Television
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY DECEMBER 9
Queen of the World (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). Or, more specifically, Head of the Commonwealth, as this doco focuses on this league of nations, Queen Elizabeth II’s role at the top of it and Meghan Markle as a modernising breath of fresh air. As evidence: the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding veil, with its 53 embroidered flowers representing the 53 Commonwealth countries (kōwhai for New Zealand, in case you were wondering).
My Kitchen Rules New Zealand (TVNZ 2, 7.30pm). The final of My Kitchen Rules New Zealand takes place at the fanciest of fancy restaurants, the French Café in Auckland. The two teams compete for the attentions of guest judges Nadia Lim, Ray McVinnie, Tom Hishon and the cafe’s former owner, Simon Wright. The winners take home bragging rights and $100,000. MKRNZ isn’t the only culinary competition coming to a conclusion this week: Britain’s Best Home Cook will be decided on Wednesday (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). The winner takes home bragging rights.
Raised without Rules (Vibe, Sky 006, 7.30pm). In the UK, it was called the dog-whistle title Feral Families and, naturally, the Sun and the Daily Mail, after an extensive trawl of Twitter, answered the call: “viewers were horrified to see seven-year-old Jessica have her hair dyed purple by her mum”, raged the former; “viewers have reacted in fury to a documentary exploring the lives of families who let their children skip school, dye their hair and live a life devoid of rules”, screamed the Mail. The doco follows three sets of parents who are “unschooling” their kids, including the Rawnsleys in Yorkshire, who have seven children. It’s a conscious choice, says mum Gemma: “It’s about letting them make decisions, it’s not a feckless attitude where we sit back and let it all happen.”
MONDAY DECEMBER 10
Get a Room with Carson & Thom (Bravo, 7.30pm). Netflix might have rebooted Queer Eye for the Straight Guy without them, but there’s still life in original Fab Five
members Carson Kressley and Thom Filicia, who front this new home-design series with their usual hilarity and flamboyance. Each week, they do a large and small project with a correspondingly large and small budget. Filicia is an established interior designer in New York, but Carson is more a gifted amateur. This week, they deal with a former interior designer who struggles to hand over control, and a guy who just came out and wants to transform his studio apartment.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 11
Clash of the Collectables (Prime, 7.30pm). Antiques Roadshow’s ceramics expert Eric Knowles slums it in Australia with well-known dealer Alan Carter in this competition-style series that doubles as a travel show. They hunt for bargains, culminating in an auction that decides the winner. In the first episode, they’re in Sydney, where Knowles picks up fragments of a woolly mammoth and takes a gamble on a famous art print. Other locations in the 10-part series
include the southern highlands of NSW, Canberra and Queensland.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 12
800 Words (TVNZ 1, 8.45pm). Sadly, the end of the Kiwi-Aussie co-pro forever. It may not have set the world on fire, but it was charming viewing nonetheless, and there’s precious little New Zealand drama on air as it is. Star Erik Thomson, who won a Silver Logie for his role as George Turner, was not happy at the cancellation: “800 Words could have run for more seasons,” he told TV Week. “Networks these days are interested in the shiny new ball, but not always in ways to keep that ball shiny.” Maybe TVNZ On Demand could screen the Dutch remake, which, perhaps in a nod to the original, relocates the story to Zeeland and is called Zomer in Zeeland (Summer in Zeeland).
THURSDAY DECEMBER 13
Jono and Ben’s Big Stupid Quiz (Three, 9.55pm). Oh, boy, do you really want to be on national TV answering questions you haven’t heard since you were at school in the 80s? Madeleine Sami, Guy Williams and Mark Richardson are doing just that in this two-part comedy special. At least Three has found something for unemployed bums Jono and Ben to do before they hit the job market after Christmas. In other end-of-year
programming, 7 Days looks back with a Best of 2018 on Friday (9.00pm).
FRIDAY DECEMBER 14
King Lear (Soho 2, Sky 210, 7.30pm). Anthony Hopkins, 80, raging one minute, defeated and frightened the next.
The esteemed film, theatre, television and opera director
Sir Richard Eyre has made a Lear for the times, set in a militarised Britain where the ageing ruler makes a balls-up of dividing his kingdom. Lear’s retinue are brutish soldiers and Eyre uses locations as diverse as Dover Castle and a Stevenage shopping precinct where, reportedly, Hopkins was mistaken for a homeless person. In a nod to the refugee crisis, there are scenes in a container camp. At two hours, the narrative can be choppy, but with a cast that includes Emma Thompson, Emily Watson and Florence Pugh as Goneril, Regan and Cordelia; Jim Broadbent as Gloucester; Jim Carter as Kent; Andrew Scott as Edgar; John Macmillan as his scheming brother Edmund; Tobias Menzies as Cornwall; and Christopher Eccleston as Oswald, not to mention a towering performance from Hopkins, it’s hard to go wrong.
Berlin Station (Soho, Sky 010, 8.30pm). The excellent spyversus- spy drama series returns and what fertile ground there is; it seems the writers barely had to make up anything, according to new showrunner Jason Horwitch. “Every morning in the writers’ room, we’d cringe at headlines about the current administration’s waning support of Nato alongside massive Russian military exercises around the Baltics,” he told Deadline. com. “If America wavers from its post-war pedestal of moral authority and role as world police, where does that leave the CIA?” Returning are Michelle Forbes as Berlin Station’s chief, Richard Jenkins, Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans and Ashley Judd, and new on the scene is James Cromwell, who plays a former CIA legend who publicly reveals information about past missions. If you need a reminder of what the show is all about, Soho is having a season-two marathon on Saturday from 11.30am.