MATERNAL INSTINCT: Tina Fey

THE BIG RED ONE Sunday, SABC3, 22:00

PAYBACK Friday, SABC3, 19:30

If you love high-action thrillers filled with screen tough guys, make a date with these two macho movies.

The Big Red One dates back to 1980, when veteran director Sam Fuller undertook to express a bold idea. He would follow the progress of a single platoon of soldiers led by a man known only as The Sergeant, as he led them through the key conflicts of World War Two, from the Italian campaigns, through D-Day, to the defeat of Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps.

Lee Marvin plays the "Sarge" and the young Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill, plays the thoughtful soldier who questions the motives and tactics of war. It was a debate about the morality (or otherwise) of war, and it played out realistically on the battleground. World War Two films were not popular in the 1980s, but this remains one of the most challenging of that decade.

The other movie, Payback (1999), starring Mel Gibson, was also a stylish and provocative drama, but it had a nifty twist.

It was a remake of the Lee Marvin classic, Point Blank (1967), a story about a thief who gets caught up with a gangster and his wife. Once he has handed over the loot to them, the wife shoots him at point blank range.

They assume that he is dead, but two years later he comes back looking for his money and for revenge.

DRYFSAND Thursday, SABC3, 21:00

This new series features a couple of celebrated names in the history of TV in South Africa.

Dryfsand was created by popular local writer PG du Plessis and directed by Koos Roets. That's a great combo, and in this thriller series, they stick very close to South African motifs.

A cargo of gold bullion from a small mining town vanished when an aircraft that was allegedly carrying the freight simply disappeared. Did it crash? Was it hijacked? Or was it flown across a border, landed and stripped of its precious cargo?

It creates a scandal and people lose their jobs and their reputations, and that takes a lot to live down in a small mining town. But eight years after that mysterious theft, the central character, Carstens, finds a new fragment of information that leads him to renew the investigation as he tries to clear his name.

In the process, he stumbles upon old family secrets that reach far beyond that single robbery and include crimes of a much darker nature. Filmed on location with a top SA cast, it's a smart "local is lekker" thriller series.

BABY MAMA Monday, M-Net, 23:30

Right now, Tina Fey is the reigning queen of TV comedy in the US. Her ruthless skits of Sarah Palin during the last presidential race made Fey a global star, but she was already a celebrated comedian on US TV, with 30 Rock, the show she wrote and starred in.

However, her 2008 movie, Baby Mama, failed to strike a nerve with the US movie-goers, despite a stellar cast that includes top-notch comedians like Amy Poehler, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver. As a result, it was not shown very widely outside of her home country, and it never reached our movie screens.

It has a fairly familiar plot. Fey plays Kate, an ambitious career woman, with good prospects ahead of her. Her boss is a sweet, laid-back hippie type, played by Steve Martin, and while he admires Kate's drive, he wants her to explore her feminine spirit.

For ambitious Kate, that means only one thing: she must have a baby. She finds an upmarket "baby-broker", played very amusingly by Sigourney Weaver, who locates a surrogate mother with all the right genes. She sounds perfect, but Angie (Amy Poehler) has a very bad attitude, and Kate has to spend nine months bonding with the tenant from hell.

The comedy is very racy and rude, probably not right for the kids, and it is unusually shrill and stridently American, but Fey's fans will probably love to see it.