Drama for everyone
Fairfax’s picks out the best on the box for the week ahead.
James Croot Beautiful Collison
The end of the world has never looked more haunting or beautiful than in Lars Von Trier’s 2011 operatic science-fiction thriller Melancholia. Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg play sisters whose troubled relationship decays even further as a planet called Melancholia heads on a collision course with Earth. Evocative and provocative. ‘‘Firmly rooted in the filmmaker’s esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic – lush, ripe, rich, delicious,’’ wrote the Los Angeles Times’ Betsy Sharkey.
Saturday, 8.30pm, Maori TV The Irish Rover
Adventure journalist Simon Reeve embarks on a two-part, 2015 journey of discovery in Ireland with Simon Reeve. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, he meets a variety of its people while uncovering a place of myths, legends and spirituality, alongside a modern state still attempting to work out its identity and values.
Sunday, 7.30pm, Prime Smith shines in dark drama
Sheridan Smith, Siobhan Finneran and Gemma Whelan star in the new, two-part British drama The Moorside, based on the 2008 disappearance of 9-year-old Shannon Matthews. ‘‘It’s getting boring, plus hard to avoid cliches, when gushing about Smith – her range, her extraordinary humanness, her ability not just to play someone but to inhabit them, to be heroic without being sentimental. But she is, to nick one of her own lines, ‘f…ing brilliant, or what’,’’ wrote The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston
Sunday, 8.30pm, Rialto Wrong girl, right actress
Based on the best-selling novel by Zoe Foster Blake, the 2016 Aussie drama The Wrong Girl stars Jessica Marais as Lily, the producer of a cooking segment on a morning television show who is trying to sort out her career and love life, without much success. ‘‘Like the novel on which it’s based, The Wrong Girl is pure, unashamed chick lit. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that,’’ wrote The Sydney Morning Herald’s Melinda Houston. ’’Tens of millions of women all over the world – and a few blokes – adore tales of loveable twentysomethings grappling with workplace challenges and personal insecurities while acquiring Mr Right. And the good stuff in the genre also provides a framework for some pretty sharp social observations – as Ms Austen knew only too well. Here, there’s a wonderful attention to detail and a determination to surprise us.’’
Monday, 8.30pm, Three
What if WWII went differently?
The new, five-part British drama SS-GB reimagines a world where World War II’S Battle of Britain has ended in victory for Hitler’s Germany and the population of 1940s Britain are struggling to adjust to life under Nazi occupation. Based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Len Deighton, it stars Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth. ‘‘A terrifically engaging thriller,’’ wrote The Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries.
Monday, 9.30pm, UKTV.