Henry's up to wife No 5 in the final season of The Tudors, and Pablo Escobar's hippos. No, really.
TV
The Tudors
60 Minutes (TV3, 7.30pm). Half the schedule is heading for its holiday break, beginning with 60 Minutes, which ends with stories about a family who are determined to find out what happened to their missing son; a woman who gave her brain-damaged son a common sleeping pill with unexpected results; and Brad Pitt explaining why he plans to quit acting at 50.
Rick Stein’s Cornish Christmas (Prime, 7.30pm). A less-sweaty programme from Stein after his Far East adventures, in which he lost half his body weight in water every episode. Apparently, they do Christmas a bit differently in Cornwall, so Stein goes wassailing (something to do with apples), visits Port Isaac’s fishermen and cooks goose. His own, too. There might be some traditional Cornish beer and cider along the way as well.
Movember (The Box, Sky 005, 8.30pm). Local programming that isn’t sport on a Sky channel? Extraordinary. A programme that follows a group of Kiwi guys as they grow moustaches and fund-raise for men’s health during November.
Drug Kingpin Hippos (Animal Planet, Sky 075, 8.30pm). The lasting legacy in Colombia of the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is not what you might expect – it’s hippos. Like any good drug baron, fascist dictator, or crazy popstar, Escobar lived in outrageous lavishness on his estate, Hacienda Napoles, including building a private zoo. In the 1980s, he illegally imported four hippos, but nature has taken its course since then, and the group now numbers more than 30. Drug Kingpin Hippos outlines efforts to keep these beasts under control, and the dangers they now pose to surrounding villages.
The Tudors (TV1, 10.45pm). Divorced, beheaded, dead. Divorced … Welcome back to the lusty, murderous, capricious reign of Henry VIII of England, a period of history that continues to fascinate nearly 500 years after Henry drew his final breath at age 55. As the final season of The Tudors begins, Henry VIII (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), now in his forties, has seen off four wives and is about to find his fifth queen. “He’s now going to make the kind of mistakes that lots of middle-aged guys make,” says series creator and writer Michael Hirst of season four. In modern-day terms, it’s a mid-life crisis. If it were today, he would have bought a red sports car and younger men’s clothes, but in Tudor England, his eye lands on the 17-year-old Catherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant), a pretty lady-in-waiting to his previous wife, Anne of Cleves. “She is the most forbidden and yet most lusted-after woman at the court,” says Hirst. Unfortunately, she was not of royal blood, and had a dodgy past, one that comes back to haunt her. “I had great, great sympathy for her,” says Hirst of Catherine Howard, who (spoiler alert!) was sent to her death in the Tower, as Anne Boleyn was. “She kept asking to see the king personally and that he would understand – Anne Boleyn said the same thing.” Her dramatic escape from her jailors in an attempt to see Henry at chapel is irresistible to the man who has over-egged the Tudors story wherever possible. “The fact is that her ghost still haunts that passageway in Hampton Court Palace.” The mid-life crisis then extends to war with France until finally Henry seems to find some peace with his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, played by Joely Richardson. One imagines Henry would have approved of Hirst’s rambunctious, saucy biography of his life. Hirst certainly enjoyed it: “I’m really sad it’s over,” he told one interviewer, “but I ran out of wives.”
