TV & Radio Friday December 9

Robin Williams, Elijah Wood and Jennifer Saunders are on Graham's couch, and Cylon mythology in sci-fi series Caprica.

TV

Caprica

Good Morning Christmas Special (TV1, 9.00am). Good Morning signs off with music (Adeaze, Elizabeth Marvelly, Annabel Fay, the Howard Morrison Trio) and prizes.

The Graham Norton Show (TV3, 8.30pm). As always, a stellar line-up on Graham’s couch: Robin Williams, Elijah Wood, Jennifer Saunders and music from JLS. The repeat of The Jonathan Ross show over on TV1 at the same time features Stephen Fry, Peter Kay, Hugh Jackman and Will Young.

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Caprica (Four, 10.30pm). An ill-fated attempt to keep the Battlestar Galactica universe going, although it wasn’t all bad: Caprica is a prequel, set on the worlds before the Cylons blew everything to Hell. On Caprica, the most technologically advanced of the 12 colonies, Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) is building a robotic army – but it’s not going very well until the avatar of his dead daughter, Zoe, is downloaded into one of his machines (thus beginning the creation of the Cylons). That Zoe was killed in a suicide bombing is part of the ethos of the series: there is religious conflict, terrorism, ethnic diversity and racism, and an exploration of the implications of artificial intelligence. Joseph Adama, father of Battlestar’s Bill, is played by Esai Morales, and the great Paula Malcolmson – who you may know as Trixie from Deadwood – plays Daniel’s wife Amanda.

Rugby Sevens (Rugby Channel, Sky 037, 10.30pm). Coverage of the IRB Sevens World Series is pretty limited, for the first two rounds of the tournament anyway; here’s round three from Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth. Next stop, Wellington.

FILM

Bridesmaids (Sky Box Office, Sky 202, 8.05pm). If you watch this Judd Apatow-produced film expecting to see a romcom, you’ll be surprised – and possibly disgusted. Yes, there is a bloke (Chris O’Dowd from TV’s The IT Crowd fills that role), but this is subsumed by the main relationship, between Annie (Kristen Wiig) and her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph). When Lillian announces her engagement, she signs up Annie to be her maid of honour, but there’s a rich, perfect cuckoo in the wedding-planning nest – Helen (Rose Byrne). Not soppy, never predictable, this is one of the funniest and most intermittently revolting movies to come out of Hollywood in a long time, and Wiig is absolutely terrific. Matt Lucas from Little Britain and Rebel Wilson do a killer double act as Annie’s horrid slug-like flatmates. Laugh until you elope. (2011) 8 – Diana Balham

Sister Act (TV2, 8.35pm). As organised religion becomes less relevant in society, it’s interesting to ponder what would happen if no nuns had found a vocation but were, in fact, lounge singers posing as nuns and hiding from their gangster boyfriends. Now that would rock. (1992) 6 – Diana Balham

RADIO

Nine to Noon with Lynn Freeman (Radio New Zealand National, 9.06am). Today: the closure of the Lyttelton rec centre; Pacific correspondent Mike Field; South African writer Gillian Slovo, whose parents were anti-apartheid activists; Harry Broad reviews The Bomber, by Lisa Marklund; new music with Sean McKenna; sports commentator Richard Boock; and The Week That Was with Radar and Irene Pink. Info and audio here.

Classic Concert (Radio New Zealand National, 11.06pm). Perhaps it took him 40 years to learn it off by heart, but in November 2008, Van Morrison performed Astral Weeks – the 1968 album many consider his masterpiece – in its entirety for the first time, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. – Diana Balham