TELEVISION
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY AUGUST 28
DRAMA: DEPARTURE (TVNZ OnDemand, full season). This 2019 UK-Canada thriller series centres on why a British airliner flying out of New York went down in the Atlantic. It stars Archie Panjabi ( Life on Mars and The Good Wife) as the leader of a team investigating the crash, the causes of which may involve a suspicious pilot, a possible terrorist and a lone surviving passenger. Panjabi’s boss is played by Christopher Plummer, possibly bringing into question his bureau’s retirementage policy. Plummer died earlier this year at 91, having completed filming his role in Departure’s second season, which involves a train crash. The Hollywood Reporter said the six-part first season seemed to take its cues from noughties thriller series 24, including that show’s contrivances and convolutions.
SUNDAY AUGUST 29
REALITY: MASTERCHEF AUSTRALIA (TVNZ 2, 7.00pm; Monday, 7.30pm). After 12 weeks of eliminations, the three remaining contestants face a three-round challenge over two nights to see who gets the title of MasterChef Australia 2021 and the $250,000 prize, with $30,000 and $20,000 going to the runners-up. On Sunday’s show, the trio must make entrées with “mystery box” ingredients selected by the eight chefs from the previous weekly challenges (that’s duck, passionfruit, saffron, mushrooms, kohlrabi, pandan leaves, whiting, gold chocolate and tomato ponzu) before creating a main from things randomly selected by their loved ones. On Monday, the final contest is a test set by Pete Gilmore using two dishes that feature on the menus of the two Sydney restaurants where he’s the executive chef.
TUESDAY AUGUST 31
COMEDY: ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING (Disney+). Steve Martin returns from a career lately more dedicated to writing novels and plays and playing banjo to star in this New York crime comedy alongside Martin Short and Selena Gomez. Martin is also one of the creators of the show, which skewers the era of true-crime entertainment while having three fans of the genre investigating a possible murder in the exclusive Upper West Side apartment building where they live. Martin plays Charles, an actor and the former star of a detective series. Short is a theatre director who has fallen on hard times, and former Disney kid Gomez is Mabel, a woman staying in her aunt’s apartment while it’s being renovated. The three
bond over their shared love of a truecrime series. When a neighbour is found dead from a gunshot, and police consider it a suicide, the trio start to investigate it themselves while recording their own podcast. The cast also includes Amy Ryan ( The Wire, The Office) and Nathan Lane, while episode four features an extended cameo by Sting, as himself.
TRAVEL: TRAVEL GUIDES AUSTRALIA (TVNZ 2, Tuesday to Friday, 7.30pm). For those who are missing a holiday in Oz, here are four episodes of the show in which supposedly ordinary travellers give their verdict on various locations. The four groups of stunt-tourists first head to Byron Bay, with further instalments exploring Alice Springs, the Whitsundays and Tasmania.
DRAMA: WENTWORTH (TVNZ 2, 8.30pm). Aussie women’s jail drama Wentworth has provided gainful employment for many a Kiwi actor since it began in 2013 – Robbie Magasiva has been in the show throughout, with his character, Will Jackson, rising from prison officer to governor. Now, the series begins its final lag, with a 10-episode season. Originally based on the 1980s series Prisoner, Wentworth has gained awards and critical acclaim at home as well as an international fanbase. The series begins three weeks after the stabbing of Allie (Kate Jenkinson) at the end of the previous season.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 2
REALITY: MILLION POUND PAWN (TVNZ 1, 8.45pm). Taking over the TVNZ 1 slot that has seemingly become dedicated to UK shows about conspicuous consumption is this three-part series about British pawnbrokers buying and lending on big-ticket items. In the first episode, one broker gets offered a Lamborghini by a business owner strapped for cash and another is offered a prized watch by a guy who was part of band Black Lace. It seems his royalty payments on novelty hits from the ’80s, such as Agadoo and Do the Conga, aren’t what they used to be, poor chap.
REALITY: AMBULANCE AUSTRALIA (TVNZ 2, 9.00pm). A third season for this fly-on-thewall emergency service series that follows the work of the Queensland Ambulance Service in pre-pandemic times. The first episode of eight features paramedics dealing with a heart-attack victim in a car crash, MDMA overdoses at a musical festival and a medical dispatcher talking a family through a labour.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 3
COMEDY HORROR: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (Neon; Soho, Thursdays from September 9, 8.30pm). Arguably, the better spin-off from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s 2014 vampire spoof remains the homegrown Wellington Paranormal. But the US show about a quartet of vampire housemates on New York’s Staten Island arrives at its third season after an imaginative second series and an amusingly shocking finale. The foursome of Nandor (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Colin (Mark Proksch) have found that their servant, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén), is descended from vampire killer Van Helsing, but used his powers to save them from a death sentence. It was quite a cliff hanger, and one that Clement has left the show’s US writers to sort out, as he won’t be involved in the scripts. l