TV & Radio Friday October 21

The long weekend begins with the RWC Bronze Final, veers left into Ice Road Truckers, and settles on Twilight: Eclipse. Say what?!

TV

Ice Road Truckers

Billy T Special (Maori TV, 7.00pm). Change of plan from the listings – Maori TV screens a Billy T special before the RWC Bronze Final between Wales and Australia. This is the pick of the Billy T sketches, re-edited by Maori TV in collaboration with Billy T’s producer, Tom Parkinson.

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, er, 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 (TV1, 7.30pm; TV3, 8.00pm; Maori TV, 8.00pm; and Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 8.15pm). It’s the big weekend at the Rugby World Cup and the fun begins tonight with the Bronze Final at Eden Park between Wales and Australia. All four channels are screening the game live.

Supernatural (TV2, 10.20pm). In tonight’s episode, the Titanic never sank, James Cameron’s movie was never made, and Celine Dion never sang My Heart Will Go on. Where’s the downside?

FILM

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (TV2, 7.30pm). The random Potter selector chooses No 5 in the series. Harry and his mates are having trouble with bureaucrats from the Ministry, in particular, senior official Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who is the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. Much more entertaining than it sounds, with Brendan Gleeson, Geraldine Somerville, Emma Thompson, Robert Hardy, Robert Pattinson and big doleful dollops of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort. (2007) 7 – Diana Balham

Scarface (Four, 8.30pm). Cuban immigrants, cocaine and the pursuit of the American dream at any cost. Al Pacino’s tour de force was shocking when it was released, but like the titular character, it’s looking a bit battered with time. What set us tutting with great indignation in the early 80s seems pretty tame today: the platinum edition DVD features 226 instances of f— and its derivatives. That’s 1.32 f—s a minute! But Brian De Palma and Pacino still offer us a classic of its type. The final shootout is a marvel of editing and you can be sure the scenes featuring guys on cocaine are pretty accurate: Oliver Stone was apparently addicted to the stuff when he wrote the screenplay. (1983) 8 – Diana Balham

Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). A little joke perhaps on the part of Sky Movies programmers, who have placed a movie from the drippiest film series ever opposite the Rugby World Cup Bronze Final. Eclipse, No 3 in the Twilight series, is the best so far, according to most critics. But is that saying much? Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) are still mooning over each other and not having sex, and Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is still mooning over Bella and not having sex either. Teenagers these days. There is more action than the previous two movies, however, thanks to 30 Days of Night director David Slade, and a preponderance of story that involves a vampire-werewolf alliance and Victoria the vampire making a bunch of new vampires so they can kill Bella. Don’t worry if none of this means anything: it just means you’re not a 14-year-old girl. (2010)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). Way tougher stuff over on Rialto; the adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s first novel in the Millennium trilogy features some very nasty violence, especially towards its heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Larsson’s themes are hatred against women, and government and institutional abuse, but he gives Salander, and us, some relief in the form of revenge against her abusers. Unfortunately, Larsson’s novels are so beloved that it seems that director Niels Arden Oplev felt he couldn’t leave anything out, so this is a slavish adaptation and rather meandering for it – in between the violence, that is. It seems that David Fincher’s version, due out this year, won’t adhere so closely to the book, probably a good thing. (2009)

RADIO

Classic Concert (Radio New Zealand National, 11.06pm). They don’t come much more classic than Clapton and Winwood, in this case Live from Madison Square Garden, from 2008. As well as playing stuff from their solo days and with groups such as Cream, Derek and the Dominos and Traffic, Eric and Steve go back in time to when they were bandmates in Blind Faith. There’ll be rampant nostalgia – and wicked guitar playing – all over the place. – Diana Balham