pay Storm Cats
Nat Geo Wild, 7.30pm
Nat Geo's annual Big Cat Week always brings some interesting insights. The four adolescent cheetahs in this documentary, filmed during Botswana's stormy wet season, provide a striking image of the imperfection of evolved instincts. When their mother decides they're old enough to fend for themselves she disappears across the plain – and the young ones find themselves in increasingly urgent need of a good meal. When they surround a helpless little antelope lamb it looks as though lunch is finally served. But then a strange thing happens – the lamb doesn't run, and without a chase to trigger their killer instinct it looks as though the cheetahs will just stand around awkwardly until the opportunity is lost. Elsewhere, a lioness forced to leave her pride to protect her cubs from bigger, bullying cousins finds the going tough when the rains run late. The animals might be familiar, but their stories are absorbing nonetheless. BN
![LL Cool J and Chris O Donnell star in NCIS: LA.](/web/20170130022346im_/http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/z/s/y/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtzt02.png/1485732258338.jpg)
Ice Wars
ABC, 8.30pm
If television is for you a source of relaxing escapism, Ice Wars is not for you. If you look to TV to inform you of the pressing crises threatening to bust open the growing cracks in our modern society, this documentary is every bit as harrowing as you'd hope. Crystal meth is taking a devastating toll on communities throughout Australia, and the doco follows the police and emergency services struggling to reduce that toll, as well as those with personal experience of the ice nightmare. It's a difficult, but valuable, glimpse into a hellish world. BP
NCIS: LA
Ten, 9.30pm
NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and the stable of television shows bearing the name is based on an extremely simple and seductive question: what if people who meant to watch CSI didn't look too hard at the name of the show in the guide? The original NCIS has capitalised massively on the abbreviation craze in crime shows, and this spin-off, now in its eighth season in the US – though we're more than a year behind here – has skilfully built on the original premise, which was "incredibly well-funded naval police somehow fail to ever get on a boat". NCIS: LA, exploring the possibilities of naval police failing to get on boats in Los Angeles, packs a decent amount of star power, with ex-Robin Chris O'Donnell starring alongside ageless rapper LL Cool J and Oscar-winning collectible figurine Linda Hunt as fearless crimebusters cracking the toughest of vaguely naval-related cases. Everything is incredibly high-tech and so glossy it's sometimes hard to tell whether the ad break has ended, but for those who like their crime shows fast-paced and dumb as a box of hair, NCIS: LA is one of the top three NCIS shows you could ask for. BP
pay Eagle Eye (2008)
Action Movies , 10.25pm
Most high-tech thrillers are preposterous – they allow audiences to forget the human qualities required for betrayal and corruption, which reside in all of us – but this effort by DJ Caruso (Taking Lives, xXx: Return of Xander Cage) is tightly assembled and well played by the two leads, Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. The pair play a grieving university student and a single mother who are both coerced into criminal activities by an all-seeing entity that digitally reaches out to them wherever they are. A network of operatives comprising solely compromised individuals, all unable to go against orders, makes for an uneasy milieu, and as the plot moves towards a finale in Washington DC, the swift storytelling occasionally pauses to indicate the emotional duress. There's a supporting cast that includes Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson and Anthony Mackie, and a relevant theme of defiance against unchecked control. CM