Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
TV Week
by Fiona Rae
Good on the eye.
SATURDAY JULY 8
New Zealand at Home and The Book Show (TV1, 5.00 and 5.30pm). Could be thought of as charter programming, although we here at TV Week would like to think of it as TV that’s actually about something. No, really, there may be actual insights. If you didn’t get round to buying Douglas Lloyd Jenkins’s book At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design, then think of New Zealand at Home as the edited highlights. Lloyd Jenkins presents an architectural history of New Zealand and looks at the living environments that we created in the 20th century. The Book Show is as advertised and we’re very glad that someone has seen fit to put author Emily Perkins on telly. She will chair a book-of-the-week segment with a panel of three guests and talk to New Zealand authors about the books in their lives. In addition, former Listener editor Finlay Macdonald has got out and about to meet writers, including Lloyd Jones, Joy Cowley, Brian Turner and Sarah-Kate Lynch.
The F Word (TV1, 7.30pm). Now children, can you think of a four-letter word beginning with “f” that Gordon Ramsay really likes to say? That’s right! Food! Well done! Ramsay, with sidekick restaurant critic Giles Coren, presents a series about his favourite thing. There are guests (Joan Collins and Ramsay’s mum), fun food facts and recipes.
SUNDAY JULY 9
The Great New Zealand Spelling Bee (TV1, 8.30pm). So someone saw the charming documentary film Spellbound and thought, “Hmm, let’s get celebrities doing the same thing, because they’re far more interesting than ordinary people”, when in fact, it was the ordinary kids who made Spellbound so fascinating. Even the title of this show is a M-I-S-N-O-M-E-R, because contestants are not drawn from the whole country. Crap. C-R-A-P. Crap.
MONDAY JULY 10
True Caribbean Pirates (History Channel, 9.30pm). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the waters of the Caribbean became a free-for-all as England, France and the Netherlands disrupted the Spanish hold on the region with “privateers”, freelance sailors who substituted for having a real navy there. Naturally, they became pirates and here are some scurvy tales about the worst of the lot: Blackbeard, Sir Henry Morgan, Black Bart Roberts and female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
TUESDAY JULY 11
The Wire (TV2, 12.00am). The best cop show ever, so naturally it’s on at midnight on a Tuesday. That’s because it’s Sopranos-smart and asks its audience to stay with it, unfolding like a Dickens serialisation instead of a boring procedural that ends every week with a tidy forensic solution and arrest. The Wire is set in creator David Simon’s home town of Baltimore, but never in the glamorous parts – the “Projects” or the docks have been settings for previous series, as Simon explores the society and conditions that make them what they are. Simon, a former Baltimore Sun journalist, has written and spoken passionately about the failed war on drugs and, lately, the failure of journalism, and the theme of series three of The Wire will be reform, of all kinds. Series- link it on your PVR (VCRs are just so last century).
WEDNESDAY JULY 12
Waterloo Road (TV1, 8.30pm). It got a telling off in the UK from the principals’ association for being sexed up and exaggerated, but then you get that with dramas made by Shed Productions – yes, the purveyors of such melodramas as Footballers’ Wives and Bad Girls. Basically, it’s about a really crap school oop north. Viewers may recognise Angela Griffin and Jason Merrells from Cutting It and Denise Welch from Corrie.
THURSDAY JULY 13
3’s Thursday Doco: Can Dogs Smell Cancer? (TV3, 8.30pm). Which is a question we never thought we’d hear, nor indeed is it one we thought anyone would bother to ask. But although you may think it all sounds completely, ah, barking, apparently there have been cases of mutleys sniffing out their owner’s illness. There has even been some research into same. Perhaps microchipping isn’t such a dumb idea – if you had a dog that was better than a cat scan, wouldn’t you want to claim it as your own? Spot! Come here and smell my moles!
FRIDAY JULY 14
24 (TV3, 8.30pm). Here’s something no one thought would happen in season five of 24: ratings increased in the US. Next, Entertainment Weekly names it as its number-one drama for the year and proclaims it was the Best. Season. Ever. Who would have thunk it? And now a 24 movie is planned, to be filmed between seasons six and seven, providing ratings hold. So the idea of a “real-time” drama played out over 24 hours had legs after all. “It’s not ‘How many times can Jack save the world?’” 24 co-creator Joel Surnow told EW. “It’s ‘How many times can you change the method of how he saves the world?’” As always with 24, don’t get too attached to characters; people are going to die, some of them in the explosive first episode. Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) and Audrey (Kim Raver) are back; incredibly, autistic-spectrum Chloë has an interoffice romance; Sean Astin and Peter Weller are guest stars; and, as we join the action, our hero has assumed the name of Frank and is living in Southern California, working on an oil rig.
