TV & Radio Sunday October 23

Some sort of rugby game on today. No, really. And

TV

Photo Sarah Ivey/NZH

Rugby (TV1, 7.00pm; Maori TV, 7.30pm; Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 8.15pm; TV3, 8.30pm). Holy cow, it’s finally here. The final of the Rugby World Cup, between the All Blacks and France. We offer no predictions, make no guesses, gaze in no crystal balls. It will be a game of no more than two halves, the winner will be the winner on the day, the teams will play the full 80, with stoppages. Unless there is extra time. More television coverage than you can shake a stick at, and for celebrators and, ah, commiserators alike, it’s a holiday tomorrow to recover. Hurrah!

FILM

Step Brothers (TV2, 8.30pm). A really incredibly stupid comedy from the team that brought you – possibly against your will –Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Writer/director Adam McKay is back with another daft situation for Will Ferrell (who co-wrote) and John C Reilly, but this time they’re not Nascar drivers, they’re fortysomething loser stepbrothers. And some childish and unembarrassable part of you is going to be laughing. (2008) 6 – Diana Balham

Jaws: The Revenge (Four, 8.30pm). In which a bunch of concerned great whites take action against the producers of this increasingly crap franchise and demand that no more Jaws-y films get made. And you know what? They succeed. (1987) 2 – Diana Balham

Orphan (TV2, 10.25pm). A little horror. (2009) 6 – Diana Balham

RADIO

aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }

Composer of the week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays and 7.00pm Monday). This week, RNZ Concert looks at the music of Brett Dean (b1961), one of Australia’s most internationally successful composers, who is also an accomplished violist and conductor. He studied at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he received a Medal of Excellence, and then moved to Germany, where he was a viola player in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985 to 1999. In 2000, he returned to Australia to make his living as a freelance composer and musician. In 2009, he won the world’s most prestigious prize for composition, the US$200,000 Grawemeyer Award, for The Lost Art of Letter Writing, a large-scale concerto for violin and orchestra in which the violin takes on the letter-writing voices of Johannes Brahms, Vincent van Gogh, Hugo Wolf and Ned Kelly. He conducted the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in a performance of this work in April, as well as the premiere of Ross Harris’s Symphony No 4 (To the Memory of Mahinarangi Tocker). Last year, his first full-length opera, Bliss, co-written with librettist Amanda Holden, was performed in Australia, the UK and Germany. It is based on Peter Carey’s 1981 novel of the same name. Before coming to New Zealand this year, he spoke to the Listener about whether he tried to put an Australian “voice” in his work: “Not consciously, no. There have been Australian composers who have pursued that very specifically as one of their goals. But no, I can’t say that’s necessarily uppermost in my mind. But as a composer I am a sum of my parts and I am who I am. Interestingly, here in Europe [where Dean was when this interview took place], people like to hear something of the wide expanses of Australia in my music and yet in Australia people hear something of my time in Europe. So it’s horses for courses, really.” – Diana Balham

Opera on Sunday (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). Ha! Today, you can’t use that excuse about not liking opera because you don’t understand it. It’s Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and it’s in English: no staring up at the surtitles and missing the action onstage or having a sneezing fit and losing track of the whole thing. Today’s performance is a recording from a CD series called Opera in English and features Rebecca Evans, Jennifer Larmore and Jane Henschel with the New London Children’s Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. It’s based on Grimm’s … er … grim story about little lost kids, a gruesome witch and the perils of eating sweeties. – Diana Balham

Young New Zealand (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). It’s one of the largest competitive events in this country that doesn’t require ball skills and tonight you can hear the first of nine programmes covering the national finale of The Big Sing 2011, recorded in the Wellington Town Hall. It started with more than 230 choirs from 150 schools; the weeding-out process has already taken place in the regions and the 18 selected choirs are competing for bronze, silver, gold and platinum awards. Tonight’s choirs include Euphony (Kristin School), Barock (Otago Boys’ and Otago Girls’ High Schools), Saint Cecilia Singers (Diocesan School for Girls), Voicemale (Westlake Boys’ High School) and Bel Canto (Burnside High School). – Diana Balham