TV Highlights

Thursday 29 November, 9.30pm

Don’t miss 20/20 – the best of New Zealand and American Current Affairs presented by Miriama Kamo with reporters Pete Cronshaw, Paul Hobbs and Sonya Wilson.

A 20/20 Special Edition:

LIVING STATUE

She’s a bright bubbly little girl, much like any other active seven-year old. She loves to dance, ride ponies and swim. But Luciana Wulkan is one of an estimated three hundred people around the world suffering from F.O.P, a genetic condition in which her muscles are slowly turning to bone. She will eventually become a living statue. But she and her mother are determined she’ll lead a full life. They share their hopes and dreams with 20/20, as well as taking a voyage of discovery to see what the future holds, by meeting other fellow sufferers.

A Tan To Die For

Are sunbeds safer than the real thing? Are we getting the full story before climbing into sunbeds? A 20-year-old Dunedin woman has a story of caution for those planning to be a bronzed bikini goddess on the beach this summer.

Monsters Or Martyrs?

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, and that’s probably one of the few established facts in the most enduring mystery of 2007. The rest has been leaks, spin and innuendo – but in the end the parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, remain suspects. In this BBC Panorama special, Madeleine’s dad speaks in a personal video, as does a woman who believes she saw Madeleine being carried off.

A treasure trove of quality educational programmes will be available to a television audience again when Triangle Stratos launches the e-cast ‘eTV’ series on weekday mornings from Monday December 3 2007.

Stratos and e-cast Limited will relaunch the acclaimed ‘eTV’ brand with a whole new line-up of programmes, mostly New Zealand made and previously available only as live streams over the internet and video or DVD recordings.

‘eTV’ will screen every weekday from 9am as a service provided by the Auckland-based company e-cast Limited. The timeslot will initially be half an hour but this is planned to extend to an hour every weekday by early 2008 and to 90 minutes by autumn next year.

Triangle Stratos Chief Executive Officer Jim Blackman says the inclusion of ‘eTV’ in the channel’s line-up will attract viewers across a diverse range of ages and interests and will consolidate Stratos’s place as a national public broadcaster with an exceptional mix of viewing options.

e-cast Director Gresham Bradley says broadcasting the ‘eTV’ series on Triangle Stratos opens a window to a nationwide television audience – including parents, teachers and students from schools and tertiary institutions – eager to share in a rich, relatively untapped resource.

“It’s the broadcasting opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” says Mr Bradley.

e-cast has a solid pedigree in developing multimedia education services including coverage of New Zealand science – its HotScience.co.nz website won the Qantas Media Award for best feature website in 2007.

Video programmes from the Hot Science resource, health programmes from MedTV and other unique New Zealand educational resources will be among the first to screen on Triangle Stratos.

New Zealand Culture, Arts and History will also feature in the new ‘eTV’ service.

Mr Bradley says the public response to news that educational television is coming back to New Zealand’s screens has been positive, without exception: “There is definitely an audience eager for television that enhances their lives, rather than just entertainment.”

The Chairman of e-cast, Robert Boyd-Bell, was the founder of ‘eTV’ in New Zealand. He is thrilled to see the service return to New Zealand broadcast television as an enhancement of the IPTV web-based service e-cast already offers.

“This is our own Digital Strategy – convergence in action – and an opportunity for New Zealanders to experience their own culture without the limits that commercial television imposes.”

“Watch this space,” says Mr Boyd-Bell. “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

New teenager Harmony O’Neil (Hetty Gaskell-Hahn) shows her devious streak when she plays TK’s cousin’s Tane (Dominic Ona-Ariki) and Wiremu (Scott Cotter) off against each other. Having been invited out for dates by both boys separately, she accepts. But instead of turning up to meet each boy as planned, she uses the boys being out as an opportunity to turn up at their house -and settles in for a night on the couch with TK (Ben Mitchell). Will TK see through Harmony’s lies, and how will he feel about her advances?

Craig (Renato Bartolomei) and Alice (Toni Potter) have been heading towards heartbreak hotel recently. This week, it’s finally make or break time, with Craig admitting that his difficult behaviour is because he is jealous of Alice’s history with Dr. Kip Denton (Will Hall). Will Alice be able to convince Craig that he is the only one for her?

Since Nate Adamson (Damien Harrison) returned to Ferndale, he has been making good on his threat to make Tess and Hunter’s love life difficult. When Hunter realises that Nate’s plan to drive them apart is starting to work, he decides to make the grandest gesture of love – and he proposes marriage to Tess. How will Tess respond? Will she settle down with the toy-boy of her dreams – or has Hunter inadvertently forced Tess to choose between him and Nate? All will be revealed this week!

Watch this space, as we inch ever closer to the final episodes of 2007!

