Television
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 30
The Block NZ Live Auction Final (Three, 7.00pm). Economic commentators, ratings agencies and the relevant NGOs will be on tenterhooks ahead of this all-important annual insight into the state of New Zealand’s property market. Award-winning journalist and after-dinner speaker Mark Richardson fronts exclusive live coverage of an event which traditionally determines the future of the entire nation. Following at 8.30pm is the new season of Married at First Sight NZ, a troubling investigation of arranged marriage among white New Zealanders.
60 Minutes (Prime, 9.35pm). The lead story here – a joint investigation into the way US legislators repeatedly hampered attempts by their own Drug Enforcement Administration to bring bad actors to account for the country’s opioid addiction crisis – actually aired in America in June, but it’s still worth watching, not least because its findings continue to reverberate in the corridors of power. On a cheerier note, Anderson Cooper hangs out with Donald Sutherland.
MONDAY OCTOBER 1
Project Runway New Zealand (TVNZ 2, 7.30pm). Project Runway has long been the reality competition format for people who can’t abide reality competition formats – the one where the bitchiness takes a back seat to real craft. Can Project Runway New Zealand pull off the same vibe? Will AUT’s Andreas Mikellis be the big-bearded Kiwi version of Tim Gunn, supportive hugs and all? Will
there be a good enough supply of interesting guest judges to keep things lively? Can our own Georgia Fowler conjure the class of Heidi Klum? Will Heidi herself make a cameo? We’ll start to find out this week, when the 14 budding fashion designers get their first chance to impress, and even if you’re not interested in the answers, our guess is that you’ll have trouble avoiding them for the next three months or so. Note also that Models of Project Runway will be conveying the view from the catwalk on TVNZ OnDemand for the duration (tvnz.co.nz/ shows).
Family Guy (TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm). A four-minute trailer for this 17th season screened at ComicCon in July and offered an array of peeks into what it will contain, which includes pop-culture jokes about Basic Instinct and Stranger Things. Not in that trailer but confirmed since: there will be an episode focusing on “fake news”, which sees perennially pathetic patriarch Peter Griffin become President Trump’s communications director. “Although this episode was written almost a year ago, fortunately Trump has done nothing since then to embarrass himself or our nation,” the show’s creators said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly.
9-1-1 (Three, 8.30pm). The Ryan Murphy-created first-responder
drama was a surprise hit in America, so gets a second season – and what looks like a considerably bigger budget. There’s no mucking about in the first episode – it kicks straight into the ultimate Los Angeles emergency, a major earthquake. How will the teams deal with the unprecedented challenges of a quake? And how will the show go without Connie Britton, whose performance as call centre chief Abby Clark made her a viewer favourite?
Take Two (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). Sam Swift (Rachel Bilson) isn’t a cop, but she used to play one on TV before the drinking got too much. Fresh out of rehab, she talks her way into shadowing private investigator
Eddie Valetik (Eddie Cibrian) – not because she particularly wants to solve mysteries, but as research for a potential comeback role. It turns out that her acting skills will come in handy.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 2
The Good Sh*t (Three, 8.30pm). Most of us are aware that “faecal transplant” is an emerging field of medical therapy and not a plot point in an alien abduction drama. But do you really know how it works? You will by the end of this three-part documentary series. It focuses on the promise of New Zealand research into getting people to swallow capsules of other people’s poo – and thus rebalance their gut microbes – as a treatment for obesity. There is early drama when the researchers face a shortage of suitable poo.
Intake (Māori TV, 8.00pm). A factual series that follows the progress of a troop of young recruits through basic training as they attempt to become soldiers in the New Zealand Army. In the first episode, 107 anxious recruits arrive at Waiouru Military Camp for basic training. They have just four days to decide whether joining the Army is for them.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 4
Renters (TVNZ 2, 8.00pm). Landlords and property managers haven’t had a great time in the press lately, so will doubtless be glad to see the return of Renters, in which they are, ostensibly, the heroes. (It doesn’t always come off quite that way to the viewer.) This season journeys from Bluff to Whangarei in search of terrible tenants.
The First (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Welcome, Sean Penn, to the exciting world of television, even if your cache is only slightly higher than Kevin Spacey’s right now, due to some injudicious comments about the #MeToo movement. However, he and his careworn face play the commander of a mission to Mars in this series from the creator of the US House of Cards, Beau Willimon. It’s slow, intense and “more about the cost of scientific exploration rather than the exploration itself” said the LA Times. Also new this week on SoHo is the latest instalment of Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story creepfest, Apocalypse (Friday, 8.30pm), which stars, incredibly, Joan Collins.