Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY MAY 6
Top Gear: The Races (Prime, 8.35pm). Two eras of the motoring show seemingly collide in this retrospective compilation, with new boy Matt LeBlanc introducing the series, which revisits two decades of the old firm’s amusingly trivial pursuits. This was assembled before the former Friends star signed on to replace the ousted Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. His hosting gig sprang from being the fastest star in a reasonably priced car. The first episode includes Top Gear’s 2013 New Zealand excursion in which Clarkson raced his rental car against May, who served as seasick ballast on an America’s Cup catamaran as it scorched its way from the Coromandel Peninsula to Spirits Bay.
Giro d’Italia (Sky Sport pop-up channel 055, 11.05pm).
You’d have to be a major bicycle nut to sit up in the wee small hours to watch the daily live coverage of the many 200km stages in the first grand tour of the year. But all those sweeping aerial shots do make it a nice way to see Italy. The race warms up in Sardinia, crosses to Sicily, cranks up the country into the mountains then breaks out the champagne in Milan on May 28.
SUNDAY MAY 7
Doctor Who (Prime, 7.30pm). David Suchet knows a thing or two about long-lasting television characters, having served 13 seasons as Hercule Poirot. He’s guest starring in this episode of Doctor Who, a show which has had a few Agatha Christie connections of its own in past years. Suchet plays “The Landlord”. It doesn’t sound as much fun as being a Time Lord, but, hey, it pays the rent.
Guerrilla (Soho, Sky 010, 8.30pm). It’s set in London in 1971 and stars Idris Elba wearing shirts with spectacular collars and colours. But this weighty six-part drama series set against the rise of the British Black Power and Black Panther movements and the police opposition they faced is more gritty than groovy radical chic.
It’s written and directed by John Ridley, who won an Oscar for his 12 Years a Slave screenplay and is the creator of anthology series American
Crime. As well as Elba, who is also an executive producer, the cast includes Indian actress Freida Pinto as a woman who turns from activism to armed radicalism with her Anglo-Nigerian partner Marcus (Babou Ceesay), as they bust a fellow militant out of jail and then go underground. Placing an Asian character at the centre of the plot about Black British militancy has already sparked controversy, with Ridley defending his decision not to have a black woman in a leading role.
MONDAY MAY 8
MTV Movie & TV Awards (MTV, Sky 015, 1pm). Live from Los Angeles, it’s the annual awards for the movies that have sold the most popcorn to young audiences in the past year – now expanded to include the hippest television shows. Beauty and the Beast, The Edge of Seventeen, Get Out, Logan and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story are up for best picture. The leading contenders across the telly categories are Stranger Things, Game of Thrones and Atlanta. Elsewhere there are combined movie-TV nominations in such categories as ‘‘tearjerker’’, ‘‘best villain’’ and “best kiss”.
Coast New Zealand (TVNZ 1, 8pm). Neil Oliver and his team of local experts head to Stewart Island for a wander around the country’s third biggest land mass. Scotsman Oliver was enthusiastic about heading so far south. “That was a privileged place for me to see – 400 people and 50,000 kiwis; the human presence is corralled in that tiny postage stamp,” he told the Listener at the start of the season. The island excursion offers stories about kakapo, the sevengill shark and a 1970s Japanese tourist who liked the place so much she stayed on – in a cave – until she was deported.
The Wrong Girl (Three, 8.30pm). It’s the final of the first season of the Aussie romantic comedy that started out feeling like Melbourne’s belated answer to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Lily (Jessica Marais) is forced to decide whether she should follow Jack the celebrity chef (Rob Collins), who has decided to up sticks. Or will her other love interest, Pete (Iain Meadows), figure in her thinking?
TUESDAY MAY 9
American Housewife (TVNZ 2, 7.30pm). This sitcom was originally titled “The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport”, which might not have played so well down on the coast. But this Westport is a well-to-do town in Connecticut. There, Katie Otto is the stay-at-home mother of three snarky and/ or quirky kids and wife of an academic husband. It’s a job that gives her plenty of time to fret about her size compared with the thinner, richer women of the neighbourhood. Katie is played by Katy Mixon, who was Melissa McCarthy’s sister on Mike & Molly, another sitcom of plus-size characters, and she also starred in HBO’s Eastbound and Down. Here, Mixon has plenty of moxie in the lead role, although the debut episode suggests this is a cookie-cutter comedy.
Private Eyes (Vibe, Sky 006, 8.30pm). Jason Priestley, the actor formerly known as Brandon Walsh of Beverly Hills 90210, returns from the wasteland of TV movies for a comedy-drama series made in his native Canada. He plays an ex-pro hockey player turned private investigator. He’s named “Matt Shade”. Rather
takes the gloss off things.
The Wheel (Discovery, Sky 070, 9.25pm). Yet another spin on a survival show, this drops six mostly experienced North American outdoor types into six different South American landscapes with a pack of useful gear and minimal supplies. After 10 days of fending for themselves in one zone, they’re dropped into another until they have endured mountains, rainforest, wetlands, tundra, bush plains and an island for 60 uncomfortable days. If it all gets too much, they can set off a personal locator beacon for a chopper ride out. If you would rather watch an old pro do this sort of thing, there’s Britain’s Biggest Adventures with Bear Grylls (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, Saturday, 8.30pm), which combines his outdoor adventurousness with a spot of local and natural history and geology in the UK.
WEDNESDAY MAY 10
Kevin Can Wait (TVNZ 2, 7.30pm). American sitcom veteran Kevin James chalks up another with this, in which he plays a retired cop hoping for a quiet life on Long Island, interrupted only by his wife and three kids and occasional guest appearances in coming episodes by Adam Sandler, Ray Romano and Billy Joel.
THURSDAY MAY 11
Gutsful (TVNZ 2, 8.30pm). Gutsful is not a series about overeating but possibly a show for those missing the rubbernecking excitements of Neighbours at War. It is, says the voice-over at the start of episode one, “a no-nonsense video platform to vent your frustrations”. The first show features locals from Warea in South Taranaki venting about – you’ll never guess – freedom campers parking and pooing by the local surf-break. Worse, they’re leaving skid marks of the vehicular variety by the nearby urupa. The locals are certainly no-nonsense. The same can’t be said of the show’s overripe delivery.