SATURDAY OCTOBER 15
It’s a Woman’s World (Travel Channel, Sky 076, 8.30pm). New Zealander Camilla Andersen could be in our Flying the Flag series – except the flags would be scattered far and wide all around the globe. She was half of the duo who made the terrific low-budget series Julian & Camilla’s World Odyssey, she went around the Pacific in The Blue Continent, and her latest series is It’s a Woman’s World, where she travels to South Africa, the Philippines, Turkey and Jamaica. The four-part series in which she meets women around the world seems to involve a lot of dancing, including ballet dancing in Manila, belly dancing in Turkey, and bump-and-grind and “electric slide” (nope, don’t know either) in Jamaica. Other highlights include meeting Yvonne Chaka Chaka, the Princess of Africa, in Johannesburg; doing a modelling shoot; tenpin bowling; and visiting Sly and Robbie in their studio.
Downton Abbey
Rugby (Maori 8.00pm; TV1, 8.30pm; TV3, 8.30pm; Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 8.45pm).Semi-final weekend in the Rugby World Cup, and four channels have the games live, so pick your poison. Today is semi-final one; tomorrow it happens all over again for semi-final two (the one that will feature the All Blacks and possibly the South Africans). All games from here on in are at Eden Park, including Friday’s bronze medal game before the big final on October 23.
MONDAY OCTOBER 17
30 Rock (Four, 8.00pm). The smartest series on tele-vision returns at last; screeds have been written about the comedy genius of Tina Fey and she is still firing in the season five opener, which she wrote, and which stars Matt Damon as Carol Burnett (yes), a pilot who Liz Lemon (Fey) met last season.
This Is Your Life (TV1, 8.30pm). When it’s This Is Your Life, who’re ya gonna call? Paul Holmes, of course, who returns to his turangawaewae to front a celebration of a good Kiwi’s life.
Parks and Recreation (Four, 9.00pm). 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation? Our cup runneth over with clever television comedy. This fantastic vehicle, driven by Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler, is a successor to The Office, but with more good cheer. Poehler plays Leslie Knope, an overly enthusiastic parks department employee in Pawnee, Indiana. The cast includes Rashida Jones, comedian Aziz Ansari, Paul Schneider and Nick Offerman as the department’s deadpan director. This is the series that has done wonders for Rob Lowe – he appears in the final two episodes of the season and is a “revelation”, according to one critic.
True Blood (Prime, 9.30pm).Drama, drama, drama. The residents of Bon Temps cannot catch a break: just when you think you’ve vanquished the witch, avenged your dead brother and finally broken up with your skanky werewolf girlfriend, some other crazy stuff happens to set up a whole mess of storylines for season five. Also in the season finale: someone dies. No, wait, three people die. Probably. You never can tell with True Blood.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 18
Coronation Street (TV1, 5.25pm). Unless John Key’s offer to “talk to someone important” about Corrie’s new timeslot has borne fruit – because ministers of the crown should totally be making programming decisions for TVNZ – here begins the early-evening regime of the soap with the most. On the upside: half-an-hour more soap suds each week; on the downside: you might have to get one of those newfangled recording devices, or your whole evening is going to be messed around.
The Celebrity Apprentice (TV2, 8.30pm). A new season, starring Meat Loaf’s massive meltdown, which has been on the internet since April. It’s not until episode five that Meat throws his little tanty at fellow celebrity – and we use that word advisedly – Gary Busey, but the whole thing is a sad spectacle. Other contestants include Dionne Warwick (why, we don’t know), La Toya Jackson, Marlee Matlin and David Cassidy, who will always be Keith Partridge to us.
Downton Abbey (Prime, 8.35pm). There’s always change coming to Downton Abbey; we know this because someone always says, “Change is coming, you know.” In the first episode of the second season, it’s up to new maid Ethel to say it. She has big dreams. We know this, because she says, “You’ve got to have dreams!” This is before Miss O’Brien puts her through a kind of maid-hazing to put her in her place. Ah, Edwardian blockbuster Downton (as the Telegraph described it), where the more things change, the more they try to keep them the same. The new series begins with a special effects bang in the muddy trenches of the Somme, although nothing is ever as spectacular as the abbey, a special effect all by itself. Mr Carson the butler is steadfastly trying to keep up standards even though there’s a war on. Meanwhile, change rages around him: Lady Edith is learning to drive in case the chauffeur is called up; Lady Sybil is learning to make a cup of tea so she can volunteer at the hospital; and the dowager countess (Maggie Smith, at her imperious best) has been forced out of bed early to help with the war effort. “War makes early risers of us all,” she does declare. Downton Abbey is outrageously popular in the UK, and in the US, too: it won a slew of Emmys in September and you can bet there’ll be Baftas on Julian Fellowes’s mantelpiece before long. Full credit, as they say, to Fellowes for writing something original. After that dire version of Emma starring Romola Garai, it looked to be all over for the costume drama, but Fellowes is Marc Cherry in an Edwardian suit, throwing in sex, intrigue, backstabbing and melodrama. How perfectly wonderful.
