The Tunnel: Sabotage
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ABC, 9.30pm
This is a second series for The Tunnel, which was originally a reboot of the Danish noir series The Bridge. Karl and Elise are back together sparking off each other in a fresh investigation, this time involving the downing of an airliner over the Channel. I've yet to make up my mind whether it is quite as compelling as the first but early signs are promising and Clemence Poesy's turn as the strange Elise remains a highlight. Nick Galvin
Pay Guitar Centre Sessions: Smashing Pumpkins
Foxtel Arts, 9.30pm
Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan is never accused of false modesty, nor of mincing words to spare people's feelings. And he's about as frank and forthright as you'd expect in this instalment of the performance-and-interview series hosted by British-born DJ Nic Harcourt. Corgan thoroughly disparages most of his '90s indie-rock contemporaries – and, indeed, pretty much anyone who isn't Led Zeppelin – and describes his own band as being "almost without peer in rock and roll history". It's interesting, though, hearing Corgan talk about how the Smashing Pumpkins sound emerged from him buying bigger amps to stop bar patrons talking over the band's "sensitive goth music", and how he deliberately made his music increasingly baroque to separate himself from other bands. This episode from 2013 features that year's version of the band performing David Bowie's Space Oddity and a bunch of Pumpkins songs. Next week: Bluesfest favourite Gary Clark Jr. Brad Newsome
Movie Apocalypto (2007)
NITV, 9.30pm
There are many shocking sights in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, a bloody and subtitled action-adventure set during the terminal decline of the Mayan empire: beating hearts are cut from the chest of live victims and decapitated heads bounce down the steps of a temple. But was anyone prepared for mother-in-law jokes? That's the cruel fate visited on Blunted (Jonathan Brewer), a hunter whose lack of children has his wife's crotchety mother on the warpath. When warriors descend on the traditional village the results are grisly: homes are torched and those not murdered are enslaved and marched off. Having witnessed his father's sadistic execution, the film's hero is revealed to be Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a young villager who has hidden his heavily pregnant wife and young son in a dry ravine before his capture. It is his quest to save them, spurred on by rains filling the well, which drives the narrative. Craig Mathieson
Saved
Seven, 10pm
This is a simple yet incredibly powerful concept for a drama documentary. Each week two separate stories are presented via a combination of eyewitness recounts and dramatic reconstructions. They are tales of everyday people suddenly facing life-threatening situations and being forced to rely on strangers to save them. Of course, it could easily degenerate into a crass accident porn – the TV equivalent of drivers slowing down to get a good look as they pass a crash site. However, by concentrating on the very human emotions involved, the film-makers manage to raise it all above tabloid voyeurism. In the first story, a retired engineer called Neville – who appears to be everything you would expect from a retired engineer called Neville – is tootling around the countryside in the south of England when he comes across a catastrophic single-car accident. Worse still, the driver has been impaled on a fence post and the car is about to explode. Neville's calm retelling of a story he must have told in the pub a hundred times only adds to the tension of the horrific situation he suddenly found himself in. The second yarn relates the near-death experience of a kayaker off the coast of south Wales, whose life is saved by the bravery of a surfer. The central thread running through all this is: "Would you risk your life to save a stranger"? Of course, we'd all like to think we would, but it's impossible to tell unless you've been put to the test – and that's not something you would wish on anybody. Nick Galvin