Television
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY JANUARY 19
Midsomer Murders (Prime, 7.30pm). The beloved whodunnit returns for its 20th season with a new character in the mix: pathologist Dr Fleur Perkins (Annette Badland). Neil Dudgeon, who plays the indefatigable DCI Barnaby, says the show’s writing team “thought it would be interesting to introduce a character who would test Barnaby, somebody with whom he would have a more provocative relationship, and Fleur does just that”. The season opener introduces Dr Perkins through the case of a man found boiled to death in a new local brewery’s kettle vat. Is it the upshot of a centuries-old curse on the ancient abbey where the brewery has made its home? Or just too many hops? As an extra treat, there’s a cameo from musical theatre legend Elaine Paige. The anniversary season features quite a crop of guests as it unfolds. In a forthcoming episode, comedian Bill Bailey turns up as a reclusive animator in a mystery centred on a comics convention which sees the village thronged by cosplayers.
SUNDAY JANUARY 20
Dynasties (TVNZ 1, 7.00pm) The latest David Attenborough nature series is family television in an unexpected sense: it’s about families. For Dynasties, the BBC Natural History Unit identified specific family groups of animals about to face a significant challenge and followed their fortunes over two years. This isn’t Attenborough on the glory and interconnectedness of nature – there are no phosphorescent plankton – but a close, intentionally relatable look at big animals and their lives. The second episode, about a group of emperor
penguins struggling through an Antarctic winter, caused a mild controversy after the BBC played up the film crew’s intervention to help stranded penguin babies out of a ravine by cutting a ramp in the snow. It seemed a departure from the let-nature-take-itscourse philosophy of BBC nature documentaries – and into reality TV territory – but viewers were seemingly relieved. The first of the five episodes focuses on a group of chimpanzees on the edge of the Sahara in Senegal and on the struggle of the group’s ageing leader, David, to retain his position.
House Rules (Three, 7.00pm). The backyard round of the Aussie home renovation contest is being rolled out in double episodes over four nights this week – yes, it’s summer – as four teams seek to make the best of instructions that range from “Turn the old shed into a pub” to “Design a haven for body and soul”. After tonight’s 7.00pm kickoff, episodes air from Monday to Wednesday at 7.30pm.
Real Time With Bill Maher (SoHo2, Sky 210, 9.30pm). Maher pretty much wished a pox on everyone when he signed off the 16th season of his show last year. Now that he’s had a few weeks off to decompress and concentrate on his cannabis hobby, will the contrarian comedian return with a new, uplifting vibe? Big call, but we say it’s unlikely.
MONDAY JANUARY 21
Seven Sharp (TVNZ 1, 7.00pm). Perhaps with an eye on how The Project, its more relaxed, team-handed competitor on Three, has begun to close the ratings gap, Seven Sharp is promising to return with “an all-new look and feel” for 2019. Working theory: something to do with Lime scooters.
Lonely Planet: Roads Less Travelled (Choice TV, 7.30pm). The
internet might have gradually relieved the Lonely Planet travel books of their near-biblical status, but the company still has hundreds of authors out in the world providing travel tips. This 13-part reality series focuses not on the travel, but the writers themselves. It’s a bit dated, but this is its first airing here on free-to-air TV.
TUESDAY JANUARY 22
1968: The Year that Changed America (Prime, 8.30pm). Another one from the Tom Hanks media memory factory, but this time, largely because it devotes four episodes to a single, crucial year, rather than an entire decade, it’s more intense and detailed. The series, originally produced for CNN, packs in a lot of previously unseen archive footage along with signal pop-culture moments (The Beatles, The Stones and James Brown serving up I’m Black and I’m Proud) to argue that the year’s events not only shaped modern America, but defined new political and social fault lines that determine its conflicts today. Each episode tells the story of a different season and the first covers winter of that year, as the conflict in Vietnam turned and the campaign for a historic presidential election began to heat up.
Zealandia: Working Women of New Zealand (Viceland, Sky 013, 9.35pm). This look at the lives of women working in the sex industry 15 years after prostitution was legalised finds a range of experiences, from an upmarket Wellington
brothel to the cold streets of Christchurch. It also discovers that, happy in their work or not, sex workers still battle stigma. Originally produced by the Vice New Zealand team for a suffrage year project, the film now gets a TV release.
THURSDAY JANUARY 24
Black Monday (Soho2, Sky 210, 8.30pm). As the world enters a new year anxious about the prospect of another financial crisis, what could be more heart-warming than a dark comedy about the OG of modern financial crises, the crash of October 19, 1987? There’s a hint of The Deuce in the way Black Monday uses the disorderly New York of the 1980s as a backdrop – and some undoubted star power in the casting of Don Cheadle in the lead as disruptive black stockbroker Maurice Monroe. Cheadle is also an executive producer, along with David Caspe ( Happy Endings) and Seth Rogen. Expect cocaine and cuss words.
FRIDAY JANUARY 25
The Split (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm).
After an encouraging run on TVNZ OnDemand, the UK drama about a family firm of divorce lawyers obliged to confront their own murky history gets a run on broadcast TV. The setup comes in the first episode, as Hannah’s father, Oscar (Anthony Head), walks back into everyone’s lives after a 30-year absence. Starring Nicola Walker ( Spooks, Collateral) and Stephen Mangan ( Hang Ups, Green Wing). A second series is reportedly being finished for this year.