TV & Radio Tuesday November 8

The world is getting whiffier every day for the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey, and another week, another Aussie obs doc.

TV

Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey

NB: The TV1 listings in the November 5 and 12 issues of the Listener say “To Be Advised” at 4.55pm every weekday, and at 7.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday because, at the time we went to press, TVNZ had not made a decision about the programmes that would screen in those timeslots. However, TVNZ has since announced it will screen Coronation Street at 7.30pm on Thursdays and Fridays starting November 10. Ellen will screen at 5.00pm every weekday. TVNZ’s full TV guide is here.

Downton Abbey (Prime, 8.30pm). Oh Lord, as if the stink under the Dowager Countess’s nose couldn’t get any worse, she has to endure an uplifting wartime concert right there in Downton. Poor Lady Mary is forced into a gang show and has to sing, “If you were the only boy …” Downton Abbey: the best place on TV for appalled facial expressions.

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Druglords (TV1, 9.30pm). Another week, another Aussie obs doc. Gary Sweet – Australia’s Bruce Willis – hosts this series that shows how NSW police made some big drugs busts over the years, so if you’re a drug dealer – bonus information! The series begins with the surveillance and bust of Olympic kayaker  Nathan Baggaley and his brother.

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (Prime, 11.15pm). Prime repeats this BBC-Comedy Central co-production that is groaning (you will be) with puns, slapstick and double entendre. It is charitable to call it Pythonesque, although Little Britain‘s Matt Lucas did just that in an interview with the Telegraph: “It’s sort-of Lord of the Rings meets Blackadder meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Lucas plays “lusty despot” Donold Dongalor, the bitter rival of Kröd (“dork” backwards) Mändoon, played by Sean Maguire. The British actor nearly didn’t take the gig after appearing in stinker Meet the Spartans, but was persuaded by the funny scripts. He is the hypochondriac leader of a group of freedom fighters that includes a pagan warrioress, an oaf, and Bruce, a gay. There were some complaints in the UK about Marques Ray’s portrayal of Bruce, but by that measure, despots, oafs and pagan warrioresses should be complaining, too.

FILM

Bridget Jones’s Diary (Four, 8.30pm). Tuesday. Watched Bridget Jones’s Diary for 98th time on free-to-air television. Still v v good. Love it just the way it is. (2001) 7 – Diana Balham

The Road (Rialto, Sky 025, 6.35pm). Quite possibly the bleakest movie ever made, said our reviewer David Larsen, about this adaptation of the book by Cormac McCarthy. Viggo Mortensen is the unnamed father, Kodi Smit-McPhee is the boy. They go on through a nuked landscape because that’s all they can do. McCarthy might have been writing about love and human spirit, but it’s a grim and dispiriting journey. (The Road did win the “Intense Aftertaste Award for a Film That Wouldn’t Let Us Out of Its World” award in the Listener Film Awards 2010, however.) (2009)

RADIO

The Sampler (Radio New Zealand National, 7.30pm). Listener columnist Nick Bollinger looks at recent releases from Bjork and Tuneyards and talks with Pat Sansone of Wilco about their latest album The Whole Love.

Sound Lounge (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.10pm). The final show of Dudley Benson’s 2008 tour in support of his album The Awakening was in the lovely St Matthew-in-the-City, Auckland. Benson is joined by an ensemble of four-part choir, string quartet, organ and harp and there are songs from the album’s Southern song-cycle as well as some unexpected covers.

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