TV with Dianne Butler

STAY tuned: Dianne Butler has carefully selected the best of what TV has to offer this week.

TV guide

STAY tuned: Dianne Butler has carefully selected the best of what TV has to offer this week.

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Tuesday, March 12
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NCIS
Channel 10, 8.30pm
Rating: 3/5

MAYBE their fraught relationship with their father is going to be the thing to bring Ziva and Tony together. Just not tonight. She's gone all revengey in the wake of his death, but first there's the guy from the Pentagon to placate, who didn't know Eli David was even in the US. Gibbs calms him, tells him they need to keep a lid on it if they want to prevent a war. David was the head of Mossad, you'll recall - quite the target. So everyone acts like he's still alive while they find out who was behind his murder (it's pretty obvious). Good luck keeping Mossad at bay.

THE WALKING DEAD
FX, Foxtel, 8.30pm (QLD 7.30pm)
Rating: 3.5/5

RICK may very well rue the day he turned his back on Tyreese. He was in the grip of his Dead Lori craze - key word, craze - but even still. And will Andrea regret not taking that knife to the governor? And is this show still about zombies? Rick's focus has definitely shifted on to killing the governor, whatever it takes. But when, Rick? When? He's got to get some supplies together first. Fire power and food.

GLEE
Eleven, 7.30pm
Rating: 3.5/5

LOVELY. A wedding. Even though the bride has crippling OCD and been recently smooched - unsolicited - by the best man. Mr Schuester knows none of this though when he waltzes in, giddy with the joie de vivre marrying Miss Pillsbury has brought. Nearby a suite of hotel rooms awaits the series of hook-ups that comes out of the lively reception. But by the end of the weekend, someone, unhappily, will be taking a pregnancy test.

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Wednesday, March 13
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MR & MRS MURDER
Channel 10, 8.30pm
Rating: 3.5/5

HORRIBLE to think someone could kill Mr Phenomenal 2013. What hope is there for the rest of us, if a drug-using body builder can't fight off a murderer? Of course, the real tragedy is he was on his way to becoming Mr Colossus, the pinnacle of shiny trophies. I shouldn't say that about the drugs. Nobody found a trace of anything. It's a shocking death and now Jonathan the promoter is worried Nicola and Charles won't be able to get the smell out. Awful really - Mr Phenomenal baked to death on a sunbed. It's a good thing they'll be illegal soon.

WILDEST ARCTIC
SBS One, 7.30pm
Rating: 4/5

THE stars of tonight's glorious first episode (narrated by Paul McGann) are polar bears. I don't know how they filmed the scenes of baby polar bear twins with their mother but they're amazing. They're in Svalbard, Norway, where there are more bears than people and more ice than the top half of your fridge that doesn't shut properly. But gee, tough to pick sides in a fight between a smart, affable beluga whale and our bear.

YOUNG & MARRIED
MTV, 9pm (QLD 8pm)
Rating: 3/5

I HAVEN'T decided - is this a sequel to Teen Moms or Engaged & Underage? Which they weren't, by the way. Underage. MTV will be hoping it's like Teen Moms in terms of ratings, not so much two of the cast going to jail. Hopefully there's less pressure on Young & Married. No kids, for a start. All they have are a whirlpool of heightened, unfettered emotions and each other, until the end of time. Or, you know, sooner.

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Thursday, March 14
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GOURMET FARMER
SBS One, 8pm
Rating: 3/5

NEXT in the series featuring former Fairfax journalists struggling to live off the land on minimal income: Matthew Evans. He's had an epiphany about his four hectares at Cygnet in Tasmania - it's sending him broke. So he's bought 28 hectares, 10 minutes away. He is sad (the pigs have moved there), yet happy (it has some great apples, a fishing hole he could fill with trout if only it didn't have an outlet, along with trees "we might be able to mill up into usable planks and build stuff"). Evans and his cheese mate, Nick, have also opened a shop, at some cost, in Hobart's Salamanca Market.

UP ALL NIGHT
Channel 7, 11.45pm
Rating: 3.5/5

REAGAN was offered $250 if she didn't marry Chris. On their wedding day. By his grandmother (Marion Ross from Happy Days). Nonetheless she lets her grandson use one of her huge diamond earrings to make Reagan's engagement ring, which Reagan loses in tonight's season finale. Chris also decides it's time he got Ava back with Kevin (Jason Lee), mainly because he's sick of fixing everything around her house.

GRAND DESIGNS UK
The Lifestyle Channel, 8.30pm (QLD 7.30pm)
Rating: 3/5

THIS is a house that has no real precedent, says Kevin. Doesn't he say this every time? Celia and Diana's house is being built using a series of cartridges clicked together right there on their land at Hertfordshire. There's not even a crane - one person can just pick up a box. You wait 'til you see it. Small point: the designer is so finicky he won't let them hang pictures on their walls.

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Friday, March 15
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WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY HOUSE?
ABC1, 8pm
Rating: 2.5/5

"WHAT is this curious old relic - I'd love to know how old it is," Adam Ford's saying, and I'm thinking "steady on dude, the woman's standing right there". He's in Roleystone, Perth, tonight, at a place owners Keith and Cherie think was a guest house during World War II. Local gossip has it a spy stayed there. Keith's doing his bit - he found an old tomahawk in the yard and a letter under the house. Now it's over to Adam the archaeologist, who I think, for show purposes, should drive something other than a late-model Toyota.

