Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY JUNE 30
Antiques Roadshow (Prime, 6.00pm). A special episode of Antiques Roadshow that aired in the UK on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27, last year. Fiona Bruce meets a group of British survivors who speak about life under Hitler. Objects that help tell their stories include family silver hidden from the Nazis, a pair of striped trousers worn in Auschwitz and a gold coin used by a fleeing family. In a break with tradition, the items are not valued. The episode was nominated for a Bafta, but lost to Cruising with Jane McDonald.
Great British Railway Journeys (Living, Sky 017, 8.30pm). It’s not about the trains, Michael Portillo told Kim Hill recently, it’s really about history and change. Certainly, there’s been a lot of change in Manchester since trains first appeared. Portillo begins season five in the world’s first industrialised city on a journey that will end in Birkenhead, Merseyside. He detours to Port Sunlight, built by
Lever Brothers to accommodate workers and named after the famous detergent. The season is an exploration of the north of England and the other great train journeys are Southport to Leyland; Preston to
Rochdale; Haworth to Huddersfield; and Honley to Chesterfield.
Chicago Med (Three, 8.40pm). The good old medical drama series; television producers have recognised their value ever since Dr Finlay’s Casebook and Dr Kildare. Dick Wolf knows it, having added Chicago Med to his Chicago franchise in 2015 and enjoyed three successful seasons (and NBC has renewed it for a fourth). If it’s a little difficult to tell them apart, one of Chicago Med’s points of difference is the great Oliver
Platt, who plays slightly wacky psychiatrist Dr Charles. As season three begins, he is recovering from being shot by a patient, which is perhaps not a good reflection on his skills. We are blessed with the return of two US medical drama series this week: season three of Code Black (TVNZ 1, 8.35pm) begins on Wednesday; this one is based on the 2013 featurelength documentary of the same name. It was made by an ER doctor in training at the Los Angeles County General Hospital, said to be the birthplace of emergency medicine, but also often overcrowded and under-resourced. The TV show certainly looks realistically crowded and frantic, amid the inspirational doctors (Marcia Gay Harden, Rob Lowe) and newbie interns.
SUNDAY JULY 1
Dancing with the Stars NZ (Three, 7.00pm). We picked Real Housewife Gilda Kirkpatrick as a possible champion and she was eliminated first, so that eliminates us from guessing the winner. The final four are on the floor tonight, but the rest of the dancers will return to shake their booties for the last time.
MONDAY JULY 2
All Star Family Feud (Three, 7.30pm). It’s the old Westies versus the new: a Westside versus Outrageous Fortune episode of All Star Family Feud. It’s promotion for the new season of Westside, which is coming soon, but still, it will be fun to see Siobhan Marshall, Nicole Whippy, Tammy Davis and John Leigh up against Westside’s Antonia Prebble, Reef Ireland, Dan Musgrove and Esther Stephens.
TUESDAY JULY 3
Elizabeth (Prime, 7.30pm). It’s
difficult not to feel that there’s a spot of obituarising going on: Elizabeth II, Queen of England and all she surveys, reached her Sapphire Jubilee last year and is the longest-reigning British monarch. She is 92 and, if she’s anything like her mum, could go on for another nine years. However, when the inevitable occurs, Britain’s Channel 5 has got an eightpart series in the can. Yes, eight parts covering from her earliest years as third in line to the throne looking forward to a comfortable life of minor royal engagements and horse breeding to her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. She has seen huge changes in British society, appointed 13 prime ministers and seen the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth, but will there be anything here that we don’t already know? Highly unlikely, my dears.
Nanakia (Māori TV, 9.00pm). Māori Television is launching several new shows for the Matariki season – it is a time to stay warm indoors and tell stories, after all – including this adventure series starring Chey Milne, Kimo Houltham and Tiare Tawera. The trio compete in all sorts of physical challenges, such as wakeboarding, parachuting and deep-sea fishing, with the loser subject to a humiliating “consequence”. There are also new episodes of Haka Life (Wednesday, 8.00pm), which follows top kapa haka group Ngā Tūmanako as they train for the Te Matatini 2019 – but first, they have to qualify at