Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY APRIL 29
Britain’s Got Talent (TVNZ 1, 7.00pm). Here they go again. Brexit may have divided the country, but everyone can agree on a performing dog, a cute kid or a magician, all three of which appear in tonight’s first week of auditions. The Missing People Choir, which includes the mum of a missing Kiwi teen, perform their heart-breaking song I Miss You. There are tears.
Dr Jeff: Rocky Mountain Vet (Animal Planet, Sky 076, 7.30pm). April 29 is World Veterinary Day. Who knew? Theme: antimicrobial resistance. Animal Planet is having a mini vet celebration with new-season episodes of Dr Jeff: Rocky Mountain
Vet and, at 8.30pm, Dr Dee: Alaska Vet. Dr Jeff is famous for his long hair, flip-flops and tattoos (although the hair came off last year when he was diagnosed with cancer). He’s also famous for his animal desexing crusade in Colorado and estimates he’s performed more than 160,000 procedures in his career, some from the mobile clinic he takes into rural areas. Dr Dee faces some pretty extreme environments and temperatures in the course of her veterinary practice in Fairbanks, Alaska, and she treats everything from bears to sled dogs, and sometimes flies to see her patients.
SUNDAY APRIL 30
Murder Calls (TVNZ 1, 9.30pm). This new Australian series features crimes in which phone calls were crucial to the investigation, and in the case of Herman Rockefeller, former chief financial officer of Brierley Investments and a friend of Prime Minister John Key, it was a phone call from his mistress to his wife that set the police on the right path. Rockefeller disappeared on a business trip in 2010, but when he didn’t return to his Melbourne home, his wife Vicky called the police.
MONDAY MAY 1
The NZ Music Month 13th
Floor Sessions (Rialto, Sky 039, 7.55pm). By crikey, customers, NZ Music Month has rolled around again, and Rialto Channel has set up a series of studio performances curated by music reviewer Marty
Duda. They begin with ukulele enthusiasts the Nukes, who hail from West Auckland and play songs of much New Zealandness. The rest of the week’s line-up comprises Lawrence Arabia on Tuesday; Yukon Era on Wednesday; Tweed on Thursday; and Tattletale Saints on Friday (all 8.00pm).
Full Steam Ahead (Choice TV, 9.30pm). Actual historians present this British goldenage-of-steam series that is, by default, the story of the creation of modern Britain. The railways brought huge change to British industry and Britons’ home and working lives, and Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn have a broad brief to look at everything from Welsh slate to Scottish whisky. The series starts with life before railways, when villages sourced everything locally.
The steam revolution enabled the distribution of products nationwide, ushering in a consumer age of standardised goods. Although much of the steam era has disappeared, there are enthusiasts and historical societies all over Britain keeping the past alive.
TUESDAY MAY 2
The 2017 Met Gala (E!, Sky 014, 11.30am). The annual fashionista event may be a fundraiser for the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but all the attention is really on what over-the-top costume Beyoncé, or any of the other A-listers, is wearing. The theme this year is Comme des Garçon founder Rei Kawakubo, as she is the subject of this year’s exhibition, so expect lots of draping and deconstruction. A Fashion Police special breaks it all down on Thursday (E!, 8.30pm).
All Star Family Feud: Olympians vs Reality Stars (Three, 7.30pm). Pitting Olympians against unwitting reality show stars could be dangerous; professional athletes are the most intensely competitive people on the planet, after all. This charity edition of the show could be a bloodbath. But wait, there’s more – Three has two All Star Family Feuds this week. Tomorrow night at the same time, it’s Comedians vs Comedians. Wellingtonian Alice Brine is the sole female comic in the line-up of Raybon Kan, Guy Montgomery, David Correos, Chris Parker, Simon McKinney, Josh Thomson and Pax Assadi.
Versailles (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Season two of the lavish (and, we should warn you, highly explicit) Brit-Franc production and King Louis XIV, having consolidated his power by confining the nobility to Versailles, is going a bit ga-ga. After all, if you put that many indolent nobles under one roof, it’s bound to get nasty. Versailles is about to enter a period known as “the affair of the poisons”, when the palace inhabitants started taking recreational powders and “love potions”, into which might easily be slipped something more nefarious. Louis (George Blagden) becomes rather paranoid and his mistress Montespan (Anna Brewster) takes the opportunity for a power grab. Louis also marries for a second time and is preparing to go to war with William of Orange, “something he’s not designed to do”, Blagden told the Radio Times. If you need a catch-up, season one screens as a box set on SoHo on Saturday (from 11.50am).
WEDNESDAY MAY 3
Doctor Doctor (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). The transtasman time slot is given over to the new Aussie dramedy that evokes the spirit of A Country Practice and The Flying Doctors – and, it has to be said, the small-town eccentricity of 800 Words. Rodger Corser takes the lead as a smart-arse Sydney surgeon who falls from grace and is sent back to his home town of Whyhope (yes, really). There’s his scheming mum (Tina Bursill), his taciturn dad (Steve Bisley), his jealous brother (Ryan Johnson), and his exgirlfriend ( Wentworth’s Nicole da Silva), who is now married to his jealous brother. So far, so typical, except that the producers behind Rake, Puberty Blues and Jack Irish do know how to put together a TV show and the rural setting makes a nice change from generic Melbourne.
FRIDAY MAY 5
Rugby League (Sky Sport 2, Sky 052, 7.15pm). The annual Anzac Test between the Kangaroos and the Kiwis kicks off in Canberra at 9.30pm, and the main event is preceded by this curtain-raiser between the Jillaroos and the Kiwi Ferns. Where the men rarely beat the Aussies (only twice since 1997), the women’s team have a better record against the Jillaroos, winning the series at the Auckland Nines in February, and triumphing in a test match last year.