SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18
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.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 19
When a City Falls
Brutal Beauty (TV1, Sunday, 9.00am). Another sad reminder of Christchurch’s losses. Sir Miles Warren, who designed many of the city’s iconic buildings, from the Town Hall to the Harewood Crematorium, is interviewed pre-earthquakes at his home, Ohinetahi. He discusses his career and influences, from British “brutalism” to Scandinavian straightforwardness – and also the difficulties of boring office buildings. The documentary ends with photos from the September 2010 earthquake, and Warren’s vow to rebuild. Since then, Ohine-tahi has been extensively rebuilt and strengthened; Warren described it last year as “a reinforced concrete -fortress”.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Grown-ups (TV1, 7.00pm). And you thought he only dispensed advice about children and teenagers. Psychologist Nigel Latta rummages around in his advice basket and hands out bon mots on all sorts of issues, including relationships, love, money, beauty, self-improvement, growing old and spirituality. He finds some fun stuff along the way, too – like why we’re so paranoid about going through Customs, or the great genital-shrinkage scare of 1967.
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21
MasterChef New Zealand (TV1, 7.30pm). All that mock seriousness, the portentous music, the tears, and the yes chef, no chef, three-bags-full chef. If only we could skip to the end and save all that anxiety. (Wait, there might be devices that do that …) Anyways, the third season of our local MasterChef reality competition begins. Judges Simon Gault, Josh Emett and Ray McVinnie are back, and there will be guest chefs, including The Food Truck’s Michael Van de Elzen, Annabel Langbein and even Rick Stein. Challenges include an all-night bake-off; catering a cocktail party – for the navy; and cooking a French banquet.
Frozen Planet (TV1, 8.30pm). The final episode looks at how people survive the polar regions, from the Dolgans, who herd reindeer on the tundra, to the research scientists at the South Pole who are cut off from the outside world for six months.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22
When a City Falls (TV3, Wednesday, 7.30pm). Gerard Smyth had the supreme misfortune, among many, to have his film When a City Falls open in cinemas just before Christmas last year. Bad timing for a documentary that our reviewer described as the film the people of Christchurch, living through their hardest year, deserved. Smyth had been filming since September 2010 when the first earthquake struck Christchurch and had been about to put the finishing touches on a short film that was in part a celebration of the zero death toll of that first quake. But when the February 22 shock hit, “we had been usurped by a much bigger event”, he told Media 7 last year. Out of his damaged studio, he managed to retrieve a camera and a broken lens, and went outside to capture what he could. We are lucky he did, because whereas most of the media were shackled by heavy Cera restrictions, Smyth, whose house was in the red zone, was able to move around at street level filming first the chaos of the earthquake – the shocked, the worried, the desperate – and then later the community response as neighbours and neighbourhoods gathered and distributed food, water, and started the clean-up. Again. There is some footage of tears and trauma in When a City Falls, but Smyth has not made a grief-porn documentary. “Most of the film is about the response,” he told Media 7. “It’s really about kindness, about people coming together – that word ‘resilience’, I suppose. “We’re not used in New Zealand to seeing ourselves in difficult times, and here we are under fire. And I guess, [asking] who are we? What happens to us? Who do we become?” In other Feb 22 Earthquake Commemoration News, the second part of Prime’s documentary A Shocking Reminder screens on Monday (8.30pm).
SPCA Rescue (TV1, 8.00pm). We’d far rather see New Zealand SPCA officers rescuing cute kittehs and puppies, and here is a whole new series of good deeds out in the field. Tonight, three little lambs with a terrible disease, a dog with an untreated injury, and a chicken that strays. No one knows why.
Burn Notice (Four, 10.25pm). It is a source of frustration to TV week that Four has held on to this fun little series for so long. It’s like the programmers want us to download it or something. Finally, season three and ex-CIA agent Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) is continuing to try to have his “burn notice” lifted. This means bad guys, schemes, spycraft and shoot-’em-ups, and Michael is aided and abetted by ex-girlfriend Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) and his buddy Sam Axe (geek favourite Bruce Campbell).