NCIS: Los Angeles (TV3, 9.25pm). A season spent eking out details of Chris O’Donnell’s character, the mysteriously named “G Callen”, comes to fruition in tonight’s season two finale. The search for Hetty Lange (Linda Hunt) leads the team to Prague, where G’s link to an Eastern European crime family is revealed.
Cops with Cameras (TV1, 9.40pm). “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening …” The UK’s Robocops return with their specially designed body cameras, their body armour and the newest high-tech addition to the force: the Lantern device, which immediately identifies fingerprints. Welcome to the future of policing: it’s not pretty.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 19
Animal Pharm (TVNZ 7, Sky 077, 7.05pm). A two-part Channel 4 series exploring the new sciences of genetic engineering, cloning and stem cell research. In one corner is biologist Olivia Judson, who is a supporter of GE, and in the other is food journalist Giles Coren, who thinks Franken-food, especially, is scary and pointless.
Hot in Cleveland (TV2, 8.00pm). If they’re bringing back Betty White, they might as well bring back some other old stars, too: tonight features guest appearances from Hal Linden, who you may remember from 70s sitcom Barney Miller; Shirley Knight, who was in As Good As It Gets and was Phyllis Van de Kamp in Desperate Housewives; and Juliet Mills, who was once a lovely British nanny in US sitcom Nanny and the Professor.
Winners & Losers (TV1, 8.30pm). A feelgood drama to replace feelgood drama Nothing Trivial. Australian series Winners & Losers is a bit like Go Girls and has been a hit across the Tassie: it features four female friends in the lead roles and is slightly saucier than the other series created by showrunner Bevan Lee, Packed to the Rafters. “It’s Sex and the City meets Ugly Betty with a dash of teen-revenge movie Heathers thrown in,” said one Aussie critic. The women were labelled losers at school, and attend their high school reunion with trepidation, but a twist at the end of the pilot episode changes their lives.
Sharpe (Prime, 9.30pm). Ah, we love a man in a silly uniform. “Encore” screenings of the Sharpe dramatisations begin with 1993’s Sharpe’s Rifles, in which Sean Bean looks -dashingly young and handsome in his Napoleonic-era get-up. In this story, Bernard Cornwell’s young Yorkshireman Richard Sharpe is in Portugal in 1809 fighting the French and getting into trouble with a band of Spanish guerrillas led by the beautiful -Comandanta Teresa Moreno.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 20
Hard Time: World Without Men (National Geographic, Sky 072, 7.30pm). Behind the bars of the US state of Georgia’s largest women’s prison, where 1600 jailbirds reside. Prison creates its own rules and hierarchies, and drugs, intrigues and sexual relationships are part of day-to-day life. The programme features several different inmates, including a prison “stud”, a changed lifer and a system manipulator.
Doctor Who (Prime, 8.35pm). You may have to have been watching closely to understand the final episode for the season. It’s a mind-bending time-warping whirlwind that brings back earlier events and characters, including the Silence, the Teselecta shapeshifting robot, Madame Kavorian (Frances Barber), Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice) and Charles Dickens (Simon Callow). Plus, of course, River Song (Alex Kingston), who has been the key to everything all along.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 21
Human Planet (Prime, 7.30pm). Human Planet heads into the jungle this week, including Brazil, where members of the Matis tribe make 4m-long blowpipes to hunt monkeys, and scale giant trees to collect honey from hives. In Venezuela, three children are filmed hunting tarantulas deep in the jungle, and in West Papua, the Korowai tribespeople build homes 35m up in the treetops.
Ice Road Truckers (The Box, Sky 005, 7.30pm). The show that seems to strike a deep, manly chord with, ah, men. Season two features truckers Hugh, Alex, Rick and Drew as they drive their 18-wheelers 320km north of the Arctic Circle on a road made of ice that lasts just 60 days. Those are some manly -statistics right there.
Rugby (Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 8.15pm). It’s the final big Rugby World Cup weekend; thank heavens for the Labour Day holiday on Monday. The fun begins tonight with the bronze final at Eden Park; TV1, TV3 and Maori TV all carry the game live as well, so no one misses out.