TV & Radio Labour Day

After the night before, today is an Idle day, and James May rights a rail transport wrong.

TV

James May's Toy Stories: The Great Train Race

Coronation Street (TV1, 5.25pm). Hey! It’s a holiday! You’re home in time to see it!

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00pm). Uh-oh. This is beginning to look more and more like an internet scam: Zlata (Kate Elliott) tells Luke that her father is being detained by the Romanian Government and a hefty bribe is going to be required for his release. But of course.

James May’s Toy Stories: The Great Train Race (TV3, 7.30pm). Even though he would be appalled at the suggestion, James May clearly needed closure for his failure a couple of years ago, in James May’s Toy Stories, to run a model railway between two towns. In this special, May returns to Bideford in Devon for another go, with the added incentive of beating the Germans – again. May wants to recreate, with Hornby model trains, the Atlantic Coast Express route that once linked Bideford with Barnstaple. Racing alongside will be the German owners of the biggest toy railway museum in the world.

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Prime Rocks: Picture This – Blondie and Debbie Harry (Prime, 9.30pm). A 2004 documentary featuring photographer Mick Rock as he shoots Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry. There’s also Blondie performances from the BBC archive (the band were initially more successful in the UK than the US) and an interview with Harry and Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, who discuss what it was like to go from an underground punk-pop act, playing at grimy venues, like Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, to one of the biggest bands of the post-punk era. The band broke up in 1982, but reformed in 1997, releasing No Exit in 1999. The album’s first single, Maria, became Blondie’s sixth UK No 1 single exactly 20 years after their first No 1, the now-classic Heart of Glass.

FILM

Last chance Harvey (TV1, 8.30pm). Quite a bit of sad-sackery in this low-key film, but it’s always a pleasure to see Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson on screen. He plays a depressed jingle writer who travels to London for his son’s wedding; a happy occasion, one would think, but he’s not terribly welcome. Thompson is the smart-but-lonely woman he meets in London. Nice. (2008) 6

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (TV3, 8.40pm). From a relic that controls life and death to Pandora’s Box – that Lara Croft sure has an interesting day job. But unlike the “real” Pandora’s Box, this really only offers bad things: flimsy directing, a dreary script and a laughable plot that screams “video game adaptation”. But that Angelina Jolie, she’s a man’s woman. Anyway, Jolie had by now grown bored with Billy Bob Thornton and no longer wore a vial of his blood around her neck, but she was still some way off bedding Brad Pitt … (2003) 4 – Diana Balham

Kisses (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). This modest, gritty little Irish drama is about two kids who run away from abusive homes at Christmas time to spend a magical and terrifying night on the streets of Dublin. I love the way their working-class vernacular is given subtitles. It’s even better when those subtitles are wrong! Great work by the kids (Kelly O’Neill and Shane Curry), and it’s a treat when the black and white of their dreary suburb is transformed into sparkling colour when they reach the city. (2008) 7 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Matinee Idle (Radio New Zealand National, 12.12pm). Jim Mora is planting out his tomatoes, so the idiosyncratic musical tastes of those anarchists of the eardrum, Simon Morris and Phil O’Brien, are back on display with a one-off afternoon assault. What topic will they come up with for Labour Day, dare you ask? – Diana Balham