Dr Aleks Krotoski is in ur internets, and new cop show Southland features brilliant brooder Benjamin McKenzie.
TV
Southland
The Mentalist (TV2, 8.30pm). Only five episodes left in the season for Jane to figure out who is in Red John’s evil thrall – and he gets a bit stupid tonight, hiring a thief to break into LaRoche’s house to steal a list of suspects. However, the sight of Large Marge LaRoche (Pruitt Taylor Vince) dealing to a burglar while holding onto his little dog is worth price of admission.
Native Affairs – Kowhiri 11 (Maori, 8.30pm). Julian Wilcox leads discussion and analysis of the results of the election.
Virtual Revolution (TVNZ 7, Sky 077, 9.05pm). Apart from Dr Aleks Krotoski’s annoying tendency to put herself in the picture, and a couple of contentious statements she makes about the internet, her Virtual Revolution is an informative ride through the greatest technological leap of the 20th century. The series had an interesting collaborative origin, in that the BBC asked its web audience to comment on clips, send questions, debate episode themes and put together their own videos before the finished programme went to air. Krotoski, who writes for the Observer and the Guardian, meets anyone who’s anyone on the internet, including its inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Stephen Fry, Al Gore and Bill Gates. She also investigates how the internet (which she calls “the web”) is changing human behaviour and thinking, and the implications and potential dangers of this greatly connected virtual system.
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Southland (TV1, 9.30pm). Good reviews for this new US cop drama that nonetheless struggled to find a big enough audience for the NBC network. Perhaps its natural home is cable, because after being compared favourably with shows like The Shield and Rescue Me, it was cancelled by NBC and picked up by pay channel TNT. It was created by Ann Biderman, who wrote for NYPD Blue, and its executive producers are Christopher Chulack and John Wells – yes, of ER fame. It centres on a group of LAPD cops, including Benjamin McKenzie (who we haven’t seen since he brooded so brilliantly in The OC), Kevin Alejandro (True Blood) and Tom Everett Scott.
FILM
X-Men 2 (TV3, 8.30pm). Aka “Return of the Freaky People with Silly Names”. But in a good way: this is a very decent sequel with a tight script, great performances and the fabulous Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler. He gets accepted into the X-Men fraternity (it’s very blokey, even though some of them are women), but Cumming couldn’t be fagged with the 10-hour makeup sessions and turned down the third movie. (Our 2008 interview Alan Cumming here.) (2003) 7 – Diana Balham
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (MGM, Sky 023, 8.30pm). Compared with Tony Scott’s 2009 remake, it’s interesting to see just how little action there is in this, er, action movie. One car crash is about it; the rest mostly takes place on a hijacked subway train and in the subway control centre, where Walter Matthau negotiates with the crims. Fun fact: the gang’s use of code names – Messrs Blue, Green, Grey and Brown – inspired Quentin Tarantino for his breakthrough film Reservoir Dogs. (1974) 7
Four Lions (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). Satirical genius Chris Morris’s comedy about jihadists in the UK is simultaneously terrifying and banal. They’re idiots, yet they want violently attack the West; they aspire to be suicide bombers, but can’t decide on a target (one of them suggests Boots chemist); they make a martyrdom video, but their camera runs out of batteries. Morris spent years researching Britain’s homegrown jihadists, and some of the dialogue comes from police surveillance tapes, but it’s difficult to know whether the movie lets the air out of radicals’ tyres or lulls us by depicting them as bungling fools. After all, the 7/7 bombers in London were no doubt idiots, and they still managed to kill 48 people. (2010)
RADIO
Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). American ensemble the Brentano Quartet have been together since 1992 and play the entire two-century range of standard quartet repertoire. But they have a special love for Beethoven and are named after Antonie Brentano, Beethoven’s supposed “immortal beloved” – a married woman with whom he was thought to be in love. Tonight’s concert, recorded in the Auckland Town Hall in June, features works by Mozart, Hartke, Byrd, Gibbons and, yes, Beethoven: his String Quartet in F. – Diana Balham
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