Monday's TV tips

Check out our guide to the best of tonight's TV.

Monday's TV tips

ENTERTAINMENT: SwipeTV (RTE Two, 5pm)

SwipeTV is the brand new RTÉ2 television series for 7 to 13 year-olds, coming to your screens three times a week at 5pm.

Presenters Hazel Doyle and Simon Mulcahy are the fresh faces of this brand new TV show and they can’t wait to kick things off with a bang!

Each week there’ll be a high octane quiz show, a kids’ helpdesk and a host of your favourite celebrity guests – SwipeTV is the perfect way to kick back after you’ve done your homework!

On Mondays, presenters Hazel and Simon turn the tables on teachers in the quiz show, ‘Who Rules the School?’ Students compete to win a chance to gunge their teachers as punishment for all their annoying and embarrassing classroom crimes.

With musical sensation Fresh Ré and the stars of Moone Boy posing some interesting challenges, the children must score points to win gunge and ensure their teacher enters the gunge tank!

Teachers from all over Ireland are in line to face the punishment so tune in on Monday 2nd March to see which teacher will be first to get slobbered with slime!

FITNESS: Gliondar (RTE One, 7.30pm)

We meet some Irish women who are passionate about power lifting and break all the stereotypes associated with it.

Focussing on the passions and exuberance that grip us as we follow our own individual pursuits – a series which reveal something of ourselves as a nation.

Glamorous, fashionable and feminine, not words you would usually use to describe power lifters. We meet some Irish women who are passionate about power lifting and break all the stereotypes associated with it.

Anybody at all can power lift once you have the dedication and the motivation. PR executive Emma Scott and beautician Sharon Conroy show us how they balance their glamorous jobs with gruelling training regimes and workouts. These are no ordinary ladies in weighting!

FOOD: Food Unwrapped (Channel 4, 8.30pm)

Pine nuts. They’re such a simple, ordinary thing, and yet they are very expensive – which must be a terrible nuisance to everyone who finds them irresistible.

So, why do they cost so much? Jimmy Doherty spends the final episode of the series travelling to Italy to find out – it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it...

Kate Quilton also signs off the run with an envious globe-trotting opportunity. She’s travelling into the depths of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil to find out what gives the humble, common or garden Red Leicester cheese its colour.

Finally, Matt Tebbutt is intrigued by glace cherries. These tasty morsels are a staple part of every decent fruit cake, but how are they made? Matt finds out during a break in Spain.

DOCUMENTARY: Life Stories: Ireland’s Greatest Robberies (TV3, 9pm)

Presented by Jim McCabe, Ireland’s Greatest Robberies gives a factual insight into some of the most ambitious and exciting heists to ever occur in Irish History.

The series examines six robberies in total, including the largest bank robbery to ever take place in this country of £26m from the Northern Bank in Belfast in 2004 and the infamous Russborough House art thefts of 1986 at the hands of gangland crime boss Martin Cahill during which 18 of the most valuable paintings in the world were stolen.

The show examines one of the biggest art thefts in the world in which crime boss Martin Cahill and his gang stole some of the most famous and expensive paintings in the world from the Beit art collection which was stored at Russborough House, one of Ireland’s stately homes in 1986.

The robbery launched one of the biggest investigations ever to take place in this country to find the gang responsible and locate the missing paintings, many of which were eventually discovered in countries such as Britain and France.

FOOD: A Cook Abroad: Rick Stein’s Australia (BBC2, 9pm)

We’ve seen Rick Stein go globe-trotting before – he’s already toured Spain and India, among other places – and now he’s off somewhere very close to his heart.

Stein first visited Australia when he was 19 and fell in love with the country immediately. He now has a home in New South Wales with his second wife Sarah; they met during a book tour Down Under while she was working for his publisher.

Now he’s about to proudly show off some of its culinary delights, beginning with a trip to Botany Bay, the first place visited by James Cook when he arrived in the area in April 1770.

Stein forages among the local foliage and learns how to cook the aboriginal way before heading to Tasmania, where he joins a wallaby hunt, tastes an acclaimed single malt whisky and samples a sustainably farmed salmon which is growing in popularity.

COMEDY: Mom (ITV2, 9pm)

There was a time when Anna Faris was the most famous person in her household, thanks to her blossoming film career, but that’s changed in recent years.

