What's the Catch?, SBS One, 8.30pm

Former Fairfax food writer turned lifestyle chef with his SBS series, Gourmet Farmer, Matthew Evans has perhaps made the most significant contribution to food journalism of his career with this revolutionary investigation into Australia's seafood industry, which has initiated a Senate inquiry into fish labelling.

Taking no prisoners in his crusade to shove the unappetising facts about where 70 per cent of our seafood comes from, and under what conditions it is sourced, Evans performs a series of clever stunts which make abundantly clear the fact that we are gorging on borrowed fish. Our appetite simply cannot be sustained by dredging the oceans of marine life just so that we can have fried prawn cutlets all year round. L'il Lisa's Slurry, anyone? Beneath Evans' smooth, friendly foodie persona, a ferocious eco-warrior simmers.  He is a glorious antithesis of the television chef, brandishing his platter of unsavoury truths.

Madam Secretary, Ten, 8.30pm

Tea Leoni is the perfect choice to play Elizabeth McCord, the serenely glamorous US Secretary of State wielding her womanly power in ingenious ways. Like a female Tom Cruise, Leoni encapsulates in one, grim-jawed glare, all that is revered about the all-American hero. She turns the corniest of lines into disarming moral statements as she tackles a delicate case of a teenage Chinese girl's asylum bid which threatens to derail a  treaty between Japan and China.

The woman's price of power is reinforced by Elizabeth's long-distance relationship with her husband and children, played out in tender phone calls which leave her alone on a hotel couch. And there is a decidedly girly moment with Elizabeth's chief of staff, Nadine Tolliver, (Bebe Neuwirth, Frasier), involving an office romance with a tragic outcome. If only women ruled the world with such sensitivity and insight, and diplomats of oppressive regimes were this easily persuaded.

Parks and Recreation, Seven, 11.30pm

The brilliantly brash Amy Poehler and good-humoured '80s hunk Rob Lowe sizzle through some cracker scenes in this stellar NBC comedy. With an eye on the absurd and a heavy dose of neuroses, the dialogue flickers from one sly gag to the next. Tonight, negotiations continue over the proposed "Pawnee Commons" park which looks increasingly unlikely to eventuate.

Bridget McManus

PAY TV

Grand Designs Australia, LifeStyle, 8.30pm

Since when do any of these grand designs come in under budget and without major drama? Since engineer Joe Cato and his wife, Maura, began building their imaginative rammed-earth home near Kiama. The build isn't without unforseen problems, but hard work, cool heads and a philosophical mindset make for a happy ending.

The Writers' Room, Bio, 8.30pm

Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, his wife and star, Katey Sagal, and writers Charles Murray and Mike Daniels join Jim Rash for a chat about the writing caper. It's an interesting and frequently amusing discussion. And one that makes it seem as though Sons of Anarchy has as much of an effect on the people who make it as it does on its legions of fans. Sagal finds it hard to watch as Rash shows the scene in which her character, Gemma, savagely murdered Tara (Maggie Siff) but she instinctively leaps to Gemma's defence, explaining why she had to do it.

Then there's the bizarre video in which Charlie Hunnam tries to help actor Ryan Hurst come to terms with the death of his character, Opie, by ceremonially cutting off his biker beard with a sword. Opie's death is also the subject of tonight's "Defend this Scene" segment – some fans still aren't happy.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Friday the 13th (2009), Eleven, 9.30pm

As everyone knows, when Americans go into the woods they go quite odd. If they are lonely and scared in a remote wood cabin, they will abandon it for the terror and darkness outside, so that they can be munched, sliced or tortured for our delectation. Characters act as if they have left all rational behaviour at home, next to the mobile phone that could have been used to save them from peril. Fans of these films love their genre-requisite dumbness. On hearing evil sounds and knowing that teenage girls will abandon any semblance of safety at whim, audiences cheer in anticipation at their impending fates. Rhodes Scholars calmly discussing quantum theory in a log cabin simply won't do. Friday the 13th has been made twice (not counting 11 sequels and a television show): first by Sean S. Cunningham in 1980 (for a cult classic, it rates a surprisingly tepid 6.5 on IMDb) and near three decades on by Marcus Nispel (a desultory 5.6).

In the original, visitors to the summer retreat of Camp Crystal Lake discover that the horrors of the past – a boy drowned while camp counsels were having sex; how's that for unfettered American Puritanism? – are not necessarily constrained to the past. In Nispel's "remake", the boy watches his mother get beheaded, marijuana is growing rampant in the woods and ... well, you can imagine the rest. Not all classics are classic, and not all need to be remade.

Emmanuelle V (1987), World Movies (pay TV), 11.05pm

One the most-abused films in history is Walerian Borowczyk's Emmanuelle V, which was released in Europe with inserted hardcore scenes directed by someone else and, in the United States and Australia, with 45 replacement minutes from the supremely untalented Alex Cunningham. There is little reason to watch this insufferable mess, except for the fact the black-and-white train sequences (part of the movie-within-the-movie, Love Express, premiering at Cannes) demonstrate the Polish animator-director at his graphic best.

Scott Murray