Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY JUNE 16
The Great NZ Dance Masala (Three, 4.00pm). A Bollywood dance competition, how fab. Colin Mathura-Jeffree hosts a series whose makers scoured New Zealand’s Indian communities for the best contemporary dancers. The judges are James Luck, Prabha Ravi and Shawn
Thomas.
SUNDAY JUNE 17
Rick Stein’s Long Weekends (Prime, 6.00pm). More Rick Stein? Why, thank you.
Here are new episodes of his European weekend break series: it’s Greece this week, specifically Thessaloniki – try saying that after a few ouzos – in Greek Macedonia, near the birthplace of Alexander the Great and reportedly the gourmet capital of the country. Back home, he whips up
veal and aubergine stew.
Endeavour (Prime, 8.30pm). It’s 1967, and season four of Inspector Morse: the Early Years
begins with a computer science lab at Oxford that is preparing for a chess match with a Russian grandmaster and ends at a nuclear power station. In between, Morse has to play bodyguard for a Mary Whitehouse-esque moral crusader when she appears on a television show with an uncouth pop band. Both Morse (Shaun Evans) and Thursday (Roger Allam) are spectacularly morose after the disappearance of Joan Thursday (Sara Vickers), who left at the end of last season. Beautifully produced, Endeavour continues to be a ratings bonanza for ITV; a fifth
season has screened in the UK this year and a sixth has been ordered.
MONDAY JUNE 18
Instinct (Prime, 8.30pm). Nice of American network CBS to help out struggling author James Patterson with this adaptation of his book Murder Games. It does mark Alan Cumming’s return to television – and the remarkable thing is that his character is the first gay lead in a US network drama; he plays Dylan Reinhart, a former CIA agent who is now a college professor. A killer is taking cues from his book about abnormal behaviour, so he is asked by an NYPD cop (Australian actor Bojana Novakovic) to consult. Cumming’s character has many idiosyncrasies, “almost too many”, he said in an online interview, and a nice, quippy friendship develops between the two leads. In a casting coup, Whoopi Goldberg appears as Cumming’s editor.
The Collection (UKTV, Sky 007, 9.30pm). Sumptuous, melodramatic, a bit overegged, The Collection, created by Pretty Little Liars executive producer Oliver Goldstick, is House of Dior meets Dynasty: in 1947, Paris fashion house Sabine is bankrolled by the richest man in France to revive French style. Gorgeous, opulent New Look-style clothes follow, but there are all sorts of secrets and lies surrounding brothers Paul and Claude Sabine (Richard Coyle and Tom Riley) and their mother Yvette (the magnificent Frances de la Tour). Mamie Gummer, Sarah Parish and Michael Kitchen also star. The Collection was streaming service Amazon Prime’s first original UK drama, but only eight episodes were made.
TUESDAY JUNE 19
Patrick Melrose (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Just when you thought Benedict Cumberbatch was wasting his talent playing a wizard in a Marvel franchise, he produces a tour de force in this adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s semiautobiographical novels.
Patrick is a drug-addicted toff, but even when he’s trashing a New York hotel room or screaming invective at an underling, Cumberbatch still finds his deep insecurities.
The five Patrick Melrose books are adapted by novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls ( Starter for Ten and One Day) and directed by Edward Berger ( Deutschland 83), who in the first episode brilliantly evokes Patrick’s woozy drug-addled meltdowns in New York when he goes to retrieve his dead dad’s remains. Flashbacks reveal the abuse Patrick suffered at father’s hands (Hugo Weaving is particularly nasty), the reason for Patrick’s spectacular pain. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Patrick’s bullied, neglectful mother and the cast also features Blythe Danner, Celia Imrie, Pip Torrens, Jessica Raine and Allison Williams.
Versailles (SoHo, Sky 010, 9.30pm). Sumptuous, melodramatic, a bit over-egged
(No 2), the raunchy, sexed-up show returns for its third and final series of wacky intrigue, knee-tremblers and torture. It’s 1678, and despite having won the Franco-Dutch war, Louis XIV (George Blagden) might have met his match in Leopold I of Hungary
(Rory Keenan), who sets his sights on Louis’ pious wife Marie-Thérèse of Spain (Elisa Lasowski). Meanwhile, the lavishness of Versailles – Louis welcomes Leopold into the
just-completed Hall of Mirrors – is beginning to rankle with the populace and there is another mystery that the showrunners clearly couldn’t resist: a man in an iron mask who is being held in the Bastille. Versailles is a somewhat cold series, everyone is horrible, but the costumes and locations are gorgeous.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 20
Brothers in the Sand (Choice
TV, 8.30pm). A story of sibling bonding in which five British brothers attempt the horrendously tough Marathon des Sables, a six-day, 251km race across the Sahara Desert. As well as running for charity and challenge, Marcus, James, Stuart, Henry and Chris White are having a go at the gruelling race in memory of their grandmother, whose wish was that they would stay connected. The marathon is known as the toughest footrace in the world (two people have died since it began in 1986), not only because of the heat. Runners must take everything they need, including a compass, map, food and water.
FRIDAY JUNE 22
A Place to Call Home (TVNZ 1, 8.35pm). The Aussie melodrama takes a leap forward in season five – to 1958, when society is on the cusp of change and, according to the writers, the Blighs’ world of privilege is being eroded. As in Call the Midwife, the personal is political – a character who is diagnosed with cancer considers euthanasia, and Elizabeth (Noni Hazlehurst) goes into bat for Indigenous Australians who fought in the war. Villain Sir Richard (Mark Lee) is still on the scene, as is Regina (Jenni Baird), who is released from the asylum. The war still haunts the characters: saintly Sarah (Marta Dusseldorp) is confronted with a former guard from her time at Ravensbrück.
The Spinoff TV (Three, 9.45pm). The Spinoff website, itself a spin-off from traditional print media, is having a go at traditional television in this new series, albeit with one eye on the internet. Comedians Tom Sainsbury and Angella Dravid and journalists Alex Casey, Leonie Hayden and
José Barbosa present segments and commentary on current affairs, pop culture and the media. Naturally, the show will also appear on the Newshub and Spinoff websites.