Madam Secretary, Ten, 8.30pm

Even with a revolving line-up of directors (including, once so far this season, executive producer Morgan Freeman), Madam Secretary still feels consistently too shiny and wholesome for its own good – even when Elizabeth McCord (Tea Leoni) is on the outer of the POTUS’s inner circle, as she is at the moment for daring to disagree on Russian matters. Never mind that she was filling his shoes as Acting President (is that even a real thing that happens?) just a couple of episodes ago. Whatever tonight’s curve ball is, we can be sure she’ll still get home in time for dinner and robust ‘‘political’’ discourse with loving husband Henry (Tim Daly) and her super intelligent kids.

The Ex-PM, ABC, 8.30pm

Shaun Micallef’s mockumentary has proven the mock-genre hasn’t run its course – unfortunately his brilliant series has. Tonight’s finale sees Ellen (Lucy Honigman) desperately trying to find some ‘‘emotional vulnerability’’ for the final chapter of his memoir when Henry (John Clarke) disappears mid-Skype call and can’t be tracked even by his home detention bracelet monitor. Then Dugdale finds himself embroiled in Henry’s trouble when a home invasion ends with a pistol pointed at his head, a gang demanding ransom  – and a potential new ending for the ex-PM. His diplomatic attempts here give us some of the best lines of the series; not bad considering every episode of this understated series (written entirely by Micallef) has been a cracker.

Beaten by My Boyfriend: Stacey Dooley Investigates, ABC2, 9.15pm

This British documentary reveals the shocking incidence of domestic abuse in the UK where, despite the widespread belief that it’s something that only happens to older women, it’s been revealed that more and more younger women – and teenagers – are subjected to abuse from their partners: in Britain, the emergency services receive a call about domestic abuse every 30 seconds. Dooley  spends a couple of days with the Lancashire police and meets victims  and even some of the abusers, in a bid to understand the issue, and why it’s become so prevalent in Britain. Given our own domestic violence rates, Beaten by My Boyfriend is important, if uneasy, viewing.
Kylie Northover

PAY TV

Lachey’s Bar, A&E, 7.30pm

If Rock this Boat: New Kids on the Block taught us anything it’s that grown women remain fanatically enamoured of the boy bands of their youth. So presumably there’s an audience out there for this dull reality series, in which brothers Nick and Drew Lachey – they of 98 Degrees fame – open a sports bar in Cincinnati. Tonight, with the bar still an empty concrete cavern, they get a menu consultant in to pitch them a bunch of bar snacks. There’s some debate over which snacks are best, so the Lacheys try them out on a bunch of American football fans who are drinking – not too heavily – outside a football stadium. Yawn.
Brad Newsome 

MOVIES

The Messenger (2009) stan.com.au

In the impressive American independent drama The Messenger, Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play Captain Tony Stone and Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery, US Army veterans whose assignment is to notify the next of kin that a beloved spouse or treasured child has died in combat. It is the height of the insurgency in occupied Iraq, and almost every day brings a new message to be delivered as Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah become additions to the American lexicon. In his director debut, having distinguished himself with screenwriting credits that included Jesus’ Son and I’m Not There, Oren Moverman begins by delineating the duties of the experienced Stone and the newcomer Montgomery, who himself has just returned from Iraq after being wounded in an IED explosion that killed his best friend. As a bureaucracy concerned with war, the US Army gives them strict guidelines – be clear that a death has occurred, don’t engage in physical contact with the NOK (next of kin) – which the burnt out Stone appreciates, as rules keep his life from spinning further out of control. But Montgomery chafes at the strictures, falling into a silent, uncertain relationship with a widow (Samantha Morton, defined by deeply held emotion) to whom he delivers a notification. Military procedure and mordant humour keep their ramrod backs from breaking, but nuanced detail and a battered soulfulness slowly but certainly come to define the arrestingly lived-in performances from Harrelson and Foster.

Another Year (2010) SBS, 1.50am (Thursday)

With Another Year Mike Leigh, as he often has, put aside the matters that have been used to narrow the concerns of his career – the struggle between the wealthy and blase, the ill-mannered and aspiring well off, and the forgotten working class – and made a tellingly acute piece of humanist filmmaking, one whose use of nature’s seasons to mark the passing of time made clear his interest in how lives unfold and move towards a conclusion that can be deeply satisfying. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a geologist and therapist respectively, are a content London couple approaching retirement, and the support they offer to those around them has a distinctly lived-in quality; Broadbent and Sheen’s performances suggest decades together. The most needy of their circle is Mary (a remarkable Lesley Manville), a chirpy receptionist whose failings are starting to imprison her. ‘‘What are you going to do with me?’’ she’ll genially remark, and the question becomes increasingly fraught.
Craig Mathieson