Tonight in HD: May 9

Series Highlight: Sons of Anarchy (TV3, 9.30, 5.1) In the penultimate episode of season four, Jax is confronted with a new challenge that threatens his family and his club. “There are a lot of big scenes here, and a few that have been building since the very start of the series, but the pay-off hasn’t quite hit,” the AV Club said. “We’re going to have to wait until next week to find out exactly how everything goes down. But provisionally speaking, To Be, Act I is a good-to-great hour of television, with Sons doing what it does best: throwing its characters into about 16 bad situations at once, and then forcing them to pick up the pieces on the fly. It starts with Jax stopping Opie from putting a final, definitive bullet in Clay’s murdering brain; it ends with Jax determined to do the deed himself, although with a syringe full of blood thinner rather than a gun.” ✮✮✮✮

Sky Movies Premiere: Never Let Me Go (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1) Never Let Me Go is a creepy, provocative, melancholic love-triangle drama set in an alternate reality where people live to be 100 – but only through organs “donated” by clones. The ethics of this, and whether such donors could have souls, is movingly and thoughtfully considered through the plight of three childhood friends who learn they’re not “originals” and another astonishing, one-of-a-kind turn by Carey Mulligan. Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins and Charlotte Rampling co-star; Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) directs. (2010) ✮✮✮✮

Home & Away (TV3, 5.30) Indi and Romeo both look to others for comfort; Gina learns of Casey and Henri’s relationship; Brax tells Henri to leave Summer Bay for good. ✮✮

Friends (TV2, 6.30, R) Emily tells Ross she’ll give him a second chance only if he cuts all ties with Rachel. ✮✮✮✮

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00) Vasa stoops to a new low; the rebound club struggle to move forward; Phoenix is caught in Hayley’s trap. ✮✮✮

Two and a Half Men (TV2, 7.30, 5.1) Zoey tries to coerce Walden into cutting his hair and shaving, while Alan rekindles his relationship with Lyndsey. ✮✮

Road Cops (TV3, 7.30) A pizza delivery boy tries to outrun the law; the hunt is on for a van load of bogans pulling brown-eyes; Sergeant Pat Duffy confronts knife-carrying youths illegally riding a motorbike. ✮✮

2 Broke Girls (TV2, 8.00, 5.1) Max and Caroline are suspicious of the new upstairs neighbour, Sophie (newcomer Jennifer Coolidge), who moves in after the old tenant dies. ✮✮

The GC (TV3, 8.00) In the aftermath of the house warming party, find out who smashed up the apartment; despite her bust-up with Jade, Jessi nervously attends her first glamour model shoot. ✮✮

The Big Bang Theory (TV2, 8.30, 5.1) Leonard and Penny experiment with dating again by ‘beta testing’ their relationship; Raj develops a peculiar relationship with his phone’s virtual assistant. ✮✮✮✮

The Almighty Johnsons (TV3, 8.30) As Axl deals with duelling prophecies; a cold wind sweeps in from the North, leading to a marriage Anders never saw coming; Olaf makes an intriguing discovery at the bottom of a bottle. ✮✮✮

Happy Endings (TV2, 9.00, 5.1) Jane convinces Penny to stop changing herself for every guy she dates, and instead to change the guy to suit her needs. ✮✮

Castle (TV One, 9.30, 5.1) Castle and Beckett investigate a murder case connected to the theft of a valuable sculpture. The Killing’s Kristin Lehman (Gwen Eaton) and True Blood’s Jessica Tuck (Nan Flanagan) guest star; the name of the professional thief Lehman plays, Serena Kaye (left), is a nod to Catwoman’s Selina Kyle — even though Castle (Nathan Fillion) likens her to another screen icon: “So, you were kinda like the female Indiana Jones, only without the hat and whip?” ✮✮

Nikita (TV2, 10.30, 5.1) Upset that Nikita continues to pursue the black boxes, Percy sends Michael to Pennsylvania to check on one of the boxes and the guardian protecting it. ✮✮

CSI: New York (TV3, 11.15, 5.1, R) When a beautiful star quarterback of the Lingerie Football League is found murdered in the locker room hot tub with traces of lidocaine in her system, the CSIs are called in to find out who wanted her dead. ✮✮

Feedback (TV2, 11.25, R, F) Season finale: An investigation into Feedback discovers dozens of faked stories and Arthur is forced to make an apology. With one last chance to impress the network – will they give him another show? ✮

This Is Not My Life (TV One, 11.55, R) Gordy covers his tracks but Jessica is thrilled to discover Alec is still alive. When ‘terrorists’, break into Waimoana, Alec and Jessica attempt to escape but are caught up in the crossfire. ✮✮

Sky Movies Premiere: Vanishing on 7th Street (Sky 20, 6.30, 5.1) Brad Anderson (The Machinist, last week’s episode of The Killing) directed this cerebral horror about “The Dark” stalking the survivors of a blackout in a mysteriously depopulated Detroit. Hayden Christensen and Thandie Newton star in what Entertaninment Weekly dubbed “a zombie movie without the zombies” and which the New York Daily News said was “just spooky enough to freak out undemanding horror fans”. (2010) ✮✮