Proper and not-so proper reality TV, and the Eversons on bFM.
TV
Keeping Up with the Joneses
Keeping Up with the Joneses (TV1, 7.00pm). Finally, the proper definition of reality TV (see also 24 Hours in A&E): life on a cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia, which might as well be Mars to us. A camera crew follows the Jones family – Milton, Cristina and three-year-old “Little Milton” – from the end of the wet season to the start of the dry season, when mustering takes place. Highlights include trapping a rogue croc, collecting croc eggs, and mustering by helicopter and on horseback.
Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare (TV1, 8.00pm). Not the proper definition of reality TV: Sarah Beeny (from Help! My House Is Falling Down) has an arbitrary six months to do up her ageing pile near Hull. Rise Hall has dry rot, collapsing floors, a leaky roof, rotten windows and structural problems. Gosh, do you think she’ll do it in time?
Rhodes Actor Singer (Maori, 8.30pm). Maori Television’s Pakipumeka Aotearoa series continues a profile of baritone opera singer Phillip Rhodes. In 2007, Rhodes won the Lexus Song Quest and was then mentored by the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation. He overcame many obstacles to get there, having been adopted, along with his five sisters, when he was five. In the doco, Dame Kiri discusses the foundation, and his first singing teacher, Jill Tobin, is also interviewed.
The Hour (SoHo, Sky 010, 8.30pm). Episode three (half way!), and Freddie (Ben Whishaw) is off to a weekend shooting party at Hector’s in-laws. Which we’re sure he’ll love. He continues to search for answers to Ruth’s death, and suspicion is mounting about Tom Kish (Burn Gorman), who we already know is dangerous (dramatic irony alert!), but the characters’ don’t. Meanwhile, Hector and Bel draw closer, if we couldn’t already see that coming. Can’t she see Freddie is the only man for her?
Lewis (Prime, 8.40pm). Back to the weekend repeats of Lewis, but what the hey – at least there’s all that pretty Oxford scenery to enjoy. It’s back to season three, and the Czech barmaid murdered with an antique Persian mirror stolen from a professor of comparative religion. For more Lewis fun, UKTV is screening the series from the beginning starting tomorrow night at 9.25pm, when Lewis returns home to Oxford and investigates the death of a mathematics student.
The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After (History, Sky 073, 9.30pm). It seems programme-makers never tire of going over and over history’s most famous assassination, and yet we never learn anything new. See this as a companion piece to The Kennedys on Prime (Tuesday, 9.40pm) – The Kennedys: What Happened Next, perhaps. The documentary follows a timeline of the 24 hours following the 1963 assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas, when Vice President Lyndon B Johnson was told of the President’s death, and his decision to take the oath of office in Air Force One alongside the former First Lady. The photograph of that moment has become iconic, especially as Jackie Kennedy is still wearing the pink Chanel suit – now bloodstained – that she wore in the Dallas motorcade.
LIVE SPORT TODAY: Presidents Cup golf, day three, from Melbourne (Sky Sport 1, Sky 030, 12.30pm); A-League soccer, Wellington Phoenix v Adelaide United (Sky Sport 3, Sky 032, 2.30pm); A-League soccer, Newcastle Jets v Brisbane Roar (Sky Sport 3, Sky 032, 7.30pm); A-League soccer, Sydney FC v Central Coast Mariners (Sky Sport 3, Sky 032, 9.45pm); NBL basketball, Gold Coast Blaze v Townsville Crocodiles, from the Gold Coast Convention Centre (Sky Sport 2, Sky 031, 9.30pm); European PGA Tour golf, Alfred Dunhill Championship, round three (Sky Sport 2, Sky 031, 11.30pm)
FILM
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Enchanted (TV2, 7.00pm). It sounds ghastly on paper: a beautiful (animated) princess is banished to (real) New York after falling in love with the son of a horrid queen and is rescued by a nice young lawyer who knows the streets a bit better than these two fairytale characters. But this Disney production sends its saccharine self up from start to finish, with Amy Adams doing sterling work as Giselle. Her Happy Working Song number where she enlists the help of Manhattan’s cheeriest vermin to clean up is quickly becoming a classic. Any song that rhymes “spoil it” and “toilet” gets my vote. (2007) 7 – Diana Balham
Harry Brown (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). ’Arry Brown is one pissed-off old geezer who’s let down by the Bill when his Old China is offed by a bunch of ’ooligans. Michael Caine’s world-weary geriatric vigilante will leave you gasping but you probably won’t be surprised that dear old London town has turned into a zoo full of chavs. (2009) 7 – Diana Balham
