SoHo is go with Game of Thrones, and new co-pro Mad Dogs has a dream cast.
TV
Mad Dogs
ONE News Election 2011 – Leaders Debate (TV1, 7.00pm). According to moderator Guyon Espiner, this will be the first time Labour leader Phil Goff and National’s John Key have “gone head-to-head”. Apart from in the House, we suppose. There were opening addresses on Friday, but this is where the election campaign begins; apparently, the election is Key’s to lose, so let’s see if he fluffs his lines – and whether Goff can dredge up some charisma from somewhere. Our Listener Live: Election 2011 (@listenerlive for you Tweetie birds) coverage here.
The Amazing Race (TV2, 7.30pm). It keeps winning Emmys, so it must have something going for it: the US series returns for season 15, a fast 21-day course spanning eight countries, and the contestants include a pair of professional poker players (both women); the first contestant with Asperger’s; a former Miss America; and, in a nicely synergistic piece of casting, two Harlem Globetrotters.
James May’s Man Lab (TV3, 7.30pm). Top Gear’s James May does manly things in his “man lab”, skills that have been long forgotten by modern metrosexual man, like building stuff, mending things and disarming a WWII bomb. Wait, what? Do not try this at home.
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Game of Thrones (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). The new HBO-like channel on Sky begins today at 3.00pm with the first episode of The Sopranos – appropriate, given it was The Sopranos that set off what is now being described as a golden age of television. Today’s schedule also features the first episodes of Six Feet Under and True Blood, but fantasy series Game of Thrones is brand new. It’s based on the book series by George RR Martin, and stars Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage (pictured, who won an Emmy last month for his role), Mark Addy and Lena Headey. It’s full-on, bloody and sexed-up, and quite the barnstormer.
Mad Dogs (TV1, 10.00pm). My, times have changed. Once, the BBC was the gold standard for drama and the Americans were a distant second with their cop shows and silly sitcoms. Now, everything’s a “co-pro”, gets screened on both sides of the Atlantic, and is more than likely to be a remake. If the BBC does produce something good, it will probably end up on pay television (think Luther and Spooks, both on UKTV, or The Hour, which will screen on Sky’s new prestige channel SoHo). Mad Dogs comes to us courtesy of British pay TV channel Sky 1, and it features the dream cast of John Simm, Philip Glenister, Max Beesley and Marc Warren. It’s a four-parter about four fortysomethings who are invited on a holiday to Majorca by an old mate (Ben Chaplin), but find themselves up to their necks in trouble of the darkest kind.
FILM
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (TV3, 8.30pm). This is a message from the Afterlife for Brendan Fraser. Stop making The Mummy films. This one is junk and you have offended the ancient spirits. (2008) 4 – Diana Balham
Shaun of the Dead (Four, 8.30pm). The first gag is that Shaun (Simon Pegg) doesn’t notice that London is full of zombies – after all, it’s like that all the time – and from then on this “rom-zom-com” is a lot of jolly British drollery and film references that is basically a mega episode of Spaced meets Dawn of the Dead. Layabouts Shaun and Ed (Nick Frost) fight off the shuffling hordes by holing up in the place they feel safest: their local. The apocalyptic zombie attack is also a chance for Shaun to reconcile with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield). For Pegg and co-writer/director Edgar Wright, this was the beginning of a beautiful thing: they went on to make Hot Fuzz, the second in their “blood and ice-cream” trilogy (they joked to the Guardian that it was a “three-flavours Cornetto trilogy” in reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours series), and are working on the third movie, provisionally called The World’s End. (2004) 9
RADIO
Book Reading (Radio New Zealand National, 10.45am). Humorist, actor and larger-than-life Christchurch personality David McPhail took a typically unusual approach to writing his memoirs. “There is a dictum that a memoir should never be published until everyone in it, including the author, is dead. I couldn’t wait that long,” he says. This morning, during Nine to Noon with Kathryn Ryan, McPhail begins a 10-part adaptation of his book The Years Before My Death. – Diana Balham
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