Yotam's Mediterranean Feast, SBS One, 8.30pm

The latest TV series from the justifiably popular Israeli-born, London-based chef Yotam Ottolenghi explores the food traditions of four Mediterranean islands: Corsica, Mallorca, Sardinia and Crete. He begins with Corsica, close to the French Riviera, describing its picturesque port as "a magnet for the upmarket traveller". But he doesn't linger, happily heading into the hills and down to the street markets, meeting beekeepers, sausage makers, goat-cheese producers and restaurateurs. Ottolenghi has a friendly and appreciative manner as he greets the locals and shares recipes. They proudly offer their traditional specialties and he returns the hospitality by cooking for them. Among Ottolenghi's dishes are veal stew with green olives and pancetta, roasted fish with aromatic olive oil and a honey and apricot trifle with walnuts and lavender. Scattered among the recipes are handy tips: with lavender, Ottolenghi advises, "a little bit is fine; a little bit more and you're in the toilet area".

Silk, ABC, 8.30pm

As the third season of this gripping English legal drama comes to a close, there are heated confrontations in the courtroom and in the offices of the Shoe Lane chambers. Martha Costello (Maxine Peake) is fighting hard to prove the innocence of her client in a murder trial but her opposing counsel and colleague, Harriet Hammond (Miranda Raison), is a formidable opponent, and the agenda of the enigmatic Micky Joy (Phil Davis) may prove pivotal. The courtroom action is compelling, the character drama is potent and Martha is a marvellous protagonist: clever, passionate, committed to her cause but not infallible.

Ink Master - season premiere, 7Mate, 9pm

As the second season of this reality-TV contest starts, a new search for America's top tattoo artist begins and 16 tough-talking aspirants arrive in New York. It's a bunch bursting with bravado, although some of the confidence and claims to greatness begin to falter after the first flash challenge involving depictions of snakes and daggers. Then comes the elimination test, with "tattoo virgins" as the "canvasses": some have strange and elaborate requests, for example a cityscape drawn to look as though it's made of bacon. Yes, really.

Debi Enker

PAY TV

Billy on the Street, Comedy, 9pm

OK, so this is part quiz show, part lunatic accosting people on the streets of New York. Comedian and actor Billy Eichner (lately of Parks and Recreation) bowls up to unsuspecting pedestrians and demands that they answer his snarky pop-culture questions. Those who get them right win small amounts of money. The good news is that Eichner has the quick wit and utter fearlessness to pull it off. It's probably worth mentioning, though, that it's not always in the best possible taste - one of tonight's games, "Where in the World is John Mayer's Penis", is a true-or-false quiz about the various celebrities the singer-songwriter has reputedly slept with. Like Drunk History and a lengthening list of other shows, Billy on the Street began life as a series of short videos on Will Ferrell's and Adam McKay's Funny or Die website. Celebrity guests this season include Joan Rivers, Rachel Dratch and Mark Hoppus.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

Ultraviolet (2006), SBS Two, 9.25pm

A child model on the cover of Italian Vogue at age 12, Milla Jovovich began acting in arthouse cinema, working for Richard Linklater and Wim Wenders, but the die was cast by her breakthrough role in former husband Luc Besson's science-fiction adventure The Fifth Element. This century the 39-year-old has been a one-woman industry, headlining futuristic action films where she's invariably a grim reaper with a powerful jump kick. Jovovich is the unlikely successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme as Hollywood's preferred European action star and she makes expensive B-movies, most notably the Resident Evil franchise. Ultraviolet, written and directed by Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium), is standard dystopic fare for her, although the frantic editing leaves the graceful force of her physicality unappreciated and the question of her emotional depth remains unanswered. The film is about the purity of bloodlines, but it embraces artificiality as a studio-based shoot.

Spartan (2004), Thriller Movies (pay TV), 4.55pm

As ebullient and incendiary as David Mamet's writing was in early works such as 1987's House of Games and 1991's Homicide, the playwright's attempts to visually represent the feverish need to deceive he catalogued felt tentative and often orthodox. Practice might not have made him perfect, but the subsequent features saw him improve, although perversely his talent for crafting a story had begun to let him down. 2001's Heist required gunplay for a resolution (an act of heresy in Mamet's world), while Spartan, the story of an American government operative trying to retrieve a VIP's kidnapped daughter after the hunt for her is corruptly abandoned, relies on a massive coincidence to close the circuit. Mamet draws a harsh but always watchful lead performance from Val Kilmer as a soldier and spy willing to decide when his moral code does and does not apply.

Craig Mathieson