SINCE John Steinbeck wrote the original story, Lifepod (Pearl, 9.30pm) has come a long way. Post Steinbeck, it became a film by Alfred Hitchcock called Lifeboat, a taut wartime thriller made in 1944 about a handful of survivors who climb into a lifeboat after their ship is torpedoed by the Germans.
In 1993 director Ron Silver turned Lifeboat into Lifepod, setting it in space in the year 2168 and throwing together a group of passengers who have to abandon their luxury space liner when it explodes. They clamber into the pod, only to discover there is a deadly saboteur in their midst.
Robert Loggia, Adam Storke and Jessica Tuck star. Ron Silver puts in a cameo.
THE mini-series Bride of Violence (Pearl, 1.10am) has the kind of plot that might stretch your credibility further than God intended. Nancy Pertinance has killed the only man she ever loved after discovering he assassinated her father. She leaves the US and her daughter to become a nun in Sicily, but journalist Hank is on to her. Throw in some warring mafia clans, the FBI and an unlikely love affair, and what you have is, well, a mini-series. Part two is same time, same place next week.
HALF of Pearl Movie Watch (Pearl, 7.15pm) is Pearl plugging its own films and the other half, the half with Geoff Wong and Gloria Wu, is Pearl behind the scenes in Hollywood. This evening's features include an interview with the man who created the makeup for Beetlejuice and Splash, a look at the life of Max Factor, the first person to prove that it takes a lot of makeup to achieve that no makeup look, and a meeting with Hoyt Yeatman and Alex Funke, who were responsible for images in Total Recall and The Abyss.
GEENA Davis produced and stars in the comedy Speechless, which is a mildly enjoyable, but ultimately very forgettable, film about speech-writers working for opposing election candidates in America. They like each other, they dislike each other, then they like each other again. If you want to see how the film was made, you can do so by watching The Making Of Speechless (Pearl, 11.20pm).