FILM
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (TV2, 7.00pm). A Sony Pictures animation that nips at the heels of some of Pixar’s best. This one concerns a boy genius whose water-into-food machine malfunctions and pretty soon it’s raining hot dogs and ice cream and waffles. But even in the land of upsizing this turns out to not be a good thing. Food can kill, you know, especially when it’s travelling at terminal velocity. Funny enough to earn the right to slip in a lesson about nutrition. (2009) 7 – Diana Balham
All About Steve (TV3, 8.30pm). In a world where eccentric means completely bonkers and socially deaf, dumb and blind, we have the talented Sandra Bullock putting her good name on the line as a verbally dribbling, love-struck stalker. Why, I do not know. She won a worst actress Golden Raspberry award for this and then a best actress Oscar for The Blind Side days later. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Bradley Cooper (Steve) might not agree. Let’s just say the scene where she falls down a mineshaft is a pretty good analogy for the movie. Desperate. (2009) 3 – Diana Balham
Stripes (Four, 8.30pm). Not a great advert for the US Army, which, amazingly, gave its full co-operation in the making of this rather dated 80s hit comedy for Bill Murray. Bet this one has them bellowing with ironic laughter in US mess tents around the world. (1981) 6 – Diana Balham
The Town (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). Doug (Ben Affleck) leads a hard crew of four Boston bank robbers who dress as diabolical nuns when they do a job. (Whoopi Goldberg, take note.) But the survival of the “family” is put at risk when Doug falls for a hostage. A stark and solid thriller with terrific work by Affleck, who also wrote the screenplay and directed. Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner, John Hamm and Owen Burke also star. (2010) 8 – Diana Balham
King Lear (Stratos & Sky 089, 8.30pm). Part three of Orson Welles’s trilogy of Shakespeare adaptations. He certainly loved the big characters: this came after Othello and Macbeth, and although he played the lead, Welles didn’t direct. This job went to Andrew McCullough (whose credits include TV’s The Donna Reed Show and Family Ties with Michael J Fox), and it played as a 73-minute TV movie. Fortunately, he didn’t try to run it as a US sitcom, although think of the melodrama some of the ladies of the day could have wrung from it: Lucille Ball as Goneril, Dinah Shore as Regan, Lassie as Cordelia … (1953) 7 – Diana Balham
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (TV2, 8.50pm). What you do if you are a fish-tank cleaner who is mistaken for a male gigolo. (Is there any other kind?) Rob Schneider makes Adam Sandler, who produced, look like Laurence Olivier. (1999) 4 – Diana Balham
RADIO
Composer of the Week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays, and 7.00pm Monday). RNZ Concert focuses on Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), who is best known for composing violin concertos The Four Seasons, which have become something of a classical cliché through overexposure, the Venice-born composer, virtuoso violinist and priest is now recognised as one of the great Baroque figures of the age. His instrumental concertos are his chief musical legacy, but he also wrote sacred choral works and over 40 operas. – Diana Balham
Spectrum (Radio New Zealand National, 12.15pm). In Under the Mountain and with more than a slight nod towards Maurice Gee’s classic story, Lisa Thompson travels to Auckland’s moody and mysterious volcanic peak Rangitoto. She meets not aliens in ill-fitting suits but descendants of the island’s once-thriving bach community from the 1920s and 30s. The Depression-era digs were wonderfully makeshift – cobbled together with whatever materials could be spared – but most were demolished after the prohibition of further building or renovation from 1937. From a high of 140 baches, there are now just 34, and these are being preserved by the Rangitoto Island Historic Conservation Trust, which seems a bit counter-intuitive, does it not? – Diana Balham
Opera on Sunday (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). Today’s work comes courtesy of Composer of the week Antonio Vivaldi. It’s Ottone in Villa, his first opera, which premiered in 1713. This 2010 recording features Sonia Prina, Roberta Invernizzi, Veronica Cangemi and Julia Lezhneva, with early music group Il Giardino Armonico, conducted by Giovanni Antonini. It’s set in ancient Rome, but the story is your stock standard opera romance: “A is in love with B, who fancies C, who dresses up as a man because she’s in love with D”, but it’s a comedy so you needn’t worry about Caligula types doing dreadful things to their relatives. – Diana Balham
The Sunday Feature: (Radio New Zealand National, 4.07pm). Today it’s part two of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s three-part series, Talking Heads 2011, entitled Inside Out: The Chemistry of Food, Sex and Ageing. In Christchurch at the University of Canterbury, Kim Hill and visiting Canadian science author Joe Schwarcz ask: Are cows more trustworthy than chemists? Joining them for a panel discussion will be Christchurch-based academics Ian Shaw, Michael Edmonds and Margreet Vissers. – Diana Balham
Blue Smoke: The Birth of New Zealand Pop (Radio New Zealand Concert, 7.00pm). Chris Bourke is back with more fascinating insights into our musical history with Blue Smoke: The Birth of New Zealand Pop, an adaptation of his award-winning book. In part two of the series – Beat Groups, Bobby Soxers and Bohemians – he delves into covers of hits of the time, early guitar bands, teenage pop and folk singers. – Diana Balham
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