A new feelgood drama replaces Nothing Trivial, and Sean Bean, younger and in a uniform. What's not to like?
TV
Winners & Losers
Animal Pharm (TVNZ 7, Sky 077, 7.05pm). A two-part Channel 4 series exploring the new sciences of genetic engineering, cloning and stem cell research. In one corner is biologist Olivia Judson, who is a supporter of GE, and in the other is food journalist Giles Coren, who thinks Franken-food, especially, is scary and pointless.
Hot in Cleveland (TV2, 8.00pm). If they’re bringing back Betty White, they might as well bring back some other old stars, too: tonight features guest appearances from Hal Linden, who you may remember from 70s sitcom Barney Miller; Shirley Knight, who was in As Good As It Gets and was Phyllis Van de Kamp in Desperate Housewives; and Juliet Mills, who was once a lovely British nanny in US sitcom Nanny and the Professor.
Winners & Losers (TV1, 8.30pm). A feelgood drama to replace feelgood drama Nothing Trivial. Australian series Winners & Losers is a bit like Go Girls and has been a hit across the Tassie: it features four female friends in the lead roles and is slightly saucier than the other series created by showrunner Bevan Lee, Packed to the Rafters. “It’s Sex and the City meets Ugly Betty with a dash of teen-revenge movie Heathers thrown in,” said one Aussie critic. The women were labelled losers at school, and attend their high school reunion with trepidation, but a twist at the end of the pilot episode changes their lives.
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Sharpe (Prime, 9.30pm). Ah, we love a man in a silly uniform. “Encore” screenings of the Sharpe dramatisations begin with 1993’s Sharpe’s Rifles, in which Sean Bean looks dashingly young and handsome in his Napoleonic-era get-up. In this story, Bernard Cornwell’s young Yorkshireman Richard Sharpe is in Portugal in 1809 fighting the French and getting into trouble with a band of Spanish guerrillas led by the beautiful Comandanta Teresa Moreno.
Undercovers (TV2, 10.30pm). The final of the series forever. The JJ Abrams-created spy series was cancelled in November last year, and the last two episodes weren’t even screened in the US. It seems that audiences like their JJ Abrams dark and twisty: he had tried to make something frothy and simple, but Undercovers was not serious enough. In the final, Steven and Sam find themselves fighting for their lives on a mission in Dubai.
The Late Show with David Letterman (Prime, 11.35pm). Tonight, Michael J Fox; the Top Ten List read by Ashton Kutcher, Jon Cryer and Angus T Jones; comedian Jim McDonald; and music from John Doe.
FILM
The American (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). George Clooney likes to make an art movie every now and then; it means he and his director can slow down and do some proper film-making. (Think of Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris: loved in Europe and despised in the US, or the existential Up In the Air.) The American is directed by photographer Anton Corbijn, who is principally known for his music videos and the biopic Control. Corbin makes stylish films, and in this retro thriller, George Clooney is an assassin who hides out in Italy and falls for a call-girl. If that suggests action, don’t be fooled, this is a “Euro-espionage thriller that’s written, acted and directed as if it were still 1974” said Sight & Sound and there are patches of stillness and reverie; Clooney, who has always had the air of a Golden Age leading man, converses with a priest and the possibility of romantic redemption is held tantalisingly in front of him. (2010) 7
Sin City (Movies Greats, Sky 022, 8.30pm). The layers of monochrome relieved only by splashes of brilliant reds, greens and whites are thrillingly dark and immersing, but this slavish adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel is ultimately a triumph of form over emotion. Too clever for its own good, you might say. Just as you’re beginning to feel for a grossly latexed Mickey Rourke, you’re whipped away to a scary Elijah Wood as a cannibalistic killer, putting Frodo firmly behind him. In response to the sickening ultraviolence, the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote: “We have, it is clear, reached the lively dead end of a process that was initiated by a fretful Martin Scorsese and inflamed, with less embarrassed glee, by Tarantino: the process of knowing everything about violence and nothing about suffering.” (2005) 5
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