From Dr Carter to the Library
It has been nearly 15 years since Noah Wyle played Dr John Carter, and he’s still trying to make sense of it all, writes Dani McDonald.
Le Ride, Wednesday, 8.30pm, Rialto
New Zealand-born US reality show host Phil Keoghan gets it almost spot on with his own amazing race in this 2016 documentary. Eager to learn more about the incredible feats of four Australasian cyclists (including fellow Cantabrian Harry Watson), Keoghan and mate Ben Cornell ride the infamous 1928 Tour de France course. With punishing timetables, and dangerous roads and descents, organisers designed routes aimed at testing riders. The warts-and-all approach to filming is endearing, while Keoghan makes for a genial guide.
Strike Back, Tonight, 9.30pm, SoHo
Shot on location in Jordan and Hungary with a new cast portraying members of the revived Section 20, the fifth season of the popular military drama features this new team facing new threats and enemies. Disavowed and disbanded, the Section programme is restored to track down a notorious terrorist following a brutal prison break. Tasked with covert military intelligence and high-risk operations, the resurrected unit embarks on a lethal manhunt that will uncover a vast web of interconnected criminal activity.
Superbowl LII, Monday, From noon, ESPN and Duke
The 52nd clash for American Football supremacy this year takes place at Minneapolis’ US Bank Stadium in Minnesota. Chucking around the pigskin are the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, while the half-time entertainment is scheduled to include Justin Timberlake, while Pink will perform the National Anthem.
Topp Country, Thursday, 8pm, TVNZ1
New series of this popular Kiwi show, which sees Lynda and Jools Topp journeying around New Zealand, meeting passionate food producers, home cooks and lovers of life.
Una, Saturday, 8.30pm, Rialto
Ben Mendelsohn and Rooney Mara star in this 2017 drama. An adaptation of David Harrower’s 2005 play Blackbird, Benedict Andrews’ film is the story of a young woman who tracks down the man who had an unlawful relationship with her. Told with restraint, nuance and style. – James Croot
Hollywood actor Noah Wyle was just 23 when he jumped on the ‘‘11-year train ride’’ with ER. The medical drama that ran 15 seasons, and became the most nominated show ever, picked him up and, eventually, as he puts it, dumped him out at a different spot, as a different person.
‘‘Everything changed,’’ he recalled. ‘‘Every relationship, not just with people, but your relationships, what you drive, where you live and the clothes you wear and the foods you eat, everything changes when you get caught up in something like that.’’
Dr John Carter left our televisions in season 11 to follow his love to Sudan. Wyle, too, left our television screens to follow his love – his newborn son Owen, now 15.
The train ride that consumed 90 hours a week needed to be greatly reduced. He called it, ‘‘a divorce with visitation rights’’.
He’s now a dad-of-three, has starred in a number of television shows, opened his own theatre company and is executive producer – and star – of his current television hit The Librarians.
While many more figurative trains have come and gone, none were quite as transformational for Wyle as the ER express.
‘‘Every single person that knows you, suddenly now knows somebody famous. I was not necessarily the best student, I was not necessarily the favourite kid, I wasn’t necessarily the most responsible or the most ambitious, and suddenly when you get given celebrity you get anointed with all these lovely qualities that you don’t have necessarily, but everyone assumes you must because you’re successful,’’ he said.
‘‘It was such a wonderfully rich kind of juggernaut experience for me that even after all this time I’m still trying to get a little perspective on what happened.’’
The once-unknown actor who waited tables during his dry spells was suddenly recognised in the farthest reaches of the globe.
‘‘You don’t feel any different, but everybody’s perception of you changes. It takes a little while both to realise that that’s all fake and projection, and it takes a little while to re-calibrate who you really are when you come out the other side because for a little while you don’t have a sense.’’
It hasn’t been all negative, though. Wyle put his celebrity status to use in 2012 when he was part of a group that illegally occupied a Washington DC office with Adapt– a disability rights organisation – as a way to lobby against the Bush Government’s decision to remove Medicaid.
‘‘I did it the first time because it’s not a very sexy charity, helping people with disabilities get a little bit more money so that they can afford aid to come to their homes a couple of hours a week,’’ he said.
‘‘It was less about the medicine and the politics and more about the ramifications of a very stupid, shortsighted decision that brings really horrible consequences in these people’s lives, so occasionally you want to use your celebrity to shine a little light on something that nobody is going to shine a light on otherwise.’’
It was inevitable that he would get arrested, with more than 100 others, but he remembers it as a dramatic and beautiful moment.
And at his first opportunity, Wyle called his son to explain his arrest. ‘‘Before I had even finished he said, ‘Dad I’m so proud of you’,’’ Wyle recalled.
With Medicaid threatened again under the Trump government, Wylie has no doubt another protest will be on the horizon. This time though, he’d prepare.
‘‘I would eat first,’’ he said. ‘‘I was hungry by the time they let me out.’’
He remembers waiting in the jail alongside 127 people in wheelchairs, and a couple of able-bodied people who hadn’t eaten in a long time.
‘‘A couple of people start talking about what their rights are and asking for some food, and then they bring down 80 baloney sandwiches. And then everybody had another protest about how, if there weren’t enough for everybody then nobody would eat.
‘‘So nobody would eat the sandwiches, they were left in the middle of the room and nobody would touch them.
‘‘Then somebody said, ‘we could cut them in half’? And then we realised that we actually had 160 sandwiches.
‘‘Try to imagine 127 people in wheelchairs – and two able-bodied people – cutting 80 baloney sandwiches, without a knife.’’
It would have been a good plot line for The Librarians, a spinoff to the film series of the same name.
The fantasy-adventure show follows a group of, you guessed it, librarians, who go on wacky adventures to save mysterious, ancient artifacts. Wyle plays Flynn Carsen, the slightly goofy bookworm, who takes on the evils of world.
‘‘It feels a little Alice in Wonderland when you’re dressed up in a crazy costume running through the city streets and nobody knows that you’re shooting a TV show and you’re in a pouring rain storm pretending you’re in Africa and it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and you’re actually in Portland holding a tennis ball that’s going to be a magical orb of Carnac once you get through doing the visual effects. At that moment it feels really stupid and cold.’’
But he really can’t blame anyone but himself for that. The actor started writing for the show’s third series after a reshuffle.
He’s enjoying the opportunity to prove the legitimacy of his point of view, and redeem his character from being the butt of jokes.
‘‘I know the character is in safe hands with me, even when if I’m making a fool [of myself], I’m confident that I can bring him back to a place of heroism when I know that’s not always the case when other writers are writing the character,’’ he said.
❚ The Librarians,
season 4, starts Sunday February 11, on SKY 5.