At the centre of it is that briefcase full of money in Gabriel's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wardrobe, which we now know was marked by the police for use by police.

But to what end? And how is it connected to the drug deal orchestrated by Bede the florist, and due to close tonight? Plenty could go wrong yet. And does.

THE REAL HUSTLE

ABC2, 9.30pm

Two stars

THIS would be just like Charlie's Angels, the exciting dress-ups movie, if two of the Angels were blokes. This isn't fiction though. No. It's an important public service.

There's a disclaimer at the start, and I also believe it: "All the people on this show have been hustled for real and after being given their money back agreed that the footage could be shown so you can avoid being ripped off by the same scams."

THE CLONE WARS,

ABC3, 7pm

Three stars

NOT in the same league as the Family Guy Star Wars, um, "tribute", but still fun for whatever age group this is aimed at (boys-men aged 12 to 40?).

Two tribes - one nice, one less nice - trying to live adjacently, the king's been murdered, the prince is in charge, things aren't travelling that well because who the hell does Princey think he is? Princess someone's just arrived to keep everyone calm. They all look like the lobster from Futurama.

SATURDAY

new tricks

NEW TRICKS

ABC1, 7.30pm

Three stars

DEFINITION of depression: Paul McGann on an episode of New Tricks. He's playing the head of the Art and Antiques Squad, and some old boyfriend of Sandra (Amanda Redman).

Still pining, as it happens. She isn't. He hands her a glass of wine and the case of Mal Baxter, antiques dealer and police informant bludgeoned to death 17 years ago for, some say, being a snitch. Others put it down to avarice or a bent copper. Once again a blunt instrument did the business.

FIVE DAYS

ABC1, 9.20pm

Four stars

LAURIE'S mother is telling everyone the police are getting nowhere with their train death investigation. But she is also putting the teapot in the fridge. The re-enactment for the media seems pointless and meanwhile, the train driver continues to unravel.

And the boys who saw it? Ross's dad was raided by the cops and Ross is off the rails. His mate Luke is going unwillingly with him.

REAL DEAL

A&E, 8.30pm

Three stars

JUST remember when you're sitting in front of the dealer and you're after big money for your 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II, the first person to speak always loses.

Chip, a dealer - and, it has to be said, wheeler - from North Carolina, hands out this piece of advice for free. Not everyone follows it. Because when there's, say, a home electro-therapy device on the block, the head isn't going to always rule.

SUNDAY

Dancing with the Stars

DANCING WITH THE STARS

Channel 7, 6.30pm

Three stars

JESSICA Watson really needs a dance floor that lists. It's not fair to just have a flat surface here that doesn't move from side to side. Or from starboard to port, if Jessica's reading. Maybe this is the year to change the dance routines.

Everyone's seen these already. The fact that contestants - and the short-priced favourite - have started falling over, it's maybe time to do something different. Unless Kerri-Anne deliberately fell over ... it's not unheard of. Dark horse: Brendan Fevola. Clearly the judges know nothing of him. If only they were actual, legal judges who wear wigs.

TOUCH

Channel 10, 8.30pm

Three stars

JAKE begins the episode with a glowing inner monologue, as he doesn't do outer, about fire ants. There goes the Brisbane audience. He's escaped his state-run facility. Again.

How long before they sedate him? Martin (Kiefer Sutherland, above) wonders what might happen if he ignores all the numbers Jake pulls out of nowhere. Bad things, is Mr Teller's (Danny Glover) response. Then Martin meets the Invisible Prince.

TWO ON THE GREAT DIVIDE

ABC1, 7.30pm

Three and a half stars

IF we're talking catastrophe, the Gold Coast is the nightmare scenario, Tim Flannery says.

He and John Doyle are almost done. From one end of Queensland, they end at Mt Cornwallis, way, way north. In between: old animals in the Mary River, very old fossils on the Darling Downs and Richmond (technically west of the Divide - it's alive with death, Doyle says) and Megan Baker's farm versus Arrow Energy.

MONDAY

Larry Emdur

THE PRICE IS RIGHT

Channel 7, 5pm

Two and a half stars

IF The Price is Right isn't a show for the Global Financial Crisis generation, hankering for white goods but reluctant to enter into 15-year, interest-free agreements, I don't know what is.

Larry Emdur, of course, could do this blindfolded. His verve and wit are unmatched on television. He's a delicious bowl of Chum, and the studio audience a docile labrador. Seven's only issue now is how tawdry Deal or No Deal with its Gordon Gecko Wall Street overtones is going to look.

THE BLOCK

Channel 9, 7pm

Three stars

BARELY anything to do this week. A spare bedroom and what real estate agents refer to as a powder room. I thought several contestants were going to have to be hospitalised trying to finish last night's bedroom and ensuite, so they needed the break. This is why they only cast kids on The Block.

No way would anyone else be staying up beyond 9.30pm painting.

MASTERCHEF

Channel 10, 7pm

Three and a half stars

THEY'RE not mucking about here and what a relief - I don't think any of us wants 50 duds hanging around for longer than ... well, what amount of time is too long?

A night? Dud may have been a bit harsh just then, but they'll be gone by the time you get to the end of this sentence, courtesy of the terrifying Mystery Box round. More daunting than any domestic pantry you've ever seen.

TUESDAY

missing

MISSING

Channel 7, 9.30pm

Three stars

WHOEVER Michael's kidnappers are, they've put him in a very nice room. The architecture says to him mid-European baroque with Gothic influences. And certainly the bad guys have the traditional hard-to-define accents and long hair. And money.

They're selling a boat tonight and bidding starts at 25 million euros. Becca (Ashley Judd), Michael's mother/somewhat retired CIA operative, goes along for a look and to bash some guys.

But her sassy friend Mary turns up in Italy unannounced and queers things. She's English, has four Mexican restaurants in London, but speaks Spanish and knows the food. She starts with pork "scratchings" - almost the same as crackling - which is big in Britain. And she consults the experts - men with moustaches.

PACKED TO THE RAFTERS

Channel 7, 8.30pm

Three stars

IS there some sort of Electra thing going on here with Julie and Ted now Donna is in the picture? Hideous thought but there always have been a lot of psycho-sexual issues at play on this show.

The dinner party tonight, where Ted has Donna over, is quite a scene. Let's change the subject. Do you think they would get Retta pregnant? So soon? Or maybe it really is just a bad pizza.

MEXICAN FOOD MADE SIMPLE

Lifestyle Food, 9pm

Three and a half stars

THE name's right, it's simple food. (Tonight, it's guacamole, chilli, raspberry and tequila nieve). But there are also a lot of extras from host Thomasina Miers.

She's English, has four Mexican restaurants in London, but speaks Spanish and knows the food. She starts with pork "scratchings" - almost the same as crackling - which is big in Britain. And she consults the experts - men with moustaches.