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23
Grand Designs (TV3, 7.30pm). It’s always more fun watching other people build houses, these “grand” ones especially. Homeowners like to dream big, and in the ninth series, Kevin McCloud meets a couple restoring an 18th-century castle; another having a go at a New England-style water mill; and another with a 15th-century castle that is on the At Risk Register. Quite a few of the home renovators featured have sustainability plans, such as the oak-framed straw-bale hexagonal house in the Cambridgeshire Fens and the earth-sheltered home made from recycled materials in Brittany.
Bored to Death (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.00pm). America might have invented the go-getter, but it also invented the self-conscious slacker – the over educated, underemployed nerd who can pontificate about Hemingway but barely tie his own shoelaces. Bored to Death is created by New York writer Jonathan Ames and is based on his story about a writer called Jonathan who has just given up drinking and is looking for some distraction. He decides to become a detective and places an ad on Craigslist. As you do. Happily, the series is not as laboured as the story was on the page: Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore) is the inert New York writer and Zach Galifianakis – whose career has taken off since The Hangover – is his offsider. The revelation is Ted Danson, as the hyper, sweary editor of a magazine firmly putting Sam from Cheers behind him. Interesting in a clever New York kind of way.
Museum Secrets (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, 8.30pm). Visit the world’s museums without leaving home. Each episode focuses on one museum – in season one, there’s the Egyptian Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Vatican Museums – and explores stories behind the treasures. At Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, the mysteries of animal mummification, Ramses’s coffin and a poor man’s hoard of gold are revealed. At the Met, the story of Evelyn Nesbit, the It Girl of her day, who was once thought to be the model for the nude Diana created in 1892 for Madison Square Garden.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (UKTV, Sky 006, 9.30pm). The BBC has been partying itself stupid for the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens – there have been retrospectives, new TV and radio adaptations, dramas and documentaries. Plus, there have been theatre productions, exhibitions and festivals going on all over the shop, if you were actually in the UK to enjoy them. UKTV has just screened a new adaptation of Great Expectations, and here’s another specially made Dickens – it’s an interesting one at that, as he died before he finished this story. Screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes took up the challenge, and her “completion” of the novel is phenomenal, said the Guardian: “others have tried before but none to better effect”. Drood is a dark, dank and nasty tale of lust and murder, involving the unloved, leery choirmaster John Jasper, who may or may not have murdered his nephew, Edwin Drood. Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters, yes) plays Jasper, while Freddie Fox (another of the Fox acting dynasty) is Edwin. Alun Armstrong (whose face was made for Dickens), Rory Kinnear, Julia McKenzie and Tamzin Merchant also star.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24
Glee (TV3, 7.30pm). Season three of this crazy show, and we hope it isn’t distracted by special episodes focusing on just one artist, as it was in season two. Apart from the chance to see Heather Morris’s amazing dancing, what good was that Brittany Spears episode anyway? This season, Sue Sylvester runs for Congress on an anti-arts funding in schools platform; Rachel’s biological mother runs a rival glee club at McKinley; and Brittany thinks an Irish exchange student (Damian McGinty, getting his seven episodes of fame after co-winning The Glee Project) living at her house is a leprechaun. Guest stars include Ricky Martin and Jeff Goldblum, and Helen Mirren (yes!) provides the inner voice of one of the characters.
Rugby (Sky Sport 1, Sky 030, 7.30pm). That crossover time of the year when we can see both rugby and cricket: the Black Caps play their second and third Twenty20 matches against South Africa this week (Sunday and Wednesday, Sky Sport 1, Sky 030, 6.30pm) and today, the Super Rugby season gets under way when the Blues meet the Crusaders at Eden Park. The Blues are looking good this year, thanks in part to the addition of All Blacks Piri Weepu and Ma‘a Nonu.