Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery, ABC, 9pm

It’s been interesting indeed to see Julia Zemiro, best known to many viewers as the one who cracks the jokes alongside Brian Nankervis on RocKwiz, morph into one of Australia’s better interviewers. Through gentle chat, she manages to coax incredible revelations from people we thought we knew, the kind of stuff ‘‘serious’’ journalists would be happy to get. And she’s at it again here with Ita Buttrose, who takes Julia along on a visit to her old school and the house where she grew up ... which somehow leads to her opening up about her relationship with Kerry Packer.

Scott Ellis, How Drugs Work: Cannabis, ABC2, 9.20pm

Imogen’s 26 and has a good job with a consulting firm, but when she gets home she can’t unwind without a jazz cigarette or two. As she rolls one the size of a whiteboard marker, she confesses she’d be healthier without dope, but doubts she’d be happier. Chris, meanwhile, is suffering the kind of joint pain that has nothing to do with arthritis. He first got high when he was aged 11 and has decided he wants to break his 14-year habit. Easier said than done. Imogen and Chris are two of many cannabis users profiled in this documentary which neither glamorises drug use, nor preaches about the dangers as it shows how cannabis hijacks the inner workings of the brain. Lighting up as she’s sprawled on her bed, Imogen reveals ‘‘the best skunk smells like an alleyway that cats have been doing their business in’’. And she wonders why she doesn’t get many visitors.

Bosch, SBS, 9.35pm

Harry Bosch is a lone-wolf detective. He drinks too much, his personal life’s a disaster and he’s at loggerheads with his boss. The only thing that seems missing from this crusty cop cliche is a commitment to a diet of coffee and doughnuts. Bosch, though, has enough going for it to forgive, for the moment now, its shortcomings. It’s worth a look largely because it’s carried by Titus Welliver, who you suspect will flex some serious acting muscle as Harry. Of interest is that Bosch carries more emotional baggage than your average TV cop. His mother was not just a prostitute, she was murdered when he was 12 and the case was never solved.
Darren Devlyn

PAY TV

Louis Theroux: Transgender Kids, BBC Knowledge, 8.30pm

In the year of Caitlyn Jenner and TV series Transparent, the topic of transgender people has been  in the spotlight.  Documentarian Louis Theroux shifts the focus to children facing the dilemma of feeling that they were born into the wrong body and asks how young they should be before they can make life-altering decisions about their gender. In San Francisco, which is leading the trend in the US for kids to transition as early as possible, he meets gregarious five-year-old Camille, who was until recently known as Sebastian, and more subdued teenager Nikki, who was born Nick. He talks to the kids, their parents, siblings and doctors. He discusses the range of treatments, from hormones and puberty blockers to surgeries. With Nikki, there’s also talk of bullying at school and severe mood swings, a consequence of adolescence and hormone treatments. As always with Theroux, there’s genuine curiosity and sensitive questioning that reveal a lot about the subject.
Debi Enker

MOVIES

Flash Gordon (1980), SBS Two, 8.30pm

Ted, a stuffed teddy bear come to dissolute life, did a pretty good job of explaining the lingering appeal of this wonky 1980 comic book adaptation in 2012’s Ted. ‘‘Flash Gordon was the most important figure of our formative years. He taught us right from wrong, good from evil,’’ the recalcitrant teddy bear tells his best friend. ‘‘And that the word ‘acting’ apparently has an extremely broad definition.’’ Directed by Mike Hodges (a long way from Get Carter) and starring former Playgirl centrefold Sam Jones as the titular American football star who ends up fighting an evil interstellar overlord, Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow), Flash Gordon was made in the wake of Star Wars but had a deliberately campy feel, perhaps to match the less than state of the art special effects that were assembled by producer Dino De Laurentiis. It’s a quite daft space opera, yet true to the comic book’s 1930s origins.

Equilibrium (2002) Action Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm

Christian Bale, who was movingly tender as a trapped grifter in American Hustle, remains a movie star even though he’s retired from the business of being Batman, and he remains one of the most curious headline talents in circulation: a child actor (Empire of the Sun) who played noble young men (Little Women) and then went on an extended campaign to remake himself with repugnant characters (Shaft, American Psycho) before committing to a succession of independent movies and blockbusters that were united by his combative intensity (Harsh Times, Batman Begins). Equilibrium was made on the way up, and looks now like an audition piece for his franchise roles. Liberally influenced by Fahrenheit 451, 1984 and Brave New World, Kurt Wimmer’s monochromatic sci-fi action flick is set in a post-WWIII society where anything that incites human emotion (music, art, literature) has been banned and by law all citizens must take daily doses of ‘‘prozium’’, a drug that tamps down the mind. Bale plays John Preston, the regime’s leading enforcer, who executes dissidents, destroys contraband material, and even allowed his wife to be executed for offending. Preston, whose commitment equates to a kind of faith and distinguishes him as a ‘‘cleric’’, practises something called ‘‘gun kata’’, which is a form of martial arts for firearms. It looks like a form of modern dance whereby the user shoots everyone and nobody can touch them. Talk about taking the fun out of an action film.
Craig Mathieson