Television
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY MARCH 11
The Hui (Three, 9.30am). Current affairs series The
Hui – winner of Best Māori Programme at last year’s television awards – returns; host Mihingarangi Forbes is joined by reporters Rewa Harriman, Ruwani Perera and Raiha Johns. There’s now a full complement of Sunday morning current affairs shows: Newshub Nation, hosted by Lisa Owen, follows The Hui at 10.00am and political interview series Q+A, with Corin Dann, is back on TVNZ 1 at 9.00am. On Monday, Māori Television’s current affairs series Native Affairs also returns ( 8.00pm).
Jane (National Geographic, Sky 072, 7.30pm). This terrific portrait of anthropologist Jane Goodall features early footage of her with the chimpanzees she studied for so long.
It was shot by Goodall’s husband, Hugo van Lawick, in 1962, and only recently discovered, and it reveals their love story as well as her love of the chimps. Director Brett Morgen ( The Kid Stays in the Picture) is a genius at this sort of montage storytelling, and incredibly, he edited his movie together before interviewing Goodall, now in her eighties. Just to add to the excellence, the score is by Philip Glass.
Trauma (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Another knife-edge drama from Doctor Foster writer Mike Bartlett, who shifts perspective between his two leads, John Simm and Adrian Lester, in this psychological thriller. With such good actors, we must prepare to have our emotions toyed with, as
Simm’s grieving father targets the surgeon (Lester) who lost his son on the operating table. Is it just a case of a father needing someone to blame, or is there something else going on?
MONDAY MARCH 12
Julius Caesar with Mary Beard (Choice TV, 8.30pm). Julius Caesar was a “master of the comb-over”, quips Mary Beard in this one-off examination of the most famous Roman of them all, his legacy and influence. It appears that, apart from the military conquests, he was a PR genius who knew how to get the populace on his side with such terms as “the metropolitan elite” and sound bites such as “veni vidi vici”. Modern leaders, from dictators to elected politicians,
have used “these tactics and methods he first perfected 2000 years ago”.
Rillington Place (UKTV, Sky 007, 9.30pm). Tim Roth and Samantha Morton as a serial killer and his wife: we may have reached peak Brit-noir gloom. Roth plays John Christie who, during the 1940s and early
50s, murdered at least eight women and, in the time-honoured tradition of British serial killers, buried them under and around his house. Just as bad, he helped send his neighbour to the gallows when in all likelihood Christie had killed the man’s wife and child. The dark and dank flat at Rillington Place, Notting Hill, is designed to be a character, as it was integral to Christie’s evil work: “The house reflected the man and, in the end, the house was the keeper of his secrets,” says co-writer Ed Whitmore. Very creepy. “The black misery spreading from one man’s evil has surely rarely been better done,” said the Guardian.
TUESDAY MARCH 13
The Great British Bake Off (Prime, 7.30pm). In an incredible turn of events, the sky did not fall when British national treasure Bake Off moved from the BBC to Channel 4. Instead, it has been an unmitigated success, with new hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding (inspired choices) providing a refreshing splash of irreverence. Prue Leith is the new Mary Berry, and Paul Hollywood clearly didn’t give a fig what channel he was on. Wisely, the format remains unchanged: cakes, biscuits, bread, puddings and pastry are to be attempted, although we are looking forward to new “forgotten bakes” week, in which the challenges are Bedfordshire clangers, Cumberland rum nicky, and a Victorian Savoy cake.
Miami Vice (Jones! Too, Sky 208, 8.30pm). Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas wore five to eight different outfits in
Miami Vice, Tuesday. an average episode of Miami Vice, all in a colour palette designed to match the art deco pastels of Miami (no earth tones were allowed). Written for an MTV audience and featuring hits of the 80s, the show was a television turningpoint, which means, ironically, that it is now so dated it hurts. Here’s season two, which features cameos by Eartha Kitt, Phil Collins and Frank Zappa.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 14
For the People (TVNZ On Demand). The Shondaland train keeps on chuggin’ along, although For the People (and the upcoming Station 19, a Grey’s Anatomy spin-off starring Miranda Bailey’s husband) sticks to its genre template.
It’s a legal drama created by Scandal writer Paul William Davies that follows newbie public defenders and prosecutors who work at the Southern District of New York. Experienced support comes from Hope Davis, Vondie CurtisHall, Anna Deavere Smith and Ben Shenkman. This isn’t the only new show debuting on
TVNZ OnDemand: Deception (Monday) features a Las Vegas magician (Brit Jack CutmoreScott) who works with the FBI to solve all their illusion-based crimes. Of course he does. To be fair, it’s a comedy crime caper that also stars Vinnie Jones. Documentary series Mafia’s Greatest Hits looks at all the movers and shakers of the US Mafia and arrives online on Thursday.
THURSDAY MARCH 15
Our Dream Hotel (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Is it a help or a hindrance to have The Hotel Inspector’s Alex Polizzi documenting your newbie attempt to set up a hotel or guesthouse? At least they’re in some interesting locations, such as Orkney, Grenada, rural Turkey and France.
The Looming Tower (SoHo,
Sky 010, 8.30pm). Bold claims have been made about this 9/11 mini-series before it even debuted in the US: it “could be the key to understanding our national paranoia”, said Vanity Fair, for one. Based on Lawrence Wright’s 2006 book, the mini-series dramatises the lead-up to the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 and, in particular, the failure of communication between the CIA and the FBI. Documentarian Alex Gibney directs actors for the first time in the first episode, although he uses plenty of news footage, such as an ABC interview with Osama bin Laden from 1998. Jeff Daniels plays the larger-than-life FBI agent John O’Neill, who was pushing for a deeper investigation into al Qaeda and bin Laden; Peter Sarsgaard is a CIA agent unwilling to share intelligence; and Alec Baldwin plays CIA boss George Tenet.