Sunday picks: Melbourne Comedy Festival Great Debate, The Loving Story and more

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL COMEDY FESTIVAL: THE GREAT DEBATE
★★★½
8.30pm, ABC Comedy

Of all the big events of the Comedy Festival, this is my favourite. The formal structure gives the whole thing a nice shape (rather than random blobs of sketch comedy) and the debaters are obliged to both prepare their bit, and then display their improv chops. Added value this year is our host, the always-delightful Magda Szubanski.

Magda Szubanski hosts The Great Debate. — Magda Szubanski hosts *The Great Debate*.

THE LOVING STORY
★★★★
10.20pm, SBS

Most people have heard of Brown v Board of Education, the landmark US Supreme Court ruling that found segregated schools unconstitutional. Fewer are familiar with the story of the appositely-named Richard Loving, a poor white farmer from Virginia who fell in love with a black woman, at a time when miscegenation (interracial marriage) was illegal in that state. This elegant documentary follows the tale from Richard and Mildred Loving's imprisonment following their marriage to their ultimately nation-shaping Supreme Court win.

MURDER, MAYHEM AND MEDITATION
★★★
9.25pm, SBS Viceland

It would have been good to get a bit more detail about the meditation (and the other rehab programmes being run by California's Salinas Valley State Prison) and a bit less about the murder and mayhem, but this Viceland doco from 2014 still holds plenty of interest. Perhaps the most alarming revelation is that prison gang violence is not really mayhem at all: it is meticulously organised in order to maintain and expand power and profits both inside and outside the prison walls.

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