Television
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY OCTOBER 1
Married at First Sight NZ (Three, 7.00pm and Monday, 7.30pm). The idea came from the happiest nation on Earth, Denmark, which is a surprise, to say the least. Aren’t their lives perfect? Apart from all the murder, of course. Nevertheless, the show has run for five seasons in the US and after the Australian iteration became Three’s highest-rated international programme of 2017, we are to be treated to our own version with our own idiots willing to be married to someone they’ve never met. In the words of Carl Gustav Jung, there’s nowt so queer as folk.
Fugitives (BBC Knowledge,
Sky 074, 8.30pm). A new twist on the police obs-doc: this series follows officers in the UK who are searching for foreign criminals.
It’s estimated there are about 18,000 hiding in the UK, but the series also follows police in Europe as they work with their British counterparts to bring these bad dudes to justice.
Marvel’s Inhumans (TVNZ 2, 9.05pm). After a pretty good run with its Netflix series and Agents of SHIELD, it looks as if Marvel finally has a bomb on its hands. Well, they can’t all be awesome like Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. The Inhumans, a race of superhumans, first popped up in a 1965 comic book and were introduced to television in Agents of SHIELD. In the US, the series has debuted in Imax theatres before it begins on TV, although this has impressed no one. The story centres on the Inhuman Royal Family,
led by Anson Mount ( Hell on Wheels) as Black Bolt. His upstart brother Maximus ( Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon), who has no special powers, leads a coup, forcing the family, which includes Medusa (Serinda Swan) and a giant dog called Lockjaw, to decamp to Earth from their secret Moon base. The poor plotting and scripts may be the fault of showrunner Scott Buck, who was also responsible for the panned Iron Fist.
MONDAY OCTOBER 2
Inside the Mandarin Oriental (Choice TV, 7.30pm). In the
UK, it was called A Very British Hotel. But, as this documentary series filmed just after the Brexit vote reveals, most of the staff at one of London’s most exclusive hotels come from overseas.
Will & Grace (TVNZ 2, 8.30pm). You read that right. US
network NBC, desperate for a hit sitcom, has raised the dead. Hallelujah? Will &
Grace was known for pushing mainstream boundaries in 1998, but there’s a whole new world of gender identity and inclusiveness since it went off the air in 2006. Early promos suggest the show hasn’t moved much in time, although the showrunners are talking about more diversity and, as the outrageous Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) “voted for her old friend Donald”, there will be a few Trump jokes.
Making Utu (Maori TV, 8.30pm). It’s now 24 years since Geoff Murphy’s ground-breaking feature film Utu, and this 1983 documentary by Gaylene Preston features a number of people no longer with us, including Merata Mita, Bruno Lawrence, Martyn Sanderson and Wi Kuki Kaa. It’s part of a raft of programmes that Maori TV is screening to commemorate the Land Wars, including James Belich’s acclaimed fivepart series The New Zealand Wars. More info next week.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 3
The Blacklist (Three, 11.00pm). It’s always a surprise to see
The Blacklist back in the schedule – after four dramatic and overly twisty seasons, are there any more stories to tell about Red Reddington (James Spader) and Liz (Megan Boone)? Especially since last season’s finale revealed that
Liz is Red’s daughter. As season five begins, Red’s criminal empire has crumbled and he’s broke, forcing Liz into father-daughter shenanigans as he tries to rebuild the blacklist.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4
Game of Thrones (Prime, 9.30pm). Not the best season of Game of Thrones, despite a couple of those famous setpiece battles, one involving dragons and the other white walkers. David Benioff and DB Weiss are basically moving their pieces around the board to get them into place for the final six episodes, which reportedly won’t air until late next year or even 2019. This means that the show’s seventh season is, annoyingly, driven more by plot than character. However, it’s still a spectacle – the dragons are now the size of 747s – and there is, finally, the confirmation that everyone had been waiting for of Jon Snow’s parentage.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 5
Netball (Sky Sport 2, Sky 052, 7.00pm). The Diamonds have held the Constellation Cup for four years in a row, but the Silver Ferns go into the tournament with heightened confidence after a thrilling series win against England. In addition, the Aussies are having a rare spell of turmoil after their loss to the Silver Ferns in the Quad Series. The first cup game is tonight at Spark Arena in Auckland. Another of our national teams, the All Blacks, are in Argentina this week to contest the Rugby Championship (Sky Sport 1, Sky 051, Sunday, 11.00am).
Curb Your Enthusiasm (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Another long-awaited return: it’s been six years since Larry David ended Curb in Paris after accusing his neighbour, Michael J Fox, of harassment. Since then, according to executive producer Jeff Schaffer, Larry has been “hoarding indiscretions like Scrooge McDuck” and, he told Variety, “he’s finally going to let them all out”. Guest stars include Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Lauren Graham, Jimmy Kimmel, Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman.
Episodes (SoHo, Sky 010, 9.30pm). It seems it’s a week for shows we thought were gone from our lives forever, although this will be Episodes’ final season, as Matt LeBlanc has that new gig on hilarious sitcom Man with a Plan. As the season begins, LeBlanc is now the host of a successful game show, his acting career all but forgotten, and Sean and Beverly (Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig) have been forced to work for Sean’s former partner. All episodes are written by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik, who have credits such as Mad About You and Friends between them.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 6
The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00pm). Hurrah, no more best-of compilations. Here’s the new season (No 22) of the best interview show on television. It begins with Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, Reese Witherspoon and Bananarama.