Fight Club (TV3, 8.30pm). When someone in a movie says, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can”, you’re either watching Jack Black being a sadomasochist in some nutbar dress-up comedy that should have remained unmade or you’re watching Fight Club. If it’s Fight Club, you need never watch another Brad Pitt film again. He will never be better – or cooler. David Fincher’s third feature (after Se7en and The Game) is an ugly, surprising masterpiece. I’m picking most women will understand less about men after seeing this. Men might just want to go out and punch someone. (1999) 8 – Diana Balham
We Are Marshall (TV1, 9.00pm). Yet another fact-based underdog sports team drama in the slot that TV1 has created for such things, but without Jerry Bruckheimer’s guiding hand. This team has one hell of a disability – everyone in it’s dead! Once again, we’re encouraged to feel good about the bad stuff: in 1970, the coaches and virtually the whole football team of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, are killed in a plane crash, and it’s up to unfortunately named college president Don Dedman (David Strathairn) to find a new coach and some players who don’t suck – out of those who didn’t make the team in the first place. Bring on the dancing girls, inspirational speeches, comical uniforms and a big box of tissues. New coach and great big sticking plaster Matthew McConaughey will have you barracking all the way to the utterly predictable ending. (2006) 6 – Diana Balham
Scary Movie 2 (TV2, 9.10pm). Scary career moves for Marlon and Shawn Wayans, Anna Faris, Tori Spelling and – shame on you – James Woods and Tim Curry. So dumb it hurts. (2001) 4 – Diana Balham
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (TV3, 11.25pm). Cor! That Sir William Raleigh was a bit of all right. Well, he would have been had he really looked like Clive Owen. Basically a period soap that tosses a little bit of history into the pot and it’s a great romp, although QEI probably wasn’t quite the vamp she’s made out to be here. This is effectively the sequel to Elizabeth (1998), for which Cate Blanchett received an Oscar nomination, but if it had been called Elizabeth: The Golden Years, nobody would have gone to see it. She’s not quite in a Zimmer frame here: the story takes up when she’s in her fifties and the Spanish are about to attack. (2007) 6 – Diana Balham
For Your Eyes Only (TV1, 12.35am). After the over-the-top silliness of Moonraker, a change down was needed for Roger Moore’s fifth Bond, although they needn’t have been quite so dull between stunts. Bond is tasked with retrieving the McGuffin that controls the Brits’ Polaris subs; this means a ride in a mini-sub, diving through a sunken wreck, a car chase through the back roads of Greece, and being dragged behind a speed boat with Bond girl Carole Bouquet. Also breaking in to a mountain-top fortress. Roger Moore is beginning to show his age here (although not quite as bad as his next Bond, Octopussy), and stuntmen frequently save the day. (1981)
RADIO
Saturday Morning with Kim Hill (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). Today, Hill talks to Australian writer Colleen McCullough (whose book The Thorn Birds got parishioners looking twice at their priests) about the autobiography she said she’d never write. Then it’s this year’s winner of the Rutherford Medal. The premier award of the Royal Society of New Zealand recognises an outstanding contribution in science, maths, social science or technology. And Sharon and Neil Finn will have another go at playing favourites after postponing their September appearance. They might even spin a tune from their just-released CD as Pajama Club, with Sean Donnelly and Alana Skyring. More info about guests and audio here. – Diana Balham
The Eversons/Mothers of Darkness Recorded Live at Roundhead Studios (95bFM, 11.00am and Friday, 2.00pm). Indie guitar band the Eversons are four friends from Wellington who have only been a band since the end of last year but have already found a way to get their music heard around the world: they’ve had a song (Creepy) accepted onto Air France’s in-flight radio playlist. Mothers of Darkness are blokes who play “casually uptight” music, according to their Facebook page. Perhaps they are four enemies from Auckland. Oddly, they share their name with a castle in Belgium – so named, apparently, because it was a centre of occult worship … There will be live streaming and podcasts on 95bfm.com, and video on this website after November 19. – Diana Balham
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