Alive And Cooking – Monday, 11:30am, Ch9
The term ‘celebrity chef’ is becoming as meaningless with overuse as ’supermodel’. I have never heard of James Reeson, but this British-born pan-slinger has apparently starred in two previous TV series, The Occasional Cook and James Can Cook. Alive And Cooking has its Channel Nine premiere this week and sees James travelling through Australia’s food and wine districts. Innovatively, he “loves to use fresh quality ingredients”. Worth a look.

Artscape: The Art Life – Tuesday, 10:05pm, ABC
I enjoyed Andrew Frost’s blog before I even knew his name. Having made the fraught transition to television, where arts programming is usually genteelly quarantined to Sunday afternoons, Andrew kicks off the second series of his thoughtful show by unpacking the cliché of the tortured artist. Must an artwork express the artist’s personality and experience to be ’successful’?

The Charm Of Britain – Tuesday, midnight, Ch7
My grandmother used to subscribe to “Britain’s loveliest magazine”, This England. Its pages showcased a bucolic Arcadia full of quaint tradition and free from the corrupting influence of nasty foreigners. This ’90s travelogue is the quaintly soothing televisual equivalent. See a Welsh eisteddfod, attend a snail race in King’s Lynn, meet a “champion shepherdess” in the Lakes District, and then head to Scotland for a spot of grouse shooting, tartan weaving, haggis stuffing and bagpiping. In Glasgow, presenter Greg Grainger even manages to give flowers to Princess Di!

Beyond The Darklands – Wednesday, 9:30pm, Ch7
Gangs Of Oz may have been unmasked as crass and racist, but bless Seven’s cotton socks, they still have faith in true crime. Based on the successful TVNZ series of the same name and narrated by Samuel ‘The Burgers Are Better’ Johnson, it aims to delve into the minds of some of Australia’s most twisted and notorious criminals, with the help of clinical psychologist and crime author Dr Leah Giarratano. This premiere episode profiles David and Catherine Birnie, the serial-killer lovers who murdered four Perth women in the 1980s.

Movie: Summer Rain – Friday, 10:55pm, SBS
This week’s Friday Night Porno is a 2006 coming-of-age tale directed by Antonio Banderas. Set in southern Spain in the ’70s, it dreamily charts the first loves, lusts and obsessions of four teenagers during their summer holidays. Despite the title, Belinda Carlisle is not involved – reportedly, Banderas was rather pissed off that producers didn’t think the English-language market would get the original title, which translates as The English Road.

Movie: The Ranch – Saturday, 12:30am, Ch7
My research on this 2004 made-for-TV movie has come up with very little, but based on the IMDB plot keywords, it is about a group of beautiful lesbian prostitutes who sunbathe topless, pash each other and play footsie. Nice to see SBS isn’t the only station offering a Friday Night Porno.

Movie: Home Alone 2: Lost In New York – Saturday, 6:30pm, Ch10
I don’t care that this is essentially a rerun of the original Home Alone; it’s still pretty funny. There’s a creepy pigeon lady (Brenda Fricker) dispensing wise advice to Macaulay Culkin, a deliciously nasty hotel concierge (Tim Curry), even more cruel and violent pratfalls in store for Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern, and – my favourite! – the Jimmy Cagney meta-sequel, Angels With Even Filthier Souls. “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal… and a happy Noo-year!”

Movie: Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl – Saturday, 8:40pm, Ch7
By the third instalment of this swashbuckling series I was heartily sick of Keira Knightley’s pouting and Orlando Bloom’s uncanny impersonation of a plank of wood, but this first in the trilogy is heaps of fun. Johnny Depp is a revelation as the sly, sexy and downright batty Captain Jack Sparrow – equal parts John Galliano and Keith Richards. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Rush enjoys himself immensely as the evil Barbossa, and the skeleton special effects are great.

Rage – Saturday, 11pm, ABC
Lupe Fiasco guest programs tonight’s edition of Rage. It’ll be interesting to see what he picks, considering the broad range of his collaborations and his general interest in nerd culture.

Movie: Enemy At The Gates – Saturday, 11:50pm, Ch9
This 2001 movie was panned at the time for being silly and pompous – Slate’s David Edelstein wrote cruelly of the contrastingly set eyes of Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz – but it’s quite enjoyable in a trashy, Titanic-meets-Saving Private Ryan kind of way. Jude Law and Ed Harris play duelling snipers during WWII’s siege of Stalingrad: Law the freakishly accurate Russian peasant and Harris the German aristocrat. Law was still hot at this point (rather than the sad ageing Lothario of today) and for extra eye candy (and contrastingly set eyes) we have Weisz and Fiennes.

The Enthusiast’s ‘Best Stuff On TV This Week’ column is published each Monday and compiled by sorting through the TV guide, among the dispiriting reality shows and US procedural dramas. We don’t cover digital stations or pay TV because not everyone has fancy-arse set-top boxes and Foxtel.