Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 1
Richie McCaw: Chasing Great (Prime, 8.30pm). The New York Times was not impressed. “Fawning”, “soft”, “superficial” wrote its reviewer, dismissing this slick, muchhyped doco in three scathing paragraphs. The NZ Herald was more charitable, but made the observation that “essentially Chasing Great is a faith-based movie designed for followers of our national religion”. Still, that’s a mighty big congregation. And this is an hour and 45 minutes of Our Richie, and the first time Chasing Great has been on free-to-air TV.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 2
The Zoo: Bronx Tales (Animal Planet, Sky 076, 6.40pm). As zoo shows go, this is a goodie. Our host is a friendly bear of a manager who has been working at the biggest urban zoo in the US since he was 14. We’re well and truly behind the scenes: in the kitchens with the crew preparing slurry for penguin chicks (gross); coaxing Malayan tiger cubs into a carrier cage (cute); and checking on the progress of an alpha-male gorilla, which has just had laser surgery for glaucoma.
The Truth About Sleep (Prime, 7.30pm). Listener readers will be familiar with the presenter: Michael Mosley, he of the 5:2 fasting diet, the eight-week blood-sugar diet and, more recently, Clever Guts, a book all about the microbiome. Turns out Mosley’s also a chronic insomniac. In this hour-long doco he treks through the newest sleep science, from the sensible – try mindfulness, get plenty of natural light, turn your ruddy cell phone off – to the rather weird. Cup of coffee right before a nap? Couple of kiwifruit for a nightcap? Apparently so. He also takes a quick look at how genes can influence sleep – and how we can adjust accordingly. Mosley pops up again later in the week in
The Truth About Getting Fit (Choice, Thursday, 9.30pm). He drills home the very welcome message that if you do it right, two or three minutes of exercise is all a person needs each week. Again, though, genes are in play. Mosley explains how one in five of us are dubbed “non-responders” because exercise seems not
to have an influence on our aerobic fitness.
Hidden (Rialto, Sky 039, 8.30pm). Guardian reviewer Graeme Virtue pitches this eight-episode Welsh noir as a perfect option for those pining for The Bridge. “It features heinous crimes committed under overcast skies, together with scenes in Welsh to provide that sweet Nordic subtitles hit.” To quite brutally précis: a girl is found dead in a stream, with forensics indicating she was imprisoned for years before her death. Other girls are going missing. Enter Sian Reese-Williams as Detective Inspector Cadi John, who has just moved home to North Wales to care for her ailing father, also a former top cop.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 4
Shop Well For Less (TVNZ 1, 7.30pm). On the back of the Brits’ Eat Well For Less, a similarly good-natured show
about busting myths and breaking habits. Hosts Alex’n’Steph are with a young Yorkshire family who love their labels but have been unable to find the cash to reinstall a bathroom that’s already been ripped out. Diagnosis: “too much month at the end of their money”. The show is peppered with camera-friendly tutorials about how we’re parted with our money: trampers are hosed down to test budget waterproof jackets against their branded counterparts; the largely unworn designer wardrobe of 15-monthold Dolly is wheeled out and priced at £1200; dolls are walked through a blackboard shopping “maze”. But the best bit is before the lessons begin, when we observe Mum and Dad in their natural environment – the mall – and get to feel ever so slightly superior as they drop £420 on impulse buys. “A whopping” is used three times in 30 minutes.
Millennium Teens (TVNZ 1, 8.45pm). Seven Kiwi babies born at the beginning of 2000 were filmed by documentary makers at six weeks old, and revisited three years down the track. Now they’re about to hit 18, and the cameras are back. The doco is framed around that ludicrous, ubiquitous question: nature or nurture? They can’t even begin to unpick it, of course, but what comes through instead is much more interesting. We’re reminded just how fast 15 years can flash by, and how lovely the world was back when Trump was building hotels, not walls, and climate change still felt like a hypothetical.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5
Mayans M.C. (SoHo, Sky 010, 9.30pm).
Still missing Jax Teller? Same. Here’s the next-best thing: a Sons of Anarchy spin-off set two and a half years after Teller’s final ride, with a lead actor who has all of Charlie Hunnam’s … let’s say “charisma”. JD Pardo plays EZ Reyes, a golden boy whose American dream is in tatters. He’s gone from Stanford to prison to prospecting for an outlaw motorcycle club – and, knowing Sons creator Kurt Sutter, things are only going to get worse. We’re not in Charming anymore. Instead, welcome to southern California, right on the border with Mexico, where Reyes falls in with a chapter of the Mayans. Familiar
faces? Emilio Rivera still reigns supreme as Mayans president Marcus Alvarez. Here’s hoping for a catch-up with Chibs and Tig, too.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6
Bad Teen to Ballroom Queen (TVNZ 2, 9.30pm) Eight out-ofcontrol British teens head off to ballroom bootcamp. Every week, they’re judged on their dancing – and decorum – and the series winds up with the “bad” teens dancing in a proper ballroom competition. Think lots of teenaged flouncing, tears, poorly applied foundation and absent self-control. Sixteen-year-old Lauren tells the camera that, straight off the bat, she didn’t like the look of the teachers, ballroom legends Lorna and Mick Stylianos. “Then they started talking; I started to hate them more.” Mick fumes and shouts but poor Lorna spends a lot of time just looking stunned. “Oh my God,” she says, quite often. “We have got our work cut out for us.”