Pawn Stars, 7Mate, 7.30pm

Try as I might, it’s hard to build up any passion for Pawn Stars. It’s just hypnotic blah TV that washes over you until you snap out of it when the cat starts nibbling your toes two days later and you start questioning your life choices. Set on the Las Vegas strip, Pawn Stars focuses on the World Famous Gold and Silver Shop which is run by the Harrison family, ‘‘Old Man’’ Richard, his son Rick and Rick’s son Corey. Enter numerous ‘‘characters’’ as they hock their wares (tonight up for grabs is one of Harry Houdini’s  straightjackets, a loudspeaker from the Brooklyn Dodgers’ old baseball field and an old telescope). Everyone is after top dollar, and in that way, it’s a more honest show than Antiques Roadshow, which is full of relatives clutching the spoils of dear Aunt Gertrude’s closet who  feign polite surprise when a painting is valued at £10 and not the £5000 they were hoping for.

Elementary, Ten, 9.30pm

Could the unresolved sexual tension between Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) and Watson (Lucy Lui) be about to burst? That won’t come as a surprise to any Elementary watcher, as the frisson between the pair is one of the show’s more appealing aspects (that, and Watson’s excellent wardrobe). URST aside, tonight Sherlock goes head-to-head with an artificial intelligence program, Bella, who is accused of killing her programmer.

Revenge, Seven, 9.30pm

Nearly five years after its debut Revenge continues to be stupidly enjoyable, thanks to its kickass heroine Emily Thorne (Emily VanCamp) and her facially immobile nemesis Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe). The hate-filled chemistry between these two sparks off the screen and is a large part of the show’s appeal. That  and the fact that Emily can fake a death/clean up a death/stage a death like nobody’s business (‘‘Sadly, erasing every trace of myself is my speciality’’). Tonight, Emily’s father David (who, in the grand tradition of TV soaps, was once dead, is now not, but thinks his daughter is dead, but not the daughter that he fathered with his daughter’s arch-rival. Comprende?) prepares to go on a television show to talk about his 10-year hostage ordeal at the hands of Conrad Grayson. Emily, however, is suspicious of her father’s hostage story and after she helps her half-sister fake a drug overdose, she goes in search of evidence.
Louise Rugendyke

PAY TV

The Manners of Downton Abbey, Monday, Style, 8.30pm

It’s enthralling stuff as Downton Abbey’s historical adviser, Alastair Bruce, provides the lowdown on the complex manners of the post-Edwardian era. It was an anxious time for the aristocracy, Bruce explains. The industrial revolution and the Great War had changed everything, and the upper classes clung to rigid formality in the hope of staving off further chaos. Members of the Downton Abbey cast queue up to share some of the challenges they’ve had in getting to grips with dress, deportment and Bruce’s eagle-eyed attention to detail.
Brad Newsome

MOVIES

The Monuments Men (2014) Premiere Movies (pay TV), 8.30pm

It is hard to believe that George Clooney could make a movie as slight as The Monuments Men. He is a consummate actor who switched effortlessly to directing, dazzling with his first and second films, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, Good Luck, stumbling forgivably with Leatherheads and recovering nobly with The Ides of March, one of the better American political movies in a sub-genre where subtlety isn’t always appreciated. So, there was no good reason to assume that Clooney would ever come up with a clunker like The Monuments Men, a film so unconvincingly conceived, written and directed that one can’t understand why, after a week, Clooney didn’t just take everyone out to dinner and say “Many thanks, but let’s all go home.” It is not that the idea – Americans trying to liberate European artworks looted by the Nazis – isn’t fascinating. After all, John Frankenheimer tackled the same topic with intelligence and visceral power in 1964’s The Train (see Tuesday).

But while The Train questions whether trying to save art is worth lives being lost along the way, Monuments raises no issues of any resonance, offering instead a flippant divertissement in which skilled actors evidence only minor pretence at being interested in their characters and the plot. Clooney is also too young to play Lieutenant Frank Stokes (his make-up is an embarrassment),  while Matt Damon, who has never been bad and can usually be relied upon to act his heart out, looks resigned to his fate from his first shot. Despite all the best intentions, some films just don’t gel. It’s not a sin. It’s just the vagaries of cinema.

The Tree of Life (2011), SBS 2, 10.15pm

Terrence Malick’s elusive film – about, in part, Creation – has had more than a few erudite column inches spent discussing it, but far too few on its cameraman, Emmanuel Lubezki. Though Lubezki has been arguably the world’s greatest cinematographer for at least two decades, his meticulous and imaginative work was ignored by critics across the globe, Meet Joe Black being the most egregious example. Now, he has finally been honoured with two Oscars in a row: for Gravity and Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Genius does not always out, but in Lubezki’s case it has. And it is radiantly on show in The Tree of Life.

The Defiant Ones (1958), ABC, 1.10am (Tuesday)

A civil rights parable from Stanley Kramer about two shackled escapees from prison – one black (Sidney Poitier), one white (Tony Curtis) – finding ways of surviving together.
Scott Murray