TV & Radio Sunday October 2

An almost unrecognisable Jason Lee turns up in Raising Hope, and the Warriors. In the grand final. Woot!

TV

Raising Hope

Rugby (Sky Sport 1, Sky 030, 3.15pm). The All Blacks’ final pool match in the RWC; they face plucky Canada, who have played some excellent rugby in the tournament, including a nail-biter against Japan that ended in a draw. They are third in pool A, having won one, drawn one and lost one. The game is in Wellington at 3.15pm, followed by Wales v Fiji at Waikato Stadium at 5.45pm; and Ireland v Italy in Dunedin at 8.15pm. Maori TV screens the All Blacks v Canada game live from 2.30pm; TV3 screens it delayed from 11.05pm; and TV1 has highlights of all the games from 10.40pm.

Hellcats (TV2, 5.30pm) The kind of silly teen drama/unintentional comedy that only the Americans can get away with – it’s pretty much the plot of cheerleading movie Bring It On told over a season with all the pom-pom shaking, bitchy dialogue and nubile half-nakedness you could want. However, the Los Angeles Times reviewer did declare herself “intrigued by any show that showcases teamwork’s necessary companions – patience and forbearance – while also evoking Flashdance”.

Rugby League (Sky Sport 2, Sky 031, 6.30pm). News about the Warriors was in danger of being drowned out in all the RWC noise, until they made it to NRL grand final that is. Amazing season, and amazing to get this far, but they’ll have to keep their focus to win against Manly and win their first NRL title, says the Herald’s Steve Deane. In Auckland, the game is being shown at Event Cinemas, and let’s not forget that the U20 Jnr Warriors face the Jnr North Queensland Cowboys in the U20 grand final from 4.00pm.

Wild Vets (TV1, 7.00pm) The return of the series that follows the vets who treat zoo animals and endangered birds. So no cute kittehs, then, but cute lion cubs, a baby giraffe and a newly hatched kiwi chick crop up. Aw. In the first episode, vet Kate leads a DoC team looking for short-tailed bats in Fiordland, vet Mike treats a tiger in Hamilton, and in Nelson vet Mana tries to save a baby penguin called Pixie who weighs a minuscule 66g. Aw. Again.

Raising Hope (TV3, 7.00pm) My Name Is Earl’s Jason Lee pops up in tonight’s episode – well, he would, wouldn’t he? Hope’s creator, Greg Garcia, was the man behind My Name Is Earl, that other dose of white-trash cleverness. Lee has been busy with his new show, Memphis Beat, in which he plays a cop whose hobby is singing Elvis songs at his favourite bar. He taps into that rock’n’roll side in this episode of Raising Hope, too, playing the ageing former lead singer of a hair band who headlines the local market’s “Grocerypalooza” concert.

FILM

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The Young Victoria (TV1, 8.30pm). Emily Blunt (a very modern bitch in The Devil Wears Prada) plays Queen Victoria in the first years of her reign and shows us a different side of the old trout who gave the word “Victorian” such a bad name. As her beloved Albert, Rupert Friend is almost undone by a floppy caterpillar on his upper lip. Nine stately piles and Westminster Abbey gave their all to make this look good and it does, although it lacks the passion of other royal biopics like Mrs Brown and The Madness of King George. But perhaps that’s the point: the film feels corseted but that’s how life was when you were in charge of the empire. She did, at least, get to choose her husband. Producers include Martin Scorsese and Sarah Ferguson. Yes, that one. Typically, she got daughter Beatrice (Victoria’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter) a part as one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. (2009) 7 – Diana Balham

2012 (TV2, 8.30pm). Let’s hope the end of the world has a better storyline. But what would normally be a couple of hours of entertaining escapism looks different now: all these shifting landscapes and collapsing structures are too close to home after the year we’ve had. Don’t watch if you live in Christchurch. (2009) 5 – Diana Balham

Hot Fuzz (TV3, 8.30pm). Before Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg wrote this script, they read critic Roger Ebert’s book that lists all the clichés from action movies, and then religiously included them all. What you get here is a surprisingly original spoof on buddy cop films, in the same way that their earlier effort, Shaun of the Dead, is a spoof on zombie movies. Pegg and his Shaun offsider Nick Frost star as a top city cop relocated to the sleepy West Country and a dopey village bobby who couldn’t arrest a guinea pig without backup. But then locals start dying from appalling “accidents” … You can play “spot the Brit acting royalty”: Bill Nighy, Timothy Dalton, Bill Bailey, Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan and Martin Freeman are all here. (2007) 7 – Diana Balham

Jaws (Four, 8.30pm). Humans! Yum! (1975) 9 – Diana Balham

The Last Airbender (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). More unkind adjectives have been applied to everything about this family fantasy adventure than poor old M Night Shyamalan could have dreamed possible. The once-acclaimed director of The Sixth Sense hasn’t just lost his way, but programmed his satnav to “Oblivion” and cranked it up to warp speed 10. Flying bison? M Night, what were you thinking? (2010) 3 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Composer of the week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays and 7.00pm Monday). RNZ Concert concentrates on Léo Delibes (1836-91), the French composer of works for the stage – the best-known being the ballets Coppélia and Sylvia and his operas Le Roi l’a Dit and Lakmé, all written between 1870 and 1883. His musical mother spotted his talent early and he began studying composition under Adolphe Adam at the Paris Conservatoire when he was 11. Upon graduating, he held various musical posts in France but found fame in 1870 with Coppélia, a ballet about a mechanical dancing doll. His operas caught the attention of Tchaikovsky, who rated him above Brahms, but this could have been a backhanded compliment, given the Russian had declared Brahms to be “a giftless bastard”. (There was less than 10 years’ age difference between the three and all were of different nationalities, so a certain amount of rivalry is perhaps understandable.) Tchaikovsky continued to be a fan, and wrote of Delibes’s ballet Sylvia: “What charm, what wealth of melody! It brought me to shame, for had I known of this music, I would never have written Swan Lake.” – Diana Balham

Spectrum (Radio New Zealand National, 12.15pm). So you’re making a movie that calls for some cockroaches, a few weta, a giant spider or three. Who ya gonna call? In The Bug Boys, David Steemson meets our No 1 suppliers of unloved critters to the stars: Auckland Museum live animal curator Brian Lawton and his stepson Baruch. No crawly is too creepy for these guys, who keep busy breeding flies and mealworms for the museum inmates or getting their little pets ready for the camera. But they like amphibians and reptiles, too: one of their frogs stars in a beer commercial and Lawton has a bearded dragon called Bruce. But no fluffy doggies wearing clothes, I suspect. – Diana Balham

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Tonight’s Proms concert features French pianist David Fray, who plays works by Bruckner and Mozart, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic conducted by Jaap van Zweden. – Diana Balham