pay Cooper's Treasure
Discovery, 10.30am
Christine Baranski (Tanya), Meryl Streep (Donna) and Julie Walters (Rosie) in Mamma Mia!Credit: Peter Mountain eMu
"It sounds crazy, but it's a treasure map from space," says American treasure hunter Darrell Miklos in this new documentary series. The map, he explains, was drawn by astronaut Gordon Cooper as he orbited the Earth in the months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, using top-secret technology to scour the globe for Soviet missile sites. Over the shallow waters of the Caribbean Cooper spotted and charted anomaly after anomaly – any one of which could be the wreck of a Spanish treasure ship whose contents could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today. But there's a small problem: the map is in the possession of Miklos' estranged and irascible father, Roger, who isn't inclined to hand it over. It's an intriguing set-up, though this first episode feels very stagey. Only the most resolutely romantic viewers will stick with it much longer.
Brad Newsome
movie Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales (1982)
7flix, 5.15pm
Bugs Bunny is an arrogant and manipulative monster who tortures poor Elmer Fudd for the sheer pleasure of it. He borders on the pathological, but we love him anyway – for his brilliance, acerbic wit, oily charm and a level of hutzpah that shames the Kardashians. Today's movie-length compilation, with newly animated links of Bugs and Daffy Duck to keep things rolling along, features many Merrie Melodies classics, including star turns from Sylvester, Tweety and Foghorn Leghorn. Sadly, though, many of the animated shorts have been abridged or altered. In Apes of Wrath, for instance, Bug's dramatically crucial "So, I'll be a monkey" becomes the idiotic "I'll sell books later", proving the politically correct were busily at work 35 years ago. So, watch 1001 Rabbit Tales and, if beguiled, locate the gems as Friz Freleng and others intended them. The Blu-rays are unaltered, stating that cultural values change and pretending otherwise is counterproductive.
Scott Murray
movie Mamma Mia! (2008)
SBS, 8.35pm
In the otherwise ebullient return of Gilmore Girls, one episode was devoted to Stars Hollow putting on a musical. It was excruciating and looked as if the show's creators were testing out the possibility of hitting Broadway with Gilmore Girls: The Musical. Please don't. The stage is littered with the carcasses of movies, shows and pop tunes turned into calamitous song and dance. The noble exception? Mamma Mia!. It takes 24 Abba songs, changes a few lyrics and adds the charming story of a young woman who invites three men (one of whom may be her father) to a Greek island wedding. Everybody has a favourite moment in Phyllida Lloyd's joyous, high-energy film. Mine are The Winner Takes It All, delivered by Meryl Streep as if her life depended on it, Pierce Brosnan's surprisingly touching When All is Said and Done and the boys (Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard) reliving their youth in Our Last Summer.
Scott Murray
Building Dream Homes
7Two, 11.15pm
It's not quite Grand Designs – the budgets aren't nearly as big and the designs a good sight less innovative, but there's some admirable work going on here nonetheless, executed by, we're told, some of Scotland's leading architects. Bobby Halliday is looking after the development of some bespoke homes in pastoral Stirling. It's a long way from where the recently married Brendan and Rosella met, in her native Indonesia, but she's clearly very taken with both her man and Bobby's handiwork. The closest the couple come to disaster is having to uproot the kitchen and start again when the bench is a few millimetres out. Liz and Bruce are harder to please – they've enlisted David Blaikie to renovate their Edinburgh townhouse, and Liz wants the kitchen done first. It's an unorthodox approach, but happy wife, happy life, and the finished product, complete with "floating" cabinets, is schmick. To the architects' credit, pernickety requests are taken on the chin, and if teeth are gritted, it's imperceptible.
Annabel Ross