What to watch on Sky and free-to-air TV this week
New Zealand gets its own The Masked Singer, also 2nd Chance Charlie and The Apprentice are back too, writes Alex Behan.
The recent Bachelor/ Bachelorette seasons may have you concerned reality television perhaps isn’t the right place to find everlasting love, but it’s the right place to dress up as a giant tuatara and sing your heart out.
The Masked Singer NZ (beginning on Sunday, 7pm, Three) might end up being the surprise success this year, with Rhys Darby leading a team of detectives sleuthing through the Tuatara, Monarch Butterfly, Possum et al, as they unmask 12 highly decorated performers.
Everybody deserves a second chance, especially 2nd Chance Charlie (Thursday, 9.30pm, Three) which returns to give five rugby players who believe they still have a shot at the big time a chance to strut their stuff. Successful applicants are mentored by host Joe
Naufahu, who will put them through their paces and charge them through a rigorous training programme. One player will win a threemonth professional development programme and $15,000 prize money.
While some of us were perfecting sourdough starters, others merely turned into dough and became perfectly sour. Nick Cave spent his lockdown creating the third film in his surprise cinema trilogy. Filmed in isolation in Alexandra Palace, Nick Cave: Idiot Prayer (Saturday, 8pm Sky Arts) finds the troubled troubadour performing 22 career-spanning songs over 84 spellbinding minutes, alone with his grand piano in the absolute grandest of locations.
A salacious period drama, Colette (Sunday, 8.30pm, Ma¯ ori TV) tells the story of a turn-of-the-20th-century writer who inspired a generation of young women in France. It is based on the life of SidonieGabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley), a gifted author who penned a series of successful novels under her husband’s name. In her fight for professional recognition, she finds her complicated personal life and high-profile marriage the subject of intense public interest.
Widely regarded as the finest stage actor of his generation, Mark Rylance’s late, great burst into cinema is largely down to the delicate courting of Steven Spielberg. Casting him as Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies helped Rylance win an Oscar and immediately following its success, the two teamed up again, this time to bring to life one of literature’s most loveable characters. The BFG (Sunday, 6pm, TVNZ2) is every bit as scary, exciting and heartwarming as Roald Dahl himself could have dreamed.
After a previous host of the United States version of the show accidentally became president of the US, Mike Pero will be stepping carefully in his new role as host of The Apprentice Aotearoa
(Monday, 8.30pm, TVNZ 1). Sixteen contestants will fight it out in the boardroom over 12 weeks for the chance to win $50,000 to invest as they wish. Hopefully it brings about some unusual, unique ideas and doesn’t accidentally start a ‘‘Pero for PM’’ campaign.
Although her time making music was short, her legacy is long. The brief, bright life of Janis Joplin is captured in Janis: Little Girl Blue
(Monday, 8.30pm, Ma¯ ori TV). A woman who felt more than most and poured those feelings ferociously into her art, this documentary from Amy J Berg (West of Memphis)
features interviews, performances and chronicles the singers’ rapid rise and her lifelong battle with substance abuse.