Balls Deep
SBS Viceland, 8.30pm
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.
In Balls Deep, Thomas Morton operates on the untested theory that people's lives are interesting. By experiencing the lifestyles of diverse groups of people, Morton hopes to gain some kind of insight into the human condition, which is pretty ambitious of him. But if you want to know a bit about life as a coyote-fighting anti-government rancher, or an old person in Florida, this is for you. Ben Pobjie
pay Boy to Man
BBC Knowledge, 8.30pm
Likeable Australian Tim Noonan is out to undergo the coming-of-age rituals of indigenous cultures in some of the wildest parts of the world. Tonight's instalment, in which he spends time with the reindeer-herding Nenets people of the Siberian Arctic, ends up being an uncommonly enjoyable example of a genre that has been pretty thoroughly trampled into the television tundra. Its success is partly down to how the open, engaging Noonan conveys a sense of the harshness of the environment and the toughness of the people without making it all about himself. Another part of it is his high-spirited Nenets host, who gets a kick out of subjecting Noonan to uncomfortable trials, and who cheerfully demonstrates his rope skills by lassoing an unsuspecting neighbour. Among many interesting insights is the fact that the Nenets regularly saw off their reindeers' antlers because they're in demand as aphrodisiacs in East Asia. Brad Newsome
The Weekly with Charlie Pickering
ABC, 8.40pm
What is the purpose of a show like The Weekly? This, of course, is a deeply unfair question. Other shows don't have to have their purpose questioned by their very nature: asking, "what is the purpose of Game of Thrones?" can be comfortably answered simply by saying, "To make people want to watch TV", and the fact that ultra-violence and gratuitous nudity makes GoT particularly good at this doesn't mean the answer would be any different if you asked it of, say, The Price is Right. But The Weekly is one of those shows that is always assumed to have a "higher" purpose: by quite deliberately seeking to carve out a place as the local version of The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight, Charlie Pickering's flagship is assumed to be trying to "do something" for society. In the US, numerous thinkpieces accused TDS and LWT of somehow failing to keep Trump out of office, as if it was ever a comedy show's job to do so in the first place. The truth, of course, is that at the very most, topical comedy can provide a little comfort to the infuriated, and help us point and laugh at how stupid the powerful are. For any comedy, being funny is always enough, and it's to be hoped Pickering and co. are as funny as we know they can be this year. Ben Pobjie
movie Roadgames (1981)
SBS Viceland, 11.20pm
Roadgames was the fourth feature of Australian director Richard Franklin, following The True Story of Eskimo Nell, Fantasm (made under the pseudonym Richard Bruce) and Patrick. For many, Patrick was the real start of Franklin's career, for it made abundantly clear that he was born to make thrillers. Franklin had studied in the US and spent time with his idol, Alfred Hitchcock, and later given the chance to make an sequel to Psycho. But it is Roadgames that showed how gifted Franklin was and it led to his moving to Los Angeles. It is a boldly conceived film that actually began as an homage to Hitchcock's Rear Window. It is about a truck driver (Stacey Keach), a pet dingo and a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who are stalked across the Nullabor by a psychotic killer (Grant Page). Elegantly crafted, it was directed by a man who studied and understood film craft in a way few other locals have.Scott Murray