She’s married to Chris Pratt, the star of Guardians of the Galaxy and the forthcoming Jurassic Park movie, who is quickly becoming the biggest star of his generation.

Not that Anna is being left behind. She’s still working on great projects, not least this sitcom, which returns for its second series with a double-bill of episodes.

For the uninitiated, she plays recovering alcoholic single mum Christy, whose own mother also has a troubled past.

The run begins with Christy contemplating falling off the wagon after suffering from nightmares, but worse is to come when she loses the money to pay the rent, leaving the family on the street. Will she find a way to get back home?

FILM: Serenity (Film4, 9pm)

(2005) This spin-off from the defunct sci-fi series Firefly concerns adventurous starship captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his gallant crew as they fight the all-powerful Universal Alliance.

His sidekicks are feisty second-in-command Zoe (Gina Torres), her pilot husband Wash (Alan Tudyk), muscle-bound brute Jayne (Adam Baldwin) and demure mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite).

When Reynolds takes on two new passengers – a young doctor (Sean Maher) and his telepathic sister River (Summer Glau) – he finds himself caught between the Universal Alliance and cannibalistic savages known as the Reavers.

This relatively cheap and cheerful sci-fi offering boasts snappy one-liners, great special effects and some fine performances.

Our own Chiwetel Ejiofor provides a stunning turn as chilling bad guy The Operative, and while some of the action scenes may appear unoriginal, writer/director Joss Whedon manages to fashion a compelling adventure which never takes itself too seriously.

Starring: Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin

DOCUMENTARY: Whistlebowers: Can we handle the truth? (TV3, 10pm)

Telling uncomfortable truths is a difficult and often painful process for the few people who are willing to put their heads above the parapet. In Ireland, a select number of people have blown the whistle on corruption and/or criminal practices in all sorts of organisations, ranging from finance to sport.

They have all paid a heavy price.

This programme will tell the stories of people who had the courage to speak out and the strength to suffer the consequences. It will ask how the Irish state and society treats whistleblowers.

Olivia Greene and Ben Beggan, both former employees of Irish Nationwide Building Society, are unemployed and battling to hold on to their home in Co Monaghan.

Former Army Captain, Tom Clonan, blew the whistle on harassment of female members of the Defence Forces. As a result, he was ostracised by former friends and colleagues.

Chalkie White tells the programme how his life fell apart after he was abused by his swimming coach George Gibney. He later helped to lift the lid on what must be the greatest scandal in the history of Irish sport – the widespread abuse of young swimmers by a number of coaches.

Noel Wardick was sacked for exposing what he believed were financial irregularities and corruption at the charity he worked for, The Irish Red Cross. He has struggled since to find employment.

FILM: Crimson Tide (Channel 5, 11pm)

(1995) A Russian nuclear missile base falls into ultra-nationalist hands, and a US strategic submarine is ordered to prepare for a pre-emptive strike if the rebels begin fuelling their weapons.

With the world poised on the brink of war, tensions are running high, and the vessel’s veteran captain clashes with his new by-the-book first mate over what course of action to take when they can’t confirm their attack orders.

Tony Scott’s claustrophobic thriller has so much tension you could cut it with a knife. Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington are superb as the two US Navy officers whose difference of opinion leads to mutiny and a life-or-death battle of wills over the crew. Hans Zimmer’s electronic orchestration takes the tense atmosphere to a whole new level.

Starring: Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington, Matt Craven, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen, James Gandolfini, Ryan Phillippe

FILM: Predators (Film4, 11.20pm)

(2010) An eclectic band of soldiers and ne’er-do-wells arrive in a mysterious jungle, where they discover they have been abducted and are being hunted by alien warriors.

Is It Any Good? That depends on your love of the Predator saga, but compared to Predator 2 and Aliens vs Predator Requiem, this looks like a masterpiece.

In 1987, sci-fi magazine Starlog ran a cartoon which depicted a couple of Aliens fans hypothesising that a sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s then-new sci-fi release would be called Predators.

By 2010 that gag became a reality, though it could have happened a lot sooner. Producer Robert Rodriguez had planned to make this offering in the 1990s, but the film was put on hold while he helmed projects such as Desperado and Sin City.

Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Laurence Fishburne

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