NZ TV Premiere: Situation Critical: Miracle At Quecreek

National Geographic – Thursday 13 December, 10.30pm

Deep inside Pennsylvania’s Quecreek mine, 18 workers descend for their evening shift on 24 July 2002. A few hours later, their lives are plunged into peril when one of the miners accidentally breaks through into a long abandoned mine – unleashing 60 million gallons of stagnant groundwater. Nine of the miners fight their way through the raging torrent and escape. The other nine retreat to the highest section of the mine, where they sit and wait to be drowned by the rising floodwater. Their only hope is that the feverish rescue operation underway 240 feet above their heads will reach them before the water does. 77 hours later, the miners are plucked to safety through a 30-inch wide rescue shaft, drilled by their heroic team of rescuers.

Art Special: Van Gogh: The Journey’s End

Arts Channel – Thursday 13 December, 9.00pm

This documentary focuses on the last few months of Van Gogh’s life, during which he produced over ten percent of his entire output. A great part of the narrative takes the form of the intimate correspondence between the artist and his brother Theo, and that of his mother and sister. In 1890, at the age of 37, Van Gogh is admired by Signac, Monet, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec. His brother provides generous financial support. Today, a new transcript of his letters – a work that took nearly fifteen years, reverses the popular image of the “cursed painter”. Van Gogh was, above all, filled with a furious desire and a pressing need to paint, and his choice of colours, brushstrokes and rhythms were incredibly unusual. (From France, in French and English, English subtitles).

Channel Premiere: Mugshot: Charles Sobhraj – The Serpent

Crime & Investigation Network – Wednesday 12 December 9.30pm

A serial killer who preyed on Western tourists throughout Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Nicknamed “the Serpent” and “the Bikini killer” for his skills at deception and evasion, he allegedly committed at least 12 murders and was jailed in India from 1976 to 1997, but managed to live a life of leisure in prison. He retired as a celebrity in Paris, then unexpectedly returned to Nepal, where he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on August 12, 2004.

NZ TV Premiere: Twelve Disciples Of Nelson Mandela

Documentary Channel – Wednesday 12 December, 9.00pm

In this tribute to his late stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng (“Lee”), filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris weaves a riveting exploration of family, exile and home. In telling the story of flesh-and-blood foot soldiers in the fight for a democratic South Africa, Harris also recounts his own difficult relationship with Lee. In 1960, after the Sharpeville massacre, Lee and 11 boyhood friends left their families in Bloemfontein to build the anti-apartheid movement and gain support for the African National Congress abroad. Known as The Twelve Who Left, they blazed a trail through sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, Cuba and North America that would be followed by thousands of South African exiles, and even met Nelson Mandela in Sudan. Lee later met Harris’s mother, and their Bronx household soon became a center for their many friends and comrades in the New York anti-apartheid and Black nationalist movements. Along the way, Lee documented the struggle, his own role and his personal life. Audiotapes of his voice, old photographs, posters, newsreels, video and Super 8 film footage including a young Harris anchor the story while interviews with surviving members and family add depth and texture. “I still long for those days when I had the guts of a lion,” laughs their former teacher, now a Member of Parliament. Harris adds another risky and beautifully successful element using young people from contemporary Bloemfontein in collaboration with survivors to perform unscripted dramatizations of the early fight against apartheid. Multiple layers of narrative and meaning come together in this story of courage, exile, reconciliation and hope.

NZ TV Premiere: Ape To Man

History Channel – Monday 10 December, 8.30pm

The story of a century and a half of tireless research that led humans to discover their ape-like beginnings. In this 2-hour special, we review several stories of discovery, each a crucial turning point in the understanding of our pre-historical past. Our heroes are the men and women who uncovered the clues, often after backbreaking and obsessive labour in some of the most hostile environments on Earth. Their stories are told with dramatic reconstructions of their expeditions and tantalising glimpses of the lives of the ancestral humans they uncovered, together with newspaper headlines, news reports and, where available, archive footage and expert interviews. In the course of this enthralling journey, We uncover the stunning facts, wild theories, and compelling conclusions unearthed by pioneering investigators of human origins. This is the story of how 150 years of sweat and toil brought our extraordinary origins into the light.

NZ TV Premiere: The Pharaoh’s Lost City

History Channel – Monday 10 December, 7.30pm

Archaeologists in the central Egyptian desert have made an extraordinary find: an ancient cemetery where 1,000 people from the Pharaoh’s lost capital of Amarna are buried. Why did this great city only survive one generation before mysteriously vanishing from history? Amarna was a city built for one purpose: to serve the pharaoh, Akhenaten who was one of Ancient Egypt’s most colourful kings. A revolutionary who set up his own religion, he was seen by many as a dangerous heretic. He married the legendary beauty Nefertiti, abandoned the ancient Egyptian spiritual home of Thebes and led 40,000 people into the desert to found his new capital at Amarna. However within two decades, Egypt was on the brink of collapse, the city had been abandoned and the pharaoh’s name wiped from history. For the first time, this documentary will tell the tale of this lost capital’s dramatic rise and fall, through the story of the pharaoh and his people who lived and died here, revealing why this city disappeared from history for more than 3,000 years. Buried in the town’s cemetery are the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptian people – workers, craftsmen and bakers – who all lived in the city during its brief twenty year occupation. It is rare to find the remains of such a large population of ancient people alive at the same time and it provides us with a unique snapshot of life at Amarna.