TV & Radio Thursday December 8

Sweary McSwearypants is back to tell US restaurant owners what to do, and the documentary of the scandal that inspired The Good Wife.

TV

Kitchen Nightmares

Coronation Street (TV1, 7.30pm). Tony is back on t’Street! It’ll end in tears, and no mistake.

Benidorm (TV1, 9.30pm). As old-fashioned a Britcom as ever there was. The broad humour quotient is high in this comedy about the English working-class at a resort hotel somewhere on the coast of Spain. And what is Steve Pemberton doing in there?

Kitchen Nightmares (TV2, 9.30pm). A new series of Sweary McSwearypants telling hapless American restaurant owners what to do. He begins with Mojito, a Cuban eatery in Brooklyn, New York, where the owners’ marriage needs saving along with the restaurant. Gordon Ramsay as a marriage counsellor? We’re not seeing it.

FILM

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The Green Hornet (Sky Movies, Sky 020, 8.30pm). A misfire from Michel Gondry, who should never have taken on a superhero film unless he was going to do it in a retro-cool animated-with-cardboard kind of way. Seth Rogen blusters through the Green Hornet story with an “unmodulated decibel level and childish, dorkish energy”, said Entertainment Weekly. No matter how much he slims down, Rogen will always be the slob from Knocked Up to us. (2011) 3

Hitch (Movies Greats, Sky 022, 8.30pm). Will Smith is charming as Hitch, the “date doctor” who keeps his job on the down low, and Eva Mendes is appropriately feisty as the journalist trying to track him down, but absolutely stealing the show is Kevin James as the chunky asthmatic who gives Hitch his toughest assignment yet. Just wait till you see him dancing. (2005) 7

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Rialto, Sky 025, 8.30pm). The documentary of the scandal that inspired The Good Wife – Spitzer was the New York Governor who was seen as a potential US President, until he was caught in an investigation into suspicious transactions to the IRS which were covering up the money he was spending on prostitutes. After flying high as New York State Attorney General, it was a spectacular fall from Grace. (2010)

RADIO

Appointment (Radio New Zealand Concert, 7.00pm). Christopher Doig, a prodigiously talented man who was as at home in the world of music as he was in the sports arena, died on October 13. This programme is a repeat of an interview with Diana Cable recorded in April. – Diana Balham

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.20pm). Australian soprano Sara Macliver tackles a globe-trotting selection in this concert with the APO recorded in February in the Auckland Town Hall. The programme includes Tarantismo by Wellington-based composer John Psathas, Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony (Titan) and some of French composer Joseph Canteloube’s famed Songs of the Auvergne. – Diana Balham