Documentaries
For hours after the February 2011 earthquake struck Christchurch, Andy and Amber Cleverley didn’t know whether they would live. They were trapped high up in the badly damaged Hotel Grand Chancellor. They did get out, and then made their own escape by fitting out an old bus and hitting the road with their children, sharing their experiences in their Bus Life video blog. They also had another goal. They wanted to reconnect with the man they’d spent those uncertain hours talking to, an American they knew only as Jeremy. Finding Jeremy: A Story of
Escape (Prime, Tuesday, 8.35pm) is compiled from the 2018 NZ On Air-funded web series of the same name. Yes, they did find him and he was delighted to be found.
On the same night, Prime has a very different documentary. The BBC’s Killer in
Our Classroom: Never Again (9.35pm) explores the mass murder of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last year
– and the way students from the school subsequently took their “never again” message to the American Establishment.
Natural Born Hustlers
(BBC Earth, Sky 074, Saturday, 8.30pm) is a three-part series looking at trickery in the animal world, from double-crossing cuttlefish to underhand orangutans. Each episode focuses on a key challenge – survival, finding food and family life.