Your guide to the week’s best TV
PICK OF THE WEEK
Tales From the Tour Bus, SoHo, 10.30pm tonight ‘Print the legend’ might not always be the best advice, but in the case of Mike Judge’s animated music history series,
Tales From the Tour Bus, it seems to work pretty well.
The episodes, which Judge narrates in a voice instantly familiar as that of Hank from King of the Hill, present musical histories the way they’re always best told: with the emphasis on hilarious and outrageous anecdotes, the ones which may or may not be 100 per cent true.
The first series was a wild, funny and at times surprisingly moving introduction to some of the larger-thanlife cult figures from the golden age of American country music. With series two, Judge has assembled some of the world’s funk greats to hazily recall their glory years, starting with the Godfather of Funk George Clinton. The half-hour episode does actually manage to provide a decent overview of Clinton’s complicated musical career, from his doo wop group The Parliaments, turned down by Motown for being “too ugly”, to the acid-soaked heights of Parliament and Funkadelic, even touching on his legacy and influence on hip-hop as one of the genre’s most sampled artists.
But it’s the stories that set the series apart, told entertainingly through a combination of interviews, animated reenactments and archival footage. Like the time the band, driving through the night to their next show, out of their heads on LSD, were scared half to death by a horde of zombies. It turned out they had accidentally driven onto the set of
Night of the Living Dead.
Mostly unprintable, often completely unverifiable, very vague on dates and facts — and one of the best music documentaries of this or any other year.
WORTH WATCHING
Das Boot, TVNZ On Demand Hard to think about Das Boot (German for ‘the boat’) without thinking of that episode of Peep Show where Mark tries to make Sophie watch the classic 1981 film version, all two and a half hours of it. This new TV adaptation — actually more like a sequel, taking place after the events of the film — might look a bit more manageable, but it’s still probably a good idea to ask any potential love interests how they feel about grim submarine based World War II dramas before you pop on the first episode.