Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 17 Wilde Ride (TVNZ 2, 6.00pm). Superb teen series from the creators of High Road, who seem to have been inspired by Upper Middle Bogan. A young champion showjumper (Molly Leishman) goes to live with her motocross-riding Westie cousins after she loses her parents in a car crash. Plenty of cool dirt-bike sequences, lots of mud – and a big journey for a teenager. Also starring Kirk Torrance, Danielle Mason, Luanne Gordon and, because there is a law that every local show should include him, Mark Mitchinson.
Wild France (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, 8.30pm). No, not the nightlife in Paris or the jet set of the Côte d’Azur; actual French wildlife, some of which has been brought back from the brink of extinction. The series begins in the magnificent forest of Fontainebleau where, ironically, they are still hunting with hounds.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 18 Sunday (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm).
Proof that the year is really under way: the return of Miriama Kamo and Sunday, and then on Tuesday, Carolyn Robinson is back with international current affairs show 20/20 (TVNZ 1, 9.35pm).
Making New Zealand (Prime, 8.30pm). Tonight’s episode takes a look at our glorious aviation past and features the stories of pioneers such as Bert Pither, who built a
monoplane in 1910, and the Walsh brothers, who built flying boats and founded the New Zealand Flying School in 1915 to train pilots for the Royal Flying Corps.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 19 The Brave (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Cut from the same cloth as SEAL Team (Prime, Friday) and somewhere between a crime procedural and propaganda: Anne Heche leads a defence intelligence team, while out in the field, Mike Vogel ( Under the Dome) carries out the missions. It’s all rescuing people from terrorists and dealing to the bad hombres. U-S-A! U-S-A!
Queen: Rock the World (Prime, 8.30pm). The name Bob Harris is not generally mentioned alongside the greats of music broadcasting, yet the British TV presenter has been working at the BBC for more than 40 years and is still known as “Whispering Bob Harris” due to his low-key presenting style that began on music show The Old Grey Whistle Test during the 1970s. In 1977, he was granted access to Queen as they planned and rehearsed for their News of the World tour: he captured interviews as well as studio and tour footage, but he never completed his documentary. To mark the 40th anniversary of the album that contained two of Queen’s biggest hits ( We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions), the footage has been restored and Harris’s doco will finally see the light of day, with additional film from 2017 of Brian May and Roger Taylor on tour with Adam Lambert.
The Bafta Awards 2018 (UKTV, Sky 007, 8.30pm). Once again, The Shape of Water is shaping up to be the big winner, with 12 nominations. Darkest Hour and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri have nine, and Blade Runner 2049 and Dunkirk have eight. Joanna Lumley takes over from Stephen Fry as presenter this year (the first woman to do so since Mariella Frostrup co-presented with Fry in 2001) and the whole shebang takes place at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In other awards news, the Brits, the British music industry’s big night out, are on Thursday (UKTV, Sky 007, 7.30pm). Presumably, Ed “Bloody” Sheeran will win all the categories, except perhaps International Female Solo Artist, which will totes be won by our Lorde. Comedian Jack Whitehall hosts from the O2 Arena.
Hunted UK (TVNZ 1, 9.30pm). A particularly cruel and possibly dangerous UK reality series: the winner of season one, Emily Dredge, revealed that after the experience she began to suffer from panic attacks, needed intense therapy to deal with her paranoia and was still “ready in a heartbeat to run from a blacked-out BMW”.
In a format reminiscent of a dystopian nightmare, or perhaps an episode of 24, contestants try to evade capture for 28 days. They are pursued by former police and military types who have at their disposal drones, helicopters, sniffer dogs and CCTV cameras. (Couldn’t the show also be useful to real criminals? Just askin’.) For tips, the fugitives could perhaps watch some of the new season of Running Wild with Bear Grylls (TVNZ Duke, Wednesday, 7.30pm), in which the Bear takes celebs on survival journeys. It begins with a trip with Ben Stiller to the mountains of the Isle of Skye.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (SoHo, Sky 010, 10.30pm). Oh, good. We’ve been missing our weekly dose of sense and satire delivered by an outraged
Englishman.
He’ll never be President of the United States, but he’s the president of our hearts.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 21
American Gods (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Gods, monsters, fantasy creatures, fairy stories and myths have all been the raw material from which Neil Gaiman has fashioned his own, new mythologies. Many, like Coraline, seem to reach deep into the psyche, and in American Gods, he weaves a tale of old gods versus new: the gods that were brought to America up against the ones created there. The series is dazzling and wildly imaginative, if at times a bit slow and obscure. British actor Ricky Whittle is Shadow Moon, whose life becomes very strange indeed when he is picked up by “Mr Wednesday” (the inimitable Ian McShane). As the goddess Media, Gillian Anderson awesomely appears in various guises, including Lucille Ball, David Bowie and Marilyn Monroe. Season two is under way, but could someone now please update Gaiman’s Neverwhere?
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23
Rugby (Sky Sport 1, Sky 051, 7.00pm). Holy cow, there’s still cricket going on, but the Super Rugby season is upon us. Here’s the first match between local teams (the season having begun in South Africa): the Highlanders play the Blues in Dunedin and it should be an exciting clash. Both teams have been looking good in their preseason games: the Blues thumped the Chiefs 45-19 in Te Kuiti and the Highlanders took down down the Waratahs 55-29 in Queenstown.