Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 25
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death (Prime, 9.30pm). The lovely Ashley Jensen seemed to find her métier as MC Beaton’s rural sleuth, but alas, only one season of eight episodes was made after this 90-minute special. Jensen is terrific as the fish-out-of-water Agatha, who moves to idyllic “Carsely”, a small town in the Cotswolds, and is promptly accused of murdering someone with her quiche.
The cast includes Hermione Norris, Mathew Horne and Cold Feet’s Robert Bathurst.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 26
Jamie’s Quick and Easy Food (Food TV, Sky 018, 7.30pm). Which is it to be? Jamie’s Super Food, screening at the same time on Prime, or Quick and Easy Food ? Either way, that’s a lot of Jamie Oliver, although Quick and Easy uses just five ingredients in every recipe, meaning it may actually be possible to cook one.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 27
Fair Go Kids’ Ad Awards
(TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). Fair Go has outsourced this year’s ad awards to underage workers. Shocking. In its 40th year,
Fair Go has asked schoolkids to make 30-second ads selling something from the 1970s, although the Vim Valley and Great Crunchie Train Robbery ads are going to be hard to beat. We are to be denied the sight of Pippa Wetzell and Hadyn Jones in silly costumes this year, as there will be no grown-up ad awards, but early next year there are two specials planned to celebrate 40 years of Fair Go.
My Kitchen Rules New Zealand (TVNZ 2, 7.30pm). The final cook-off for the year takes place at a fancy restaurant in Auckland, where Nadia Lim, Sean Connolly, Ray McVinnie and Tom Hishon join in the judging fun. The prize is a tidy $100,000. In other season finale news,
Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (TVNZ 1, Thursday, 8.30pm) concludes, and 800 Words (TVNZ 1, Wednesday, 8.30pm) is enjoying a mid-season finale in which George muses about true love and his own wedding day. Shay, however, is having problems with Ollie, especially after she takes a cricket bat to his drone.
All Star Family Feud: Mai vs the Rock (Three, 7.30pm). Radio personalities emerge, blinking, into the light in this celebrity version of the game show.
Mai FM’s Nickson Clark, Nate Nauer, Lily Taurau and K’Lee McNabb battle the Rock’s Roger Farrelly, Bryce Casey, Andrew Mulligan and Jen Bainbridge. They play for charity and MediaWorks crosspromotion. It’s a win-win!
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 28
The Great British Bake Off
(Prime, 7.30pm). Galloping guinea fowl, it’s Bake Off’s first and only Tudor Week, in which the five remaining purveyors of pastry must create something that Henry VIII might recognise as food. This involves many, many pies, with large amounts of lard going into their crusts. There are also “jumbles” (pastry biscuits) and show-stopping “marchpane” (like marzipan) cakes. It’s just as well Henry is dead and buried at Windsor Castle, really.
Brian Johnson’s A Life on the Road (Prime, 8.30pm). Pink Floyd fans: tonight is your night. AC/DC frontman Johnson is in the Cotswolds, where the pride of drummer Nick Mason’s classic car collection is the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. The car was used as collateral to fund Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, and this leads to a conversation about the rock concert spectacle The Wall Show, the early days with Syd Barrett and touring without Roger Waters.
Louis Theroux: Transgender
Kids (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, 9.25pm). Another typically insightful documentary from Mr Fly-on-the-Wall. Theroux meets kids at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center in San Francisco and spends time with them and their parents. They include five-year-old Camille, born Sebastian, who identified as a girl from the beginning. “You spend a day with my child and tell me I don’t have a little girl,” says her mum, Casey. Nikki, 14, is undergoing hormone therapy, but puberty is a difficult time for transgender teens. A lot of kids at school don’t understand, and “she worries about finding someone and being married and being a mom”, says mum Isobel.
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 29
From Russia to Iran: Crossing the Wild Frontier (Choice TV, 7.30pm). Levison Wood, the Bear Grylls of travel documentaries, is off on another epic expedition (you may remember him from Walking the Nile and Walking the Americas); we make the Grylls comparison, because in this four-parter, Wood explores the Caucasus Mountains between Russia and Iran using any means at his disposal. Not for him the cushy four-wheel-drive or even a motorbike; he’d rather travel with the locals and live as they do. The trip takes him through five countries, starting in southern Russia, and is a dangerous one – there be Islamist fighters in them thar hills, and he is trailed by secret police, passes through forgotten war zones and meets reclusive monks and Iranian bikers.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 30
The Newsroom (Sky Box Sets, Sky 009, 7.30pm). All three
seasons of Aaron Sorkin’s crazy, verbose newsroom drama will run on Sky Box Sets for the next three Thursdays. Episodes are built on real, recent news events, such as the Deepwater Horizon spill and the Boston Marathon bombing, and Sorkin also goes into deep discussion – polemic, really – about citizen journalism, journalistic integrity and whistleblowing. One wonders what he would have done with the Trump era had the show still been on air.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 1
Cricket (Sky Sport 1, Sky
051, 10.30am). Summer has officially arrived – the West Indies are in New Zealand and they are definitely bringing the sunshine to Wellington. Definitely. The first test match against the Black Caps is at the Basin Reserve, followed by a second test match, three oneday internationals and three Twenty20s. After that, the Black Caps will hardly have time to put linseed oil on their bats before Pakistan arrive on January 6.
Sam Smith Live in London (Three, 9.45pm). Hey, if Adele gets a special BBC concert, then so should Sam Smith, whose debut album, In the Lonely Hour, has sold more than 12 million worldwide and whose new single, Too Good at Goodbyes, made its debut at No 1 in the UK in September. In this recording at the BBC Studios, Smith performs old and new songs and talks to Fearne Cotton about his life and career.