TV & Radio Sunday October 9

Bathurst and the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals? Hog heaven for Dad. Also, tigers!

TV

Our World: Expedition Tiger

V8 Supercars: Bathurst 1000 (TV3, 9.30am). The Rugby World Cup and Bathurst? Hog heaven, for the blokes anyway. Park Dad in front of the telly; he can watch the cars go round and round for seven hours and then catch the All Blacks’ game at Eden Park. What a day.

Our World: Expedition Tiger (TV1, 5.00pm). A BBC series giving us some hope that tigers in the wild might be saved. An expedition led by explorer Steve Backshall travels into remote Bhutan to look for evidence. They use a tracker dog and remote cameras as well as good old-fashioned lying-in-wait to see whether they can see the fearful symmetry burning bright.

Rugby (Maori TV, 5.00pm; Sky Sport 1, Sky 020, 5.45pm; TV1, 7.30pm; TV3, 8.00pm). The third and fourth quarter-finals in the Rugby World Cup begin with South Africa v Australia in Wellington, then the All Blacks v Argentina in Auckland. Maori TV screens both games live; TV1 has the All Blacks’ game live with delayed coverage of the South Africa game afterwards; and TV3 has the All Blacks’ game live.

Let’s Get Gadgety: 101 Gadgets That Changed the World (History, Sky 073, 7.30pm). A programme presented by (who else?) Richard Dean Anderson, formerly MacGyver, who is the mouthpiece for the editors of Popular Mechanics and a panel of experts. They have decided which gadgets have had the most impact – with a gadget defined as “something you could hold in your hands, mechanical or electronic, and a mass-produced personal item”. We can tell you that No 101 is duct tape, “the ultimate multitool”, used to make repairs in space. Settle in: this is a two-hour special.

FILM

I Am Legend (TV2, 8.30pm). A sole survivor picks over the remains of a city years after some disaster has wiped out most of life on Earth. He meets another robot and together they watch Hello Dolly on VHS … Sorry, wrong Armageddon. If that was WALL-E, this is WILL-E: Will Smith’s fearless performance as a scientist who spends his days scrounging for food and fighting off infected zombies. If this is your bag, you may also enjoy The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, The Road and even Night of the Living Dead. Come on, admit it. Things could be worse! (2007) 7 – Diana Balham

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Jaws 2 (Four, 8.30pm). If “jumping the shark” kills a TV series, replicating the shark – and producing a virtually identical movie in the process – will leave you with a great white … elephant. And elephants
can’t swim. (1978) 6 – Diana Balham

Dinner for Schmucks (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). Jemaine Clement made it into the cast of this underseasoned US remake of Francis Veber’s 1998 French comedy, The Dinner Game, and you might like it for this reason alone. You might also like Steve Carell’s brand of agonised deadpan humour or appreciate the fine nuances of another identical loser performance by Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover, Due Date). But even a full-on French farce has more subtlety than this excuse for overdoing things: the parade of stuffed mice, a blind fencer and a crazy ventriloquist pour an entire salt cellar over the original, simple idea: who
can bring the biggest idiot to a dinner party? (2010) 6 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Insight (Radio New Zealand National, 8.12am). Insight looks at the considerable amount of legislation that has been passed under urgency by the National-led government and asks if the practice is leading to a reduction of the democratic process.

Composer of the week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays, and 7.00pm Monday). RNZ Concert features Johannes Brahms (1833-97), the German composer and pianist who was a key figure of the Romantic period. He spent much of his professional life in Vienna but was born into poverty in Hamburg. His musician father encouraged him to play the piano but, as a boy, the younger Brahms was forced by penury to play in dance halls and brothels. It’s said he entertained drunken sailors and over-amorous prostitutes – an experience that apparently had such an effect on him he was never able to form a lasting relationship. If he couldn’t find the ideal woman, he had even more trouble accepting his own abilities: Brahms was such a perfectionist he destroyed many of his early works, including his first 20 attempts at a string quartet. He spent 15 years tinkering with his first symphony and then substituted the original slow movement for another after a few performances. But he was an extremely influential leader of Vienna’s musical scene and his oeuvre includes works for piano, voice and chorus, chamber ensembles and symphonies and, as a virtuoso pianist, he premièred many of his own pieces. – Diana Balham

Spectrum (Radio New Zealand National, 12.15pm). Tiny entrepreneurs came out in force during the capital’s recent Wellington on a Plate festival. In Kids’ Market, Jack Perkins follows the first-ever event for budding stallholders run by the Thorndon Farmers’ Market. Jelly bean bracelets, painted pebbles, sticky toffee apples and organic parsley were the order of the day, and the youngsters were encouraged to run everything, from making the goods to pricing, advertising, decorating the stalls and handling money. And with most of the profits going to charity, rampant capitalism among the junior set may not be just around the corner. – Diana Balham

The Arts on Sunday (Radio New Zealand National, 12.40pm). Today’s programme includes artist Bill Culbert, who has been picked to represent New Zealand at the 2013 Venice Biennale; the band Fly My Pretties; and Dunedin artist Scott Eady. Info and audio here.

The Sunday Feature (Radio New Zealand Concert, 2.00pm). Part eight of Douglas, the Landscape of a New Zealand Composer, the 10-part series that marks the 10th anniversary of Douglas Lilburn’s death. Today, how Lilburn’s music changed over time, and how it has fared amid the shifting sands of fashion.

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Today from the Proms, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit, present works by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Ravel. – Diana Balham

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