TV & Radio Thursday September 29

An explanation of civilisation. Crikey. And Neighbors from Hell. They're really from Hell.

TV

Ancient Worlds, photo BBC

George Gently (UKTV, Sky 006, 8.30pm). Alan Hunter’s Inspector Gently novels are brought to life by the BBC and Martin Shaw, who these days, with his grey hair and careworn face, suits an old-fashioned procedural set in 1966 (even if he is the thoroughly modern Judge John Deed on Saturdays on UKTV). Tonight, it’s the first episode of the series, in which Gently’s wife has been murdered and Gently is contemplating retirement, until he hears of another case that could the murderer’s handiwork. Hunter, a farmer and antiquarian bookseller before he began writing the Inspector Gently novels in 1955, died in 2005. The Telegraph‘s obituary here.

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Ancient Worlds (BBC Knowledge, Sky 074, 7.30pm). A six-part series that explains civilisation. Crikey. In the first episode, archaeologist and historian Richard Miles starts in Uruk in Iraq, known as “the mother of all cities”. He travels to Syria, Egypt, Anatolia and Greece, exploring the challenges of this new way of organising human life. Civilisation, says the slightly blustery Miles, is based on an improbable idea – “that strangers can live together in dense urban settings”, and given that, the series is “not the story of ancient worlds long past, it’s the story of us, then”. In the following episodes, he explores the Iron Age, the Greeks, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire and, lastly, the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity.

Futurama (Four, 8.30pm). An episode that references both the Möbius strip and Moby-Dick: Leela becomes obsessed with killing a four-dimensional space whale that she believes is responsible for killing the first crew of the Planet Express. Executive producer and head writer David X Cohen discusses the revived series here.

Neighbors from Hell (Four, 9.00pm). Reviewers were underwhelmed by this new animated series created by Pam Brady, who is best known for her work on South Park and Team America: World Police. Maybe it will get better with age. It features a family of demons, sent from Hell to Texas by Satan to stop a drill that can reach the Earth’s core. The obvious joke is that they find that Earth isn’t very different from Hell, and humans are as bad as demons. Canadian comedian Will Sasso voices dad Balthazor Hellman, comic actress Molly Shannon voices mum Tina Hellman, and Steve Coogan, for no apparent reason, is Satan.

FILM

Eat Pray Love (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). It would be so easy to like this emotional-journey travelogue that Julia Roberts take us on as she waltzes from “Iddily” to India to Indonesia in search of herself. She’s luminescent, she sloughs off her old unenlightened skin, she learns. And she’s on the button when she asks a Texan guru (Richard Jenkins) if he always talks in bumper stickers. But, in the end, it’s such an example of “white women’s woes” that you can’t help but get sick of her Western whining and wish she’d wobble away in a whacked-out Winnebago. See? This corny movie is making me crazy! Deeply shallow: more so than the Elizabeth Gilbert book. (2010) 5 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Tonight from the Proms, pianist Maria João Pires and Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra (under David Zinman) perform works by Hillborg, Mozart and Beethoven.