Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY APRIL 14
New Girl (Three, 2.00pm). Not really that new any more: here’s the seventh and final season. It begins with a three-year jump: Nick (Jake Johnson) and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) are together and Schmidt and Cece are celebrating their daughter’s birthday.
SUNDAY APRIL 15
Bear’s Mission with Anthony Joshua (Choice TV, 7.30pm). Climbing Bosigran Ridge, also known as Commando Ridge, in Cornwall was “one of the hardest things I’ve done”, said Joshua, although this was before his fight with Joseph Parker. The immensely likeable boxer from Watford is well out of his comfort zone – he’s scared of heights and, at 198cm, has a high centre of gravity – in this Bear Grylls’ adventure, but throws himself into challenges such as crossing a 30m rope suspended 60m above the sea. His insurers must have had heart attacks.
2018 Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony (TVNZ 1 and TVNZ Duke, 10.30pm). It’s all over and we won hundreds of medals, probably. Go us! Toni Street, Peter Williams and Jenny-May Clarkson do the honours for the closing ceremony.
MONDAY APRIL 16
Lucifer (TVNZ 1, 9.25pm). Our favourite TV show starring the Devil, his mum, angels, a demon and a miracle child from God. What was the American Family Association so worried about? Despite a petition signed by more than 134,000 people, Lucifer launched to much acclaim in 2015 and has become a critical and popular success. You may recall that at the end of season two, Lucifer Morningstar ( Miranda’s Tom Ellis) awoke in the desert to find that dear old dad had restored his wings. Awkward. In season three, he’s trying to track down his kidnappers while continuing his work with the LAPD’s Chloe Decker (Lauren German). In other news, Smallville’s
Tom Welling joins the cast as Chloe’s new boss.
TUESDAY APRIL 17
SVU: Special Victims Unit (Three, 9.25pm). The Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo
movement was always going to be fodder for the rippedfrom-the-headlines Law &
Order spin-off, although the show could have done a story about rape culture and sexual assault in the workplace at any time during its 19 seasons. Tonight’s episode is set in the airline industry: a co-pilot ( Quantico’s Yasmine Al Massri) accuses the pilot (Martin Donovan) of assault. “Here we have a closed industry and we see how everybody has been protecting the guy for years,” showrunner Michael Chernuchin told the Hollywood Reporter. invasion of Britain in AD43; Emperor Claudius’s troops were perhaps better prepared than Julius Caesar’s a decade earlier, but still, the particular combination of warrior kings and queens and psychedelic druidism comes as a bit of a shock. David Morrissey’s General Aulus Plautius rolls into Albion, does a quick bit of slaughtering and announces that Rome is taking over. He’s going to have to deal with the Cantii and the Regni, the latter ruled by Zoë Wanamaker’s Queen Antedia, and the drugged-to-the-eyeballs druids, led by a cadaverous Mackenzie Crook. It teeters dangerously towards parody, which is perhaps why it’s fun.
Doctor Doctor (TVNZ 1, 8.35pm). The Aussie feel-good drama did well enough to be renewed, much to the relief of star Rodger Corser and Channel 9, which has been struggling with falling audiences. In season two, Corser’s bad-boy doctor is still languishing in Whyhope, while
love interest Penny (Hayley McElhinney) is in Sydney. However, that may change. To mix things up a bit, there’s a hot new doc in town: Packed to the Rafters’ Angus McLaren plays a charming former army medic who pursues Penny.
This Is Us (TVNZ 2, 9.45pm and Thursday, 9.30pm). The most tear-jerking TV series in the history of tear-jerkers has been such a huge hit with US viewers that nearly 27 million people watched its post-Super Bowl episode just to see how Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) dies, an event that has been teased since episode one. As that is 14 episodes into season two away, we have a bit of time to buy tissues and ice-cream; besides, characters are never really gone in this series, they just turn up in flashbacks. In another time-twist, creator Dan Fogelman has added flash-forwards of “the big three”, as the siblings Kate (Chrissy Metz), Randall (Sterling K Brown) and Kevin (Justin Hartley) are known. In strange guest-star news, Sylvester Stallone appears as Kevin’s co-star in a movie.
FRIDAY APRIL 20
Call the Midwife (TVNZ 1, 8.00pm). At last, something before Coronation Street that isn’t a repeat. More hatches, matches and dispatches from the East End of London: it’s 1963 and, carrying on from the Christmas special, the UK is still frozen, there are power cuts, and a new midwife joins
Nonnatus House. She’s West Indian; racism ensues. There’s devastation this season, with the loss of one of the midwives, and Sister Monica Joan’s health is deteriorating, too. Creator Heidi Thomas does put some lovely dialogue into her characters’ mouths, however. “My uniform is going to talk to your uniform, sir,” says the formidable Nurse Crane in a terse exchange with officious policeman Sgt Woolf. “Not the other way around.”
The New Legends of Monkey (TVNZ 2, 8.00pm). Hopefully, another Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, which ran for six seasons and kept half of West Auckland employed. Or a Xena: Warrior Princess, for that matter. This Australian/New Zealand/Netflix co-pro has had a wee bit of a controversial beginning, with protests about “whitewashing” – that is, European actors playing non-European characters. It’s not strictly accurate to say that the main characters are white – but none of them is Chinese, either. Some of us will have fond memories of watching nutty TV series Monkey in the 1970s and 80s, based on the 16thcentury novel Journey to the West, and this update is going for the same comedy-meetsspecial-effects feel. The four lead cast members include two Tongan New Zealanders, comedian Josh Thomson and Luciane Buchanan ( Filthy Rich), and two Australians, Chai Hansen and Emilie Cocquerel. Housebound and Terry Teo director Gerard Johnstone is on board and a slew of Kiwi actors make up the numbers, including the marvellous Rachel House. It appears the only actor of actual Chinese descent is New Zealander JJ Fong.