The Secret Daughter
Seven, 8.30pm
Likeability is everything for the new batch of Australian dramas: Doctor Doctor turns on the roguish impudence of Rodger Corser, Jessica Marais bounces through comic mishaps on The Wrong Girl, and now The Secret Daughter is built around the knockabout charm of Jessica Mauboy. The successful Indigenous singer and actress (The Sapphires) plays Billy Carter, who seemingly spends most of her days in an outback NSW town sorting the latest scrape of her dodgy dad (David Field). When Billy meets an ailing hotel magnate (Colin Friels) they bond, and subsequent circumstance has her reluctantly pretending to be the man's long-lost daughter and heading to Sydney to meet his family. Shenanigans shouldn't really extend to impersonation, but Mauboy really is likeable, and the first episode, capably directed by Leah Purcell, keeps her singing to reinforce that. It's a pleasing start, with echoes of Ugly Betty, but the show's success depends on what transpires with her entitled hosts. Craig Mathieson
movie Heat (1995)
One, 8.30pm
Showing Los Angeles from unexpected angles – in a city of freeways it begins with a character arriving by train – Michael Mann's masterful Heat opens up into a contrast of harsh, flat sunshine and neon-rimmed nights, creating a landscape where the interests of career criminals and career police officer naturally intersect. The coffee shop meeting between Al Pacino's obsessive police detective, Vincent Hanna, and Robert De Niro's meticulous master thief, Neil McCauley, shows the similarities of their mindsets, but it's also notable for how their preoccupations and fears mark them as men who can't allow themselves to be impacted by the feminine. In Heat males risk their lives for the nominal cause of family, but when they have to commit themselves emotionally they abstain or flee. It's the telling counterpoint to set-pieces such as a shootout in downtown Los Angeles that feels sculpted, such is its acuity and energy. Craig Mathieson
Pay Quarry
Monday, Showcase, 9.30pm
A slow but just sufficiently interesting start to a new southern-noir loosely based on novels by Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition). It's 1972, and Marine Corps buddies Mac (Logan Marshall-Green) and Arthur (Jamie Hector) are returning to Memphis from Vietnam. There's no welcoming committee – their unit has been implicated in some kind of massacre – and Tennessee offers little in the way of job prospects. Enter Peter Mullan (Top of the Lake) as a chap who needs men who know how to pull a trigger, and who is about to make Mac and Arthur an offer they can't refuse. Mac and his wife, Jon (Jodi Balfour) have a lot to unpack at home, but after a while this over-long series opener begins to feel almost as drab as its design palette. Also starring Damon Herriman as a fellow who enjoys singing Harry Nilsson songs in Spanish and hammering nails into baseball bats. Brad Newsome
Modus
SBS, 11.30pm
It's Christmas time in Stockholm, and people are being murdered. So far, so Swedish crime drama. But as intermittently bloody as the first episode of this snowbound eight-part series is, Modus unwinds at a measured pace as it attempts to get a grip on the lives – almost uniformly troubled – of a wide-ranging and so far unconnected cast. The fulcrum is former criminal profiler turned author and university professor Inger Johanne Vik (Melinda Kinnaman, Joel's half-sister), whose oldest daughter, Stina (Esmerelda Struwe) has witnessed the culprit disposing of a body. But Stina has autism, and while the sociopathic killer knows of her she hasn't told anyone. The show is setting up as a whydunit instead of whodunit, hoping to combine a procedural's tension with genuine characterisation. Angles such as Inger's combative protectiveness of her daughter, not to mention the presence of melancholic former colleague Ingvar (Henrik Norlen), will determine the outcome after a slick start. Craig Mathieson
