The Code
ABC, 8.30pm
Look, I know TV internet access and real-life internet access are poles apart. But if someone can explain to me how Anthony LaPaglia can perfectly access the internet in remote West Papua and Malcolm Turnbull can't get the NBN hooked up in my street, I'm all ears. Ah, that's right: one's fantasy and the other is a well-written local drama returning for its second season. If you missed the first season, don't worry there are enough clues here for you to start fresh. Brothers Ned (Dan Spielman) and Jesse (Ashley Zukerman) are still in the sights of Australian National Security after Jesse hacked into the Parliament House computer systems. This time, however, the cops wants to use Jesse skills to help them crack a "dark net" site run by LaPaglia's Jan Roth from West Papua that's selling children to paedophiles. Enter Sigrid Thornton as a sassy tech guru working with the government and you have a very compelling first episode. Louise Rugendyke
Luke Nguyen's Street Food Asia
SBS, 8.30pm
Warning: Do not watch this while eating dinner. I realise that's not the best recommendation for a food show, but if you can stomach watching chef Luke Nguyen eat a stir-fried duck egg embryo dish, you're a stronger person than me. Admittedly, the dish comes at the end of this jolly show, with Nguyen an enthusiastic host talking a million miles an hour as he guides us through the street food of his family's home town of Saigon. As anyone who has travelled through Asia knows, the street food is where it's at. Cheap, cheerful and delicious (duck egg embryos notwithstanding, same goes for the crab and pig brain soup), street food is the perfect window into a city's heart and the Vietnamese are experts at it. There are no $20 organic burgers served from food trucks here, just small carts on wheels or shops that are little more than holes in the wall serving up noodle soup and banh mi for a buck. Delicious. Louise Rugendyke
pay Finding Bigfoot
Animal Planet, 8.30pm
The misleadingly titled Finding Bigfoot heads to Brazil so the guys can do what they do best: stumble around in the forest at night giving themselves goosebumps and signally failing to find anything resembling a sasquatch. But the legend of the mapinguari, as the Amazon Bigfoot is known, is fairly interesting. The most fanciful version is a one-eyed monster with backward-facing feet and a second mouth in its abdomen. More plausible notions are that it's a folk memory of extinct giant ground sloths, or perhaps a surviving relative of those animals. The Finding Bigfoot team is keen for it to be a tropical cousin of the good old North American "squatch". It's mildly interesting hearing rainforest locals describe their supposed encounters with the creature, but none is too convincing. The show's token sceptic, biologist Ranae Holland, does little more than erroneously refer to venomous snakes as "poisonous" snakes. Sad. Brad Newsome
movie Tehroun (2009)
SBS, 11.35pm
Though one can freely travel in Iran today (and could in the days before the Islamic overthrow of the Shah, as I did), much of what the West learns or is misinformed about that great nation comes via a largely hostile media and Iranian cinema. In the 1970s, that cinema was its golden days, with directors such as Sohrab Shahid-Saless (Still Life) producing masterpiece after masterpiece. Once the country settled into post-revolution life, it had a second wave, headed for many by Abbas Kiarostami. Now there is a third wave, less subtly questioning what has happened to Iran, for better or worse. Nader T. Homayoun's Tehroun shows a hell many would associate with Western and Asian decadence, a bleak and despairing underworld where babies are trafficked and life has no hope. Using the assumed cinema verite style beloved of Iranian filmmakers, this is a riveting, beautifully acted exploration of an underclass in alarming dysfunction. Scott Murray