Television
A new channel offering home and living content will show you how to make the chookhouse home.
This week, we welcome to the television firmament the shiny happy people of ThreeLife, who are going to make living easier, more delicious and probably tidier.
The new MediaWorks channel, which replaces The Edge TV on Freeview 11, launches with a raft of Australian programmes presented by people so happy they could be Ecstasy users.
These grinning fanatics include Adrian Richardson and Janella Purcell, who kick off the channel on Sunday with their long-running series Good Chef Bad Chef (every night at 6.00pm). The pair’s recipes set the indulgent against the healthy: chef Richardson is a bit of an Aussie bloke with his meaty, beaty, big and bouncy dishes; Purcell, a nutritionist, goes for low-fat and nutritious.
Good Chef Bad Chef and Everyday Gourmet with Justine Schofield, which follows at 6.30pm, screen every night, just in time for a spot of dinner inspiration. Schofield was a contestant on the first series of MasterChef Australia and has turned her popularity into a full-time career that includes catering, column-writing and cookbooks. No wonder she’s smiling.
If you enjoy Adrian Richardson in Good Chef Bad Chef, there’s a double-dose of him on Wednesdays with Secret Meat Business (8.00pm). Having missed the memo about too much meat being bad for our insides, Richardson makes sausages and salami, and ages his own steak. His cookbook is called Meat.
Australian programmes translate well to New Zealand, says ThreeLife head of content Andrew Szusterman. “Australian content is more relevant to our audience than it has ever been and there is a demand to provide lifestyle content.”
Further improvements to our lifestyles are offered by
The Home Team, a DIY series that screens every night at 7.00pm. Leah McLeod and
Anthony Scott are going to turn a 1950s doer-upper into a thrilling neutral masterpiece.
By comparison, You Can’t Turn That Into a House (Thursday, 8.00pm) is the rock’n’roll of makeover shows. Missouri brothers Taimoor and Rehan Nana create dwellings out of unconventional structures, such as chicken coops, grain silos or storage tanks.
Szusterman is fond of pets’ night on Sundays: Bondi
Vet (7.30pm); Vet on the Hill (8.30pm), which follows Aussie vet Chris Brown in his practice in south-west London; and Endangered (9.30pm), with adventurer Lin Sutherland.
“ThreeLife is an alternative to other channels,” he says. “It’s pure and simple entertainment.”