The Box Set
One Thousand Ropes 8.30pm, Wednesday, Rialto
Wellington-based filmmaker Tusi Tamasese’s 2017 follow-up to his superb debut The Orator is a slow-burning drama that gets under your skin and stays with you for days. At its heart, it’s the story of Maea (Uelese Petaia). Living in a cramped inner-city apartment, he works two jobs trying to make ends meet. We know the former boxer is carrying some kind of burden or guilt because of the marks on the wall where family photos might once have sat and the ghostly presence of a demon, who taunts Maea that she will find a way of rebirthing.
Cricket: NZ vs West Indies, 10.30am, Friday, Sky Sport 1
The Black Caps kick off their home summer series with this five-day match at Wellington’s Basin Reserve. Another test will follow, followed by three one-dayers and three Twenty20 matches.
Agatha Raisin 8.30pm, Saturday, Prime
Ashley Jensen (Extras) stars in this eight-part 2016 British series about a former high-flying public relations whiz who accidentally turns into an amateur sleuth when things keep happening around her in her new abode of Cotswolds village Carsely.
Beyond the Known World 8.30pm, Saturday, Rialto
A New Zealand-India co-production, this 2017 drama is an intriguing, intimate look at one fractured family’s struggle for reunification. Director Pan Nalin (Samsara) does a terrific job of evoking the sights, sounds and even smells of rural India. It also provides a terrific backdrop for the ever-watchable Dave Wenham (Top of the Lake) and Sia Trokenheim (Step
Dave) to sell the drama. While Wenham normally excels in this kind of role, Trokenheim displays a maturity and depth of performance audiences might not have seen before.
The Lives of Others 8.45pm, Saturday, Ma¯ ori TV
A superbly subtle, but gripping 1980s-set 2007 German drama that also offers a dash of paranoid, political thriller. Cinematographer Haden Bogdanski’s work is stunning – his use of fish-eye lenses, grey landscapes and light and dark are the perfect accompaniment to the action on screen, making the audience complicit in the East German authorities’ surveillance of a writer and his lover.
Four Weddings and a Funeral 9.45pm, Saturday, Three
Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell and Kristin Scott Thomas star in this 1994 romantic-comedy about the intermittent romance between a bumbling Englishman and an American woman. ‘‘A rare movie commodity, an adult comedy that takes a mostly smart, mordant approach to such topics as sex and romance, ‘‘ wrote The Philadelphia Daily News’ Gary Thompson.
The seven-day television listings are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. For the most up-to-date programme details, please see the newspaper’s daily listings.