SATURDAY DECEMBER 10
2011 Maori Sports Awards (Maori, 8.30pm). Sports awards ceremonies are usually tedious affairs, what with sportspeople not being known for their public-speaking prowess, but perhaps the Maori Sports Awards will be livened up with a few haka and waiata. Let’s hope so. Expect to hear the word “awesome” quite a lot, however.
The Tudors
Lewis (Prime, 8.40pm). The fun episode of Lewis in which Joanna Lumley plays rock chick Esmé Ford, lead singer of the band Midnight Addiction. Very cool, although that’s not Lumley singing – she was dubbed by Glasgow singer Maggie Bell singing songs with the band, written for the episode by the Lewis composer Barrington Pheloung. Because Midnight Addiction are “practically Black Sabbath”, Lumley told the Oxford Mail, “I guessed Esmé was a slightly stoned, fairly wrecked Janis Joplin-type figure”. Bonus – the episode is written by Guy Andrews, who wrote Lost in Austen.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 11
60 Minutes (TV3, 7.30pm). With Christmas approaching (far too rapidly in our view), it’s time to say a fond farewell to about half the schedule. First up this week is current affairs show 60 Minutes, then on Monday, Rookie Blue (TV2, 9.30pm), the show where the police work is a mere backdrop to the relationships, ends its season with an episode that looks at the emotional toll police work can take. On Wednesday, Brit sketch show Fast and Loose (TV2, 9.00pm) finishes, with David Armand and his improvised dancing to songs (saying it’s funny is the kiss of death, but it really is funny). Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow also ends this week (TV2, Wednesday, 9.40pm): comedians are Ardal O’Hanlon, Jack Whitehall and Andi Osho. Neighbours waves hoo-roo on Friday (TV2, 6.00pm), as does Campbell Live (TV3, 7.00pm). And last but not least, Shortland Street’s traditional Christmas cliffhanger is on Friday (TV2, 7.00pm) and involves, predictably, Hunter’s drug problem spiralling out of control.
Rick Stein’s Cornish Christmas (Prime, 7.30pm). A less-sweaty programme from Stein after his Far East adventures, in which he lost half his body weight in water every episode. Apparently, they do Christmas a bit differently in Cornwall, so Stein goes wassailing (something to do with apples), visits Port Isaac’s fishermen and cooks goose. His own, too. There might be some traditional Cornish beer and cider along the way as well.
Movember (The Box, Sky 005, 8.30pm). Local programming that isn’t sport on a Sky channel? Extraordinary. A programme that follows a group of Kiwi guys as they grow moustaches and fund-raise for men’s health during November.
Drug Kingpin Hippos (Animal Planet, Sky 075, 8.30pm). The lasting legacy in Colombia of the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is not what you might expect – it’s hippos. Like any good drug baron, fascist dictator, or crazy popstar, Escobar lived in outrageous lavishness on his estate, Hacienda Napoles, including building a private zoo. In the 1980s, he illegally imported four hippos, but nature has taken its course since then, and the group now numbers more than 30. Drug Kingpin Hippos outlines efforts to keep these beasts under control, and the dangers they now pose to surrounding villages.
D
The Tudors (TV1, 10.45pm). Divorced, beheaded, dead. Divorced … Welcome back to the lusty, murderous, capricious reign of Henry VIII of England, a period of history that continues to fascinate nearly 500 years after Henry drew his final breath at age 55. As the final season of The Tudors begins, Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), now in his forties, has seen off four wives and is about to find his fifth queen. “He’s now going to make the kind of mistakes that lots of middle-aged guys make,” says series creator and writer Michael Hirst of season four. In modern-day terms, it’s a mid-life crisis. If it were today, he would have bought a red sports car and younger men’s clothes, but in Tudor England, his eye lands on the 17-year-old Catherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant), a pretty lady-in-waiting to his previous wife, Anne of Cleves. “She is the most forbidden and yet most lusted-after woman at the court,” says Hirst. Unfortunately, she was not of royal blood, and had a dodgy past, one that comes back to haunt her. “I had great, great sympathy for her,” says Hirst of Catherine Howard, who (spoiler alert!) was sent to her death in the Tower, as Anne Boleyn was. “She kept asking to see the king personally and that he would understand – Anne Boleyn said the same thing.” Her dramatic escape from her jailors in an attempt to see Henry at chapel is irresistible to the man who has over-egged the Tudors story wherever possible. “The fact is that her ghost still haunts that passageway in Hampton Court Palace.” The mid-life crisis then extends to war with France until finally Henry seems to find some peace with his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, played by Joely Richardson. One imagines Henry would have approved of Hirst’s rambunctious, saucy biography of his life. Hirst certainly enjoyed it: “I’m really sad it’s over,” he told one interviewer, “but I ran out of wives.”
