Played: Inside Australia’s World Cup Bid, ABC, 8.30pm

This promises to be a fascinating trawl through the bizarre soap opera that is world soccer. This particular episode of the Sepp Blatter Show is the one where Australia was apparently persuaded to hand over $43 million in a bid to host the 2022 Football World Cup and ended up walking away with a thanks-for-coming certificate. At the heart of the whole fiasco was Frank Lowy, a man used to getting what he wants and whose dream was to bring the cup to Australia. Regardless of whether he was blinded by his passion or simply out-played by the veteran manipulators of FIFA, it was not a good look for Australia. Neither was it a particularly easy time for Lowy. ‘‘People tell me at FIFA that I’m a sore loser,’’ he said. ‘‘But  in this instance, I am a sore loser because I thought that we had the credentials to have it.’’ Fronted by Leigh Sales and with key interviewees that include former PM John Howard, Sepp Blatter and Lowy himself, the doco will inevitably leave us asking what all this has to do with The Beautiful Game?

The World’s Oddest Animal Couples, Seven, 8.40pm

Biologist Carin Bondar wanders the globe looking for ‘‘profound and extreme’’ pairings between humans and animals. She says this will afford us a ‘‘unique insight’’ into the animals’ emotions, which turns out to a bit of a stretch. For instance, no matter how close you get to a pangolin (think of an armour-plated possum) it’s never going to let on whether it’s having a good day or not. We do, however, get an insight into some of the unusual people for whom a pet cat or guinea pig is never going to be enough. There’s Maria in Namibia who ‘‘as far as she knows is the only woman in the world with a pangolin for a friend’’. In Dartmoor, England, Shaun Ellis likes nothing better than rolling around in the mud with his pack of timberwolves. And then there’s South African Mike Rutzen, who tickles white sharks under the chin and believes he can ‘‘read their personalities’’. Good luck with that.

Man Fire Food, SBS Food Network, 11pm

Roger Mooking likes to keep things simple. If you were ever looking for what is the opposite of Nigella it could possibly be super-blokey Roger. He likes eating – meat usually – and cooking on flames, the bigger the better. 
Nick Galvin

PAY TV

Stephen Fry in Central America, BBC Knowledge, 9.30pm

From the top of Mexico to the bottom of Panama, Stephen Fry is on a journey through a region of amazingly diverse cultures, landscapes and histories. He crosses over from El Paso, Texas, into Ciudad Juarez, acquires one of those old American school buses that serve as the workhorses of the region, and ... well ... is merely good rather than great. But it’s perhaps unfair to expect Fry to be dripping with erudition and sparkling with bons mots at every turn, or to be drilling too far down into various horrific and depressing realities of modern Mexico. And in any event it’s a thoroughly interesting hour as Fry checks out – among many other things – the spectacular Copper Canyon railway, the pre-Aztec pyramid city of Teotihuacan, the adorable axolotl and the cliff divers of Acapulco.
Brad Newsome

MOVIES

The Judge (2014) Premiere Movies (pay TV), 6.05pm

After the astounding commercial success of multiple Iron Man movies and then The Avengers – which achieved the third highest box-office take of all time – Robert Downey jnr, the tabloid headline, rehab washout, and prison inmate who ascended to Hollywood superstardom, could probably have had his pick of directors and projects for when he decided to venture outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe; his interest in a film or a filmmaker literally could have got anything made. But what eventually appeared was The Judge, a father and son legal drama that was directed by David Dobkin, whose prior notable films had been Wedding Crashers and Fred Claus. With Robert Duvall as the ageing, ailing Judge Joseph Palmer, a small town legal lion charged with a hit and run murder, and Downey jnr as his estranged lawyer son, Hank, who defends him, Dobkin appeared overawed by his cast, capturing their family discord but not making resonant drama out of it. Whenever the story moves to a courtroom Dobkin’s camera solemnly descends via crane, as if he’s heard that’s the requisite move, and if the family anguish doesn’t exactly suit Downey jnr’s sharp wit, then it’s mystifying that the banter between Hank and his high school love, Samantha (Vera Farmiga), doesn’t click either when they start circling each other. The movie is overly long, starchy and, once Hank’s young daughter, Lauren (Emma Tremblay), arrives to remind him of his priorities as a father and family man, predictable.

Romeo Must Die (2000)Go!, 9.30pm

The Chinese actor and martial arts master Jet Li was a superstar in Asia by the ’90s, so after a menacing if limited turn as the villain in Lethal Weapon 4 he got his own movie with this boilerplate 2000 Hollywood B-movie, which added his fight sequences (choreographed by Corey Yuen) to a familiar tale of feuding Asian and African-American crime syndicates on the Oakland waterfront. As the title suggests, the template is Romeo and Juliet, with Li as Han Sing, who escapes from a Hong Kong jail when he learns of his brother’s murder in America, and the R&B singer Aaliyah as Trish O’Day, the daughter of Han’s father’s adversary. But there is little chemistry between the pair, mainly because the script doesn’t risk much given that Li in some cases appears to have learnt his English dialogue line by line – a romantic conversation is beyond him. It’s his body that does the talking here, in brief but explosive bursts.
Craig Mathieson