Harry Potter grows up (and is on Jonathan Ross), and Dictaphone Blues live in session.
TV
The Jonathan Ross Show
The Jonathan Ross Show (TV1, 8.30pm). Guests tonight are Daniel Radcliffe (whose new, spooky grown-up movie is Hammer Horror The Woman in Black), Sir David Attenborough (he has penguins!), and Noel Fielding.
Lonely Planet’s Year of Adventures (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, 8.30pm). A way of travelling the world without leaving home. Adventurer Ben Fogle sets off on a year of adventures, based on the Lonely Planet book of the same name: among the challenges are climbing the via ferrata mountain route in the Dolomites, diving beneath a glacier in Iceland, and driving in a 1000km car rally in Australia. Let’s face it, all things that are way beyond the capabilities of most world travellers, and we’re very glad fitness freak Fogle is there to do it for us.
FILM
Kicking & Screaming (Four, 6.30pm). Robert Duvall and Will Ferrell in a Judd Apatow-produced odd-couple sports comedy about living up to your dad’s expectations. There’s a whole lot of soccer and stuff about how winning isn’t everything, as well as a mediocre script, and very few laughs make it onto the pitch. Duvall is a huge soccer fan, apparently. That explains almost everything. (2005) 5 – Diana Balham
Date Night (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). Steve Carell and Tina Fey are better than the material in this screwball comedy about an ordinary couple thrust into extraordinary circumstances while trying to have a simple “date night” in the city. Before long, they’re being threatened by mobsters, and finding themselves in car chases and Mexican stand-offs. It’s all cheerily done, however, by Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy, and there is an enjoyable cast of supporting characters, including scene-stealers James Franco and Mila Kunis. It’s deeply formulaic, said Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams, but “manages to make sport of romantic movie conventions without being mean about them”. (2010)
I Hate Valentine’s Day (TV2, 9.30pm). It hates you, too, Nia Vardalos. The writer/director might have hit the jackpot with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but starring and reteaming with John Corbett in this painfully unfunny effort was one romcom too far. She should have stuck with dumpy and dateless, instead of creating the irritating Energizer bunny Genevieve whose five-date routine comes unstuck when she falls for a restaurateur. Every bit as bad as her Greek Wedding follow-up, which has the brilliantly autobiographical title My Life in Ruins.(2009) 4 – Diana Balham
In This World (Maori, 9.30pm). A Bafta-winning docudrama by English director Michael Winterbottom about two young Afghan refugees who are smuggled from a Pakistani camp along the Silk Road to the UK. That their mode of transport is trucks they are not allowed out of should give a sense of how unenjoyable this journey is. (2002) 7 – Diana Balham
The Tiger’s Tail (TV1, 11.30pm). So much potential: this comedy crime drama is written and directed by John Boorman (The Tailor of Panama, Deliverance) and it’s just the genre that potato-faced Brendan Gleeson nailed so brilliantly in last year’s The Guard. Here, he’s married to – who? Kim Cattrall, ageing sex goddess of Sex and the City? The great cast also includes Sinead Cusack and Ciaran Hinds, which makes it all the more baffling why this thriller should be so meandering, tame and poorly executed. Grab this tiger by the tail and it would probably lick your hand and roll over on its back for a tummy tickle. (2006) 5 – Diana Balham
RADIO
Saturday Morning with Kim Hill (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). Today: New Zealand entrepreneur Derek Handley; Yvonne Shaw discusses dying with dignity; writer and photographer Bella Bathurst; art with Mary Kisler; Wellington jeweller Lisa Walker plays favourites; choreographer and composer Hofesh Shechter; gardening with Kath Irvine. Info and audio here.
Dictaphone Blues/Cat Venom, Recorded Live at Roundhead Studios (95bFM, 11.00am and Friday, 2.00pm). Dictaphone Blues used to be three chaps from Christchurch who moved to Auckland to make their fortune playing “fuzzy guitar pop with largely vintage influences”. Now they are four, and their debut album, On the Down and In, was released in 2009. It featured guitars, pianos, bells and whistles, three different drummers and possibly the kitchen sink. Cat Venom is Auckland alternative/goth pop/indie duo Zina and Maeve, who list their interests as leather jackets, graveyards, firewater, vodka and felines. They pledge to “keep with the punk ideals of old; take something, f— it up, deliver it without caring who cares”. Yikes. There will be live streaming and podcasts on 95bfm.com and video on the Listener website after February 18. – Diana Balham