PICK OF DIGITAL & ON DEMAND TV
LOVE ME, ACORN TV
THIS sharp-edged Melbourne drama is all about love — pursuing it, holding on to it, and the pain of losing it — at different times of life. The Matrix’s Hugo Weaving is its most familiar face, as Glen Mathieson, the painfully selfsacrificing husband to ailing Christine (Sarah Peirse), to whom he’s been married for 40 years. Their grownup daughter Clara (Instinct’s Bojana Novakovic, pictured), meanwhile, is at her wits’ end dating weirdos she finds online, while son Aaron, a twentysomething law student, is enjoying the first flush of passion with girlfriend Ella (Shalom Brune-Franklin, from BBC thriller The Tourist). Love Me is based on a Swedish series, Alska Mig (available on Viaplay), and the story has that Scandinavian fatalism that the Australians do well, too. Series two, which joins the first, six-part series on Acorn TV today, opens with the characters in a much more stable place — Aaron’s now expecting his first child, and Clara’s thoughts turn to starting a family of her own, too — but with the sense that it might not last for long . . .
FILM THRILLER The Infernal Machine, 2.15pm, Sky Premiere
GUY PEARCE has clearly been working hard on his northern English accent for this compelling drama, in which the Australian star plays a reclusive novelist troubled by an obsessive fan.
GRAPHIC DRAMA The Idol, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
THIS six-part HBO series about a pop singer’s racy re-invention bills itself as ‘the sleaziest love story in all of Hollywood’ and stars Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny Depp, as the singer. Her mentor is a sordid cult leader played by Abel Tesfaye (pictured with Depp), the singer also known as The Weeknd. Tesfaye created The Idol with Sam Levinson, the man behind the notoriously graphic series Euphoria, and did so with the pitch that, due to his fans’ loyalty, ‘if I wanted to start a cult, I could’. Whether this undeniably stylish show is a boundary-pushing tale of fame, dark love and female empowerment, or simply a seedy male fantasy, will depend on your perspective.
DATING GAME Love Island, 9pm, ITV2
NO, YOUR eyes don’t deceive you — after not even three months off air, Love Island is back for a new series of semi-clad shenanigans in Mallorca. Maya Jama and Iain Stirling return as the show’s host and narrator.