Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY MAY 13
NZ Music Month 13th Floor Sessions (Rialto, Sky 039, 7.55pm). The great thing about these live sessions curated by
Marty Duda is seeing bands that we’re clearly not cool enough to have discovered on our own. Sessions this week feature folk duo the Bollands tonight at 8.00pm; Ghost Town, featuring former Fetus Productions’ Jed Town, on Sunday; Candice Milner, from the folk hothouse of Lyttelton, on Monday; former Goodshirt keyboard player Gareth Thomas on Tuesday; soul singer Aaradhna on Wednesday; country singer Kendall Elise on Thursday; and celebrated goth folkie Aldous Harding on Friday.
Siege (TVNZ 1, 10.20pm).
After his devastatingly creepy Colin Bouwer in Bloodlines, Mark Mitchinson produces another great performance as Napier gunman Jan Molenaar, who holed up in his house for 53 hours in a siege that left Senior Constable Len Snee dead and three others, including two more policemen, injured. This 2012 dramatisation also stars Joel Tobeck, Miriama Smith, Will Hall and Ray Woolf and is followed by the documentary Siege: The Real Story at 12.10am.
MONDAY MAY 15
Hyde & Seek (Three, 8.35pm). After dabbling in the thriller genre in This Is Not My Life, Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan go the whole hog with an actiony cop drama, although this transtasman creation is a lot more Aussie than Kiwi. It’s a conspiracy story in which Matt Nable’s search for his partner’s killers leads him into the murky waters of organised crime and terrorism. Lots of gunfire, lots of explosions and it features Hugh Jackman’s missus, Deborra-Lee Furness, in her first Australian television role in nearly 20 years.
Treasures Decoded (Choice TV, 8.30pm). One of those slightly annoying History Channelstyle shows with overloud music and an overloud narrator. Nevertheless, there are lots of fun facts: topics include the Easter Island heads, the Spear of Destiny, the Ark of the Covenant and Blackbeard’s ship.
Little Survivor (TVNZ OnDemand, 9.00pm). TVNZ gets on-trend, as they say, with a gabfest after the show. Matty McLean, comedian Alice Snedden and invited guests rake over the latest episodes of Survivor New Zealand.
Tennis (ESPN 2, Sky 061, 9.00pm). Rafael Nadal has won the Italian Open seven times, but it’s world No 1 Andy Murray who will be looking for his second win after last year’s stunner against Novak Djokovic. In the women’s tournament, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams both have three Italian Open titles, but with Sharapova on the comeback trail after her suspension for taking a banned drug (and controversially handed a wild card for the event), it will be Serena’s tournament to lose. Play starts today and continues during the week.
Rock and a Hard Place (SoHo,
Sky 010, 9.30pm). Put them in an army-style rehabilitation programme: Dwayne Johnson, aka the Rock, drops by to mentor a group of offenders who are going through the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Boot Camp, a programme that records an 11% recidivism rate, compared with 70% among the rest of the prison population. It’s a passion project for Johnson, who is an executive producer, as he sees parallels with his own misspent youth.
TUESDAY MAY 16
NZ Women in Rock (Prime, 8.35pm). A couple of local documentaries are hauled out of the Prime vault and dusted off: Karyn Hay’s NZ Women in Rock features some of the legends who forged a path in a tough male world. Shona Laing, Sharon O’Neill, Jenny Morris, Margaret Urlich, Anika Moa and Brooke Fraser are frank, honest and funny. The Naughty Bits at 10.10pm looks at the changing landscape of what has been deemed acceptable since Europeans arrived, beginning with the removal of penises from Maori carvings by the early settlers. The first episode, about sex and nudity, goes right up to our first gay movie, Squeeze.
The following two episodes cover banned language and the control of information.
Meet the Parents, Thursday.
THURSDAY MAY 18
George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces Snow Special (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). How good is it, being George Clarke? This week, he’s on a tiki tour of dwellings built to withstand the winters of British Columbia and Alberta.
Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled (UKTV, Sky 007, 8.35pm). Somewhere between a talk and a panel show that will make you green with envy that the UK has so many interesting people with interesting stories. Alan Davies hosts a roundtable discussion that’s basically the most brilliant dinner party conversation ever, from Stephen Fry’s anecdote about hosting Charles and Diana for tea, to Catherine
Tate explaining how Nan got her voice. At the show’s end, guests come up with a title for
the episode, hence the title of the show.
Meet the Parents (TVNZ 2, 9.30pm). The Brits are constantly trying to recreate the halcyon days of Blind
Date, when Cilla Black ruled Saturday nights and a couple could just as easily end up on an all-expenses-paid holiday in Bognor Regis as in the Maldives. Since then, there have been travesties such as Dating in the Dark, Naked Attraction, Sexy Beasts and any and all Bachelor, Bachelorettes and Married at First Sights. Meet the Parents is the kind of thing a TV producer might have dreamt up after getting drunk and watching the Ben Stiller movie: a contestant meets three sets of parents, while their embarrassed offspring look on from a concealed booth, sometimes from behind the couch.
FRIDAY MAY 19
Ocean Parks (Choice TV, 3.30pm). Mmm, underwater nature porn, and something to put the kids in front of after school without feeling guilty. A series exploring protected marine habitats, from the Bahamas to Belize. Beautiful.
Twin Peaks (SoHo Pop-up, Sky 210, 7.30pm). Not something to put the kids in front of after school, despite being 27 years old. SoHo is softening us up for the new Twin Peaks, arriving later this month, by screening the original series for all Sky subscribers. The log lady, the damn fine coffee, deaf David Lynch … bring it on.