Pay Aussie Gold Hunters
Thursday, Discovery, 7.30pm
The roller-coaster ride continues for the small-scale gold prospectors trying to scratch a living out of the West Australian dirt. Success and failure follow each other in such rapid succession that it must all feel like a kind of emotional blur. An emotional blur in 40-degree heat, no less. As far as small operations go, the one run by Vernon and Leon is looking a bit bigger this week. They have offsider Jake on the job, they're getting more help flown in from Canada, and Vernon's daughters have turned up to help out and tear around the place on trailbikes. But there's rain on the way, which means that Vernon and Leon have to shut down their $500,000 dry-blowing plant. Elsewhere, pals Kellie and Henri hope that the "sunbaker" nugget they find on top of the dirt at their new site is a good omen. Absorbing stuff. Brad Newsome
Silvia's Italian Table
8pm, ABC
The eternal quest for new ways to slice and dice the food television experience hit the mother lode when it found Silvia Colloca. A Nigella-ish cook who sells the idea of food as the heart of any properly functioning family (she's Italian, so has diplomatic immunity on that one), Colloca is as much about a lifestyle, a beautiful house overlooking some expensive Sydney piece of waterfront, and about fashion as she is simple Italian food. And now her famous "friends" are thrown into the mix for a bit of celebrity chatting as they cook together in her glam kitchen. This week it's Tom Gleeson (funny), Lisa McCune (sincere) and Kathy Lette (popping off the one-liners like her livelihood depends on it… oh, hang on). Larissa Dubecki
Movie A Time to Kill (1996)
Eleven, 8.30pm
In the first of his many Hollywood leading man roles, a young Matthew McConaughey was photographed, amid the race riots, arson attacks and revenge murders of this John Grisham adaptation, like a Greek god of the American south. He plays Jake Brigance, the small town lawyer who defends Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), a local black man who has shot dead the two white racists who raped his young daughter. No temptation can force Jake to succumb, be it the abuse of a local KKK leader (Kiefer Sutherland) or the flirtations of his tank-topped law student from up north (Sandra Bullock), who is both a legal cohort and a temptation despite the presence of Ashley Judd as Mrs Brigance. The showiest role is Jackson's, who delivers his now oft-parodied, "Yes, they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!" outburst to Kevin Spacey's devious prosecutor. Craig Mathieson
The Code
8.30pm, ABC
The whiplash-inducing scene changes between the remote hills of Indonesia and the sterile bureaucracy of Canberra (looking sexier than it ever has in real life) draws to its finale as Anthony LaPaglia's intense Jan Roth brings his endgame crashing down with a zero sum mentality. The big question is: will computer hacker Jesse (Ashley Zuckerman) go down the rabbit hole with him, or find the moral courage to set his own plan in motion? Meanwhile Ned (Dan Spielman) and Hani (Adele Perovic) are working to expose the corporate corruption personified by Sigrid Thornton's ice-cold spin as Lara Dixon. Australia has traditionally been better at soap operas than political thrillers. A few leaps of faith notwithstanding, The Code might be something of a watershed moment. Larissa Dubecki
