Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY JANUARY 13
ASB Classic Men’s International: Final (Sky Sports 4, 054, 12.00pm) Spot of lunchtime tennis? Grab the ’sparagus rolls and that last bottle of holiday champers and settle in for the final match of New Zealand’s premier tennis event. Highlights screen on Prime from 4.20pm Sunday. Then it’s Grand Slam time in Melbourne – the Australian Open begins Monday (Sky Sports 4, 054, 1.00pm).
Casketeers (TVNZ 1, 7.00pm) Husband-and-wife team Francis and Kaiora Tipene are funeral directors in Auckland. Motto: “Celebrating life, one family at a time.” Now it’s the Tipene family and the work they have built their lives around being celebrated. This new show promises to “lift the lid” (yeesh!) on the world of funeral directing – and to do it with a sense of humour.
SUNDAY JANUARY 14
Sweet Home Oklahoma (Bravo, double episodes, 10.30pm) A reality show, the first episode of which includes but is not limited to: iced tea, tight white jeans, cupcakes, power walking, pugs, tie dye, a gun shop, two skinny blondes and a bombastic lawyer nicknamed “Pumps”.
MONDAY JANUARY 15
The Miniaturist (SoHo, Sky 010, 3.30pm, with encores from Monday January 22, 7.30pm) Daytime telly to get excited about. This much-hyped BBC period thriller picks up on the wildly popular 2014 novel by Jessie Burton. It’s set in 17thcentury Amsterdam, where 18-year-old country mouse Nella Oortman (Anya Taylor-Joy) is settling into what promises to be a sumptuous married life with a wealthy merchant. He gives her a beautiful doll’s house, a replica of their home – but Nella soon notices that it seems to have an eerie connection to real life. What other secrets are her new home – and husband – hiding?
Keep in mind that I wrote this before Christmas when our broadcast media seemed engaged in a high-stakes game of musical chairs. But it should be back to business as usual this week for the AM Show (Three, 6.00am weekdays) and The Project (Three, 7.00pm weekdays). [Insert shock reshuffle news here].
Also back up and running is The Crowd Goes Wild (Prime, 7.00pm weekdays).
Shortland Street (TVNZ 2, one hour special, 7.00pm) It’s the morning after that spewy, spearfishing, trifle-spiking prison-breaking cliffhanger. Who even knows?
TUESDAY JANUARY 16
National Treasure (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm) Robbie Coltrane plays the heck out of Paul Finchley, a genial old stalwart of the British comedy scene. Out of the blue he’s accused of historical sexual abuse. As more women come forward, his wife of 40 years starts to waver in her support. There were affairs, sure – but rape? Another poisonous thought takes root: could Paul also have hurt their daughter?
Julie Walters, as the wife, and Andrea Riseborough, as the daughter (now an adult with serious addictions and mental health problems), are impressive in their portrayals of doubt, doggedness and desperate wondering. And Coltrane is, of course, terrific. The bulk, the bulldog face, the sincerity and the anger just beneath the surface – it’s impossible not to think of Harvey Weinstein.
The Bafta-winning miniseries is based on Operation Yewtree, which netted Jimmy Savile along with Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris and others.
To its great credit, the show doesn’t flinch from the role of male friendship and loyalty in frustrating victims’ attempts to get justice. Two episodes screen back-to-back tonight, and the final two next week.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 17
Alone (Choice TV, two-hour premiere, 8.30pm) Why has no one done this before? Ten “trained survival experts” are dropped into the grim wilds of Vancouver Island. They’re separated from each other by water or by impassable mountains, ensuring they will remain alone. Each has video equipment and has chosen 10 items from a list of 40 (groundsheet, fishing line, knife etc). There are no stupid games, no teams and no crew: the winner, who gets US$500,000 ($700,000), just has to hang in there longer than the other nine. And not get eaten.
“I am so afraid of bears and cougars that I don’t even know what to think,” mutters one contestant as the sun drops. He bails the next morning, though to be fair to him, we should mention that in his first few hours on the island, he stumbled upon a bear’s den that looked like the T Rex nest from Jurassic Park – then looked up to see mama and her cubs watching him from the trees.
Having contestants film their own adventures works much better than you’d think. It’s only occasionally Blair Witch- ish, and for the most part, they treat the camera like a friend and a confidant. Fair enough. It’s wet and it’s lonely and there are wolves to worry about, too.
THURSDAY JANUARY 18
9JKL (Three, 8.00pm) Mark Feuerstein – you know him, the Republican attorney on The West Wing who dated Donna before Josh came to his senses? Anyway, here’s his new comedy: man gets divorced, his TV show crashes and burns, he moves into a New York apartment squished between his parents and his brother’s family. Proximity pratfalls ensue.
The Truth About Dementia (Living Channel, Sky 017, 8.30pm) Presenter Angela Rippon watched her own mother fall prey to dementia and her father was showing signs of it when he died. We follow her through the fraught process of genetic testing (she was advised not to do it, as her family history was not particularly worrying, but TV needs must).
More important, Rippon learns that certain habits and lifestyle changes – like sleeping more, learning another language and doing simple puzzles – can have a dramatic effect on whether one gets dementia, and how it progresses.
The best bits are her empathetic, thoughtful interviews with people who have dementia and those who care for them.
FRIDAY JANUARY 19
The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00pm) Cue Star Wars theme: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill and Gwendoline Christie ( Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth) squeeze onto Graham’s couch. Hamill uses the Force on an orange and does a surprisingly great impression of Harrison Ford. But Ridley whips this show right out from under him: she’s a star, poised and funny and loving every silly second of it.