TELEVISION
Our Picks of the Week
SATURDAY MARCH 19
JOANNA LUMLEY’S BRITAIN
Travel queen looks towards home Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm Streaming: TVNZ OnDemand
In the decade before the pandemic, Dame Joanna Lumley reeled off a string of TV travelogues, visiting Egypt, Siberia, India, the Caribbean and the Nordic countries. Then, when it became impossible to travel, she and her producers set their sights on home (this series screened in Britain as Joanna Lumley’s Home Sweet Home – Travels
in My Own Land). She was actually born in Kashmir, but, she explains, “I decided that using my traveller’s eyes, I’m going to turn that vision on to this country, the place that I now call home.” Over three episodes, she ventures from the Highlands of Scotland to the cobbles of Coronation Street, meeting the locals and marvelling at the histories.
VINYL NATION
The record revolution Screening: Sky Arts, 9.00pm
In other parts of the world, Vinyl Nation has been available in online festival screenings, with tickets often sold by and benefiting the record stores it celebrates. Here, it’s tucked away on Sky Arts. But the reaction since this US film about the vinyl revival premiered in 2020 might be enough to make some local record fans stump up for a subscription. Directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone travelled America visiting stores, observing the way the record-buying audience has changed (it’s no longer just dudes) and seeking to explain why so many will people pay top dollar to own a physical recording in an era when music itself is basically free.
SUNDAY MARCH 20
HOLDING
Criminal capers in Cork
Screening: TVNZ 1, 9.30pm Streaming: TVNZ OnDemand
When chat-show star Graham Norton published his first novel, Holding, in 2016, some reviewers liked it more than others, but nearly all agreed it was a capable debut and not just a vanity exercise. The book’s darkly comic tone and quirky characters were always going to lend themselves to a TV adaptation, and here we are. Conleth Hill ( Game of Thrones) plays Sergeant PJ Collins, who must step up and solve the first serious crime of his career after the remote Irish village of Duneen is rocked by the discovery of human remains. The cast also includes Brenda Fricker ( Home Alone), Siobhán McSweeney ( Derry Girls) and Charlene McKenna ( Peaky Blinders).
THURSDAY MARCH 24
THE NEWSREADER
Oz newsroom nostalgia Screening: eden, 8.30pm. Streaming: Full series on ThreeNow from 9.30pm.
With apologies to anyone who finds this upsetting, the 1980s are now officially the domain of period drama – and The Newsreader makes the
point by namechecking both Paul Hogan and Margaret Thatcher in its first few minutes. This award-winning ABC TV series plots itself around real-life news events of the mid-80s, some of which (the bombing of the Russell St police headquarters in Melbourne) will mean less to viewers here than they do to Australians. But its centre is the personal relationship between aspiring TV newsreader Dale Jennings (Sam Reid, Bloom) and star anchor Helen Norville (Anna Torv, Fringe), who are teamed up by their boss in an effort to shut them both up. It’s gentler in both look and tone than the legends of infamy about 80s Australian newsrooms would imply, but its six-part first season looks like a strong way for Discovery to lead out its new channel, eden. See page 70 for more eden offerings.
FRIDAY MARCH 25
HALO
Sci-fi shoot-’em-up Screening: TVNZ Duke, 9.30pm Streaming: Weekly episodes on TVNZ OnDemand
This isn’t the first live-action screen production adapted from the famous Halo
game franchise – one, Halo: Nightfall, was even made by Ridley Scott’s production company – but the others have all, more or less, been bonus content for the games themselves. This new Halo
series clearly sets its sights higher, but it has taken nearly a decade to get to television, and its original producer, Steven Spielberg, left the building years ago. Like the games, it focuses on engineered super-soldier Master Chief and his battle to save Earth from the alien religious zealots known as the Covenant. But according to executive producer Kiki Wolfkill (yes, that is her real name and she works for Microsoft), it will pursue its own story and leave the already substantial Halo
canon to itself. The producers are promising to tell more personal, human stories amid the action, so it might just be worth a watch for non-gamers, too. ▮
Films are rated out of 5: (abysmal) to (amazing)