Various perceptions of the past
Fairfax’s picks out the best on the box for the week ahead.
James Croot Memorable drama
In Atom Egoyan’s 2016 drama Remember, Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music) is Zev Guttman, a rest-home resident who every morning wakes up unable to remember his recent past. Waiting for him at breakfast is Max Rosenbaum (Ed Wood’s Martin Landau), who jogs his memory that the breakfasts there are crummy, and hands him a letter with instructions for a trip he needs to take. ‘‘You’re the only one who can remember the face of the man who murdered our two families,’’ Auschwitz survivor Rosenbaum tells him. What follows is a deliciously disorientating combination of Memento, Apt Pupil and Broken Flowers, as Guttman’s trek becomes complicated as he narrows down the suspects and begins to be missed back home. A simply superlative, superior drama, well-worth seeking out.
Saturday, 8.30pm, Rialto Battle for American Dream
A heady mix of Faustian drama and social realism ripped-from-theheadlines, writer-director Ramin Bahrani’s 2014 film 99 Homes is both sobering and rage-inducing viewing. Evoking memories of the likes of Margin Call, Wall Street and A Most Violent Year, 99 Homes is a complex and compelling story of innocence corrupted and what one man will do to keep his American Dream alive. Andrew Garfield creates a likeable, identifiable everyman who wears his heart on his sleeve and his emotions all over his face, while the bear-like Michael Shannon somehow manages to persuade us that his reptilian real-estate man is as much a victim of the current economic situation as the families he is helping to turf out of their homes.
Sunday, 8.30pm, Maori TV A history of popular music
The excellent eight-part 2016 documentary series Soundbreaking gets a welcome repeat. Featuring more than 150 original interviews with some of the most celebrated recording artists, producers and music industry pioneers of all time, it charts a century’s worth of innovation and experimentation and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of brand new sounds.
Sunday, 8.30pm, Prime Kiwi canines in focus
The popular Kiwi working canine reality series Dog Squad returns with more stories about those pooches protecting our streets and borders. This time the net is widened, as the shows features the work of Department of Conservation dogs trained to detect young kiwi, a penguin detector dog, and the world’s only trained Argentine ant-detecting dog.
Wednesday, 7.30pm, TVNZ1 Mad scientist or genius?
The 2016 PBS documentary Tesla recounts the life of scientist, inventor and visionary Nikola Tesla. His fertile but undisciplined imagination was the source of his genius, but also his downfall, as the image of Tesla as a ‘‘mad scientist’’ came to overshadow his reputation as a brilliant innovator. Even before his death in 1943, he was largely forgotten.
Thursday, 9.30pm, History