COWBOY BUILDERS
7TWO, 9.30pm
Rating: 3.5/5

TWO things you don't want: a half-built house in Wales with a roof you could drain pasta through and to be the builder who did it once Dominic Littlewood's on your scent. Dominic is the hunter part of this show, Sheree Murphy the fluffer. Julia, her mother, son and dog all live in this near-lethal shemozzle, abandoned three years ago by a shonky mother-son outfit. Dominic's so rabid tonight, he bails out another victim.

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
Channel 7, 7.30pm
Rating: 3/5

YOU thought sausages were bad. You do think sausages are bad, right? Look away tonight - Karen makes marshmallows. She calls them raspberry sherbet marshmallows but they've still got horses' hooves in them. They look like something you use to wipe down your sink. No offence. And are you excited to find out Colin Fassnidge's favourite recipe? Course you are. Maybe it'll be marshmallows.

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Saturday. March 16
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WILD THINGS WITH DOMINIC MONAGHAN
ABC2, 7.30pm

YOU know Dominic. Lost and Lord of the Rings. He's also got a thing for bugs and your less hospitable animals. So this isn't the usual vanity series, where a celebrity gets a cushy holiday. And good luck to him, because tonight's first episode is the army ant of Ecuador. Dominic's goal is to see how many bites he can put up with and how bad they are. This'll be a doddle after working in Hollywood. But this is the Amazon jungle, so if it's problems he's after snakes, spiders, centipedes this is the place. Although that ant nest is pretty big: four million of them.

MAGIC BEYOND WORDS: THE JK ROWLING STORY
Universal, Foxtel, 8.30pm (QLD 7.30pm)
Rating: 2/5

MAGIC all right. And there they are cruelly setting us up for the grit of an unauthorised biography. On the other hand, JK Rowling sues a lot. Yes, I'm afraid this is pretty dreadful. But also hilarious, such as when Harry Potter appears to her when she's sitting on a train. But make allowances - she's a genius. Rowling is played by Poppy Montgomery, so lucky old JK. In one way.

PRISONERS OF WAR
SBS One, 8.30pm
Rating: 4/5

NIMROD'S quit his job. It was in advertising, so it was only a matter of time. He hasn't told his wife yet, and she still thinks all they need is a cathartic chat with a support group. Their daughter, meanwhile, is trying another approach in her seduction of her therapist. Yael's still seeing Ilan, but he's keeping something from her. Hmm. How is anyone expected to watch Homeland after this?

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Sunday, March 17
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THE BIGGEST LOSER
Channel 10, 6.45pm
Rating: 3.5/5

PEOPLE might be preparing to get a bit worked up over this season, thinking it's going to have children. And it does, only the children are, like, 23. And at 15, the youngest is able to say he's being bullied and who's going to want to stop him from taking charge of his life? Not me. And not you either, probably. It's maybe too early to say this, but there doesn't appear to be anyone to actively dislike. Can this be? A burst of emotional carry-on at the start sets up the dramatic leap into it, followed by the weigh-in. Uh oh. Fun's over.

DOWNTON ABBEY
Channel 7, 8.40pm
Rating: 3/5

SO her sister died tragically last week and there's the maid bleating in Lady Mary's ear about how her husband the convicted murderer's still in jail. Who does she think she works for - Oprah? If only grieving Tom the reformed chauffeur enjoyed the same liberty. But he's - I ... I don't even know if I can say this out loud - a Catholic, so that'll never happen. In a further shock, Ethel, no longer a prostitute, produces a charlotte russe.

THE UNLIKELY LEOPARD
Nat Geo Wild, 7.30pm (QLD 6.30pm)
Rating: 4.5/5

THE perfect cat. And Jeremy Irons, the perfect narrator. This film shot in Botswana where leopards are protected follows one cat's fraught passage from clumsy baby into adulthood. A coddled mama's boy who can't even stay in a tree without falling out, he's hardwired, as Irons puts it, to be adorable. It's an incredible documentary, with some very ugly statistics about the slaughter of these beautiful cats.

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Monday, March 18
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REVENGE
Channel 7, 8.45pm
Rating: 4/5

JENNIFER Jason Leigh hasn't been this nutty since Single White Female. I'm also reminded just how twisted a killer Roger Bart was when he played George the over-prescribing pharmacist on Desperate Housewives, and now, suddenly, he is a real danger as writer Mason Treadwell, with his whiteboard and his red bits of string. Yes, Emily has all sorts of problems. Quite apart from her part half boyfriend/half accomplice/half lethal enemy Aidan. Mason's the one to watch, though. He and Emily have a lot of fun tonight, until it stops. And we need to be concerned about Nolan. He seems to be off his game.

PRIVATE PRACTICE
Channel 7, 10.45pm
Rating: 3/5

VIOLET, the therapist, is in therapy because of her husband, Pete, dying. Those five stages of grief? She's found more. Sheldon, also a shrink, thinks maybe she shouldn't be back at work. With reason. Also in need of professional help is Addison, who's all messed up because of Pete and because her ex-husband, Derek Shepherd, pulled the plug on Mark Sloan, the guy she left him for over on Grey's Anatomy.

READY STEADY COOK
Channel 10, 2pm
Rating: 3/5

NOW this is a cooking show. Scoff if you want, but four dishes out of five ingredients? In 20 minutes? And that eagle-eyed audience sitting there, with their combined cooking experience totalling upwards of 6000 years? Explains why only gun chefs go on this show. Today: Monty Koludrovic (chef at Becasse) and Jacqui Gowan (The Burlington). Their apprentices are Natarsha Belling and Angela Bishop.