MONDAY DECEMBER 12
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (TV2, 7.30pm). Whatever happened to the original Extreme Makeover? Gone the way of the dinosaur, we hope. Here’s a new series of the feelgood US show that builds new dwellings for the deserving. Tonight, a mother and daughter in Las Vegas who suffer from an immunodeficiency disease. Do you think someone will cry? We think so.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 13
Air Medics (TV1, 8.00pm). Cameras follow the British air ambulance crew who are known as the “Angels of the North”, presumably after the spectacular sculpture by Antony Gormley that welcomes visitors to the northeast of England. Apart from the drama of rescuing the sick and injured and carting them off to hospital in a helicopter, there’s the lovely Pennines and Lake District scenery to take in as well.
Renters (TV2, 8.00pm). The local show that gives most tenants a bad name. Cameras follow property managers as they inspect rental properties and deal with disgusting renters. They’ve seen it all, from bathrooms used as bike sheds to unregistered pets and drug paraphernalia.
The Man Who Can’t Stop Hiccupping (TV3, 9.30pm). Experts agree that six out of 10 people prefer documentaries to be about unusual medical phenomena than any other subject, and this week TV3 has two documentaries of this sort. Okay, that’s not a serious assertion, but good old investigative current affairs documentaries seem to be thinner on the ground these days, replaced by The Man Who Can’t Stop Hiccupping, a BBC doco from last year about Christopher Sands from Lincoln who, at the time, had been hiccupping for more than two years. Cameras follow his search for a cure, although a quick google can shorten the suspense if you’re interested.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 14
The History of the World in Two Hours (History, Sky 073, 7.30pm). History for the MTV set – 14 billion years is condensed into 120 minutes using computer-generated imagery to depict everything since the moment God said “Stand back, it’s about to blow.” It takes its cue from the emerging field of “big history“, a field of study that uses a multidisciplinary approach to look at history across long time frames.
Hot in Cleveland (TV2, 8.00pm). The ladies of Cleveland bring the word “Spanx” into our vocabulary in an episode called Sisterhood of the Travelling Spanx. A pair of the body-shaping underwear (also mentioned by Jane Lynch after her Emmy ceremony opening dance number) magically fits all the ladies, and they commence to get into all sorts of trouble – including a catfight between Victoria (Wendie Malick) and Melanie Griffith – playing herself.
The World’s Tallest Man (TV3, 9.20pm). A doco that follows Sultan Kösen from Turkey to the US, where he hopes to find a cure for his gigantism and meet girls. Kösen is more than 2.4m tall and has a medical condition that causes him to grow. In the US he meets America’s tallest man, former Harlem Globetrotter George Bell.
Weeds (SoHo, Sky 010, 10.00pm). If we’re lucky, this might be one of the shows that will eventually wash up on Prime. It had been there up till now, but SoHo has dibs on the latest season (No 7), which is set three years after Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) turned herself in to the FBI and was sent away. You’ve got to hand it to Weeds for having the most forward momentum of all the edgy half-hour shows; each series has been set somewhere new, and the Botwins are now in New York, where Nancy is in a halfway house. This doesn’t stop her from making wrong choices, of course.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 15
Coronation Street (TV1, 7.30pm). It’s carnage, carnage! Evil Tony has escaped from jail and he and henchman Robbie Sloane have taken three hostages in Underworld undie factory, including Tony’s ex-wife Carla. Plus, he’s going to burn the place down! Two of these people are not going to make it out alive. Meanwhile, the verdict in Gail’s murder trial is handed down. What a week!
FRIDAY DECEMBER 16
Getting On (UKTV, Sky 006) 9.00pm). A darkly funny yet strangely moving satire set on a geriatric ward somewhere in England. Comedian Jo Brand won a Bafta for her role as nurse Kim Wilde (yes, it’s a homage to real Kids in America-singing Kim Wilde), who brings some heart and soul to what is essentially God’s waiting room. The series is done in mockumentary style and is directed by Peter Capaldi, who is best known as the foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker from political satire The Thick of It and its spin-off movie In the Loop.