Radiation by Fiona Rae

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Views of the Week June 13

SATURDAY JUNE 13

Exhibition on Screen: Van Gogh & Japan (Sky Arts, Sky 020, 8.00pm). One of those 8K tellys would be awesome for this Exhibition on Screen doco about the influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh. It seems so obvious when they put it like this.

Stockholm (Sky Movies Premiere, Sky 030, 8.30pm). The reviews weren’t brilliant, but this 2018 film sounds interesting nonetheless. It’s based on the 1973 bank heist that spawned the term Stockholm Syndrome and Ethan Hawke is, according to those reviews, the best thing in it. Based-on-a-true-story films can often seem overly embellished, but many of the bizarre details are true, according to the New Yorker.

I Love Lucy (Jones!, Sky 008, 9.00pm). The amazing Lucille Ball, housewife. It seems wrong, but it was the 1950s and she and Desi Arnaz had already overcome CBS's objections to Arnaz being Cuban. Jones! is screening the show from the beginning. 

The Happytime Murders (TVNZ 2, 9.15pm). This Melissa McCarthy comedy is very silly – especially the puppet sex scene, which is like an explosion in a silly string factory – but what the hell. It's Melissa McCarthy, it's directed by Jim and Jane Henson's son Brian and McCarthy's co-star, a puppet PI called Phil Phillips, is voiced by Dr Teeth.

MONDAY JUNE 15

Endeavour (Vibe, Sky 006, 8.30pm). I have a soft sport for Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel in which Shaun Evans plays the young Morse, the clever-clogs copper of Oxford who seems to be the subject of much professional jealousy, if season six is anything to go by. It's slow and they left the other "o" out of Morse (after the "r"), but it's beautifully filmed and rather subtle. The season starts in 1969, Morse has a moustache, and he and Thursday are on the trail of police corruption. There's also the Apollo 11 Moon landing and a murder in the Bodleian. We're a little behind – season seven screened in February in the UK.

TUESDAY JUNE 16

High School Mums (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). There are spaces for 30 pregnant or teenage parents at He Puāwai Teen Parent Unit at Fraser High in Kirikiriroa – and room for a camera crew, which follows some of the young women as they work towards graduating. According to Fraser's website, there is transport available for the students, a nurse practitioner, Plunket visits and a campus creche, which is just the sort of wraparound care that can make all the difference.

STREAMING, ETC

The Nest (TVNZ OnDemand, Thursday). A knotty, moreish new thriller, according to the Guardian's Lucy Mangan, although their tolerance for distraction in the UK may have recently been way higher than usual. Line of Duty's Martin Compston and Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders) play a couple struggling to conceive who meet a teenager (Mirren Mack) who offers to help.

BLACK LIVES MATTER (Netflix). The streaming giant has curated a BLM playlist, which includes LA 92, a doco looking at the acquittal of the officers who beat up Rodney King in 1992; When They See Us, about the wrongful conviction of the so-called Central Park Five in 1990; the comedies Black AF, Dear White People and She's Gotta Have It; and the movies Moonlight, See You Yesterday, Mudbound and What Happened Miss Simone?

 

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