Radiation by Fiona Rae

Really trying not to see anything on the interweb that will spoil the end of The Sopranos, but if you have friends in America (loving that expression), here’s Salon’s Heather Havrilesky. Is it an irony that TV1 starts screening The Sopranos just as it is ending in the US? Maybe, but I love that sequence in last night’s episode with Christopher out of it at the fair. It was beautiful, awful, pathetic and sad all at once and it had a dog. TVNZ has been heavily advertising The Sopranos, which shows commitment, and I hope it finds a good home on TV1.

There’s definitely an air of something going right at the state broadcaster, ratings for the news and Close Up are up, the schedules are stable and they’re not firing as many journos as they said they would (although cold comfort, I’m sure, for those who lost their jobs). The 6 o’clock news is alarmingly straightforward, although still don’t know why we need a live cross to Tim Wilson in the US to discuss Paris Hilton.

But do you think there’s at least one person at TVNZ with a teensy bit of regret about not giving Flight of the Conchords their own show? Their HBO show starts June 17, here’s an ew.com interview and a Salon one too (“hilarious” says the writer). The show has been bought by Prime.

So my worst nightmare has come true while Russell is away: the internet’s gone funny. Plus, no email, so anyone taking Russell up on his suggestion to contact me for his gmail address – well, you can try. I’ve tried unplugging it and plugging it back in and the 12-year-old genius unplugged something and plugged it back in as well, but to no avail. Wah! I feel like I’m in that cartoon where the woman pathetically waits for a man to come and change her car tyre, although ironically, I can change a car tyre in a pinch, just can’t fix an internet connection. You never quite know whether, like when the theme to Shortland Street was sung by one of the Yandall Sisters, is it me or is it you? Is it some technical doo-dah that I could fiddle with, or is it at the other end?

[Update: internet and email working Saturday morning. Appointments missed: one; unsolicited emails: four; vital information about Victoria's Secret bra sale: one.]

Saturday 16/6
Here’s a YouTube clip of Perfect Parents on TV1, Christopher Eccleston’s first drama after Doctor Who, although I think it might have been swapped with Walk Away and I Stumble on Sunday night.
Abouna on Maori gets a nine from Philip Matthews; the 1967 thriller starring Audrey Hepburn, Wait Until Dark on TV1 gets an eight.

Sunday 17/6
Sunday (TV1) has stories about herbal remedies, stuttering and a woman growing her own veggies. Imagine.
Simon Schama (TV1) does Van Gogh.
In Search of Shakespeare on the Documentary Channel had good reviews, from memory.
Only five more episodes left of Gilmore Girls (TV2), Grant Lee Phillips is in this ep. There’s talk of a movie

Monday 18/6
New seasons of Criminal Intent and Medium on TV3. Must … stay … awake …
A Matariki special on Maori TV.
John Cusack and musical guests Pink Martini are on Letterman.

Tuesday 19/6
Hooray! Ugly Betty returns on TV2.
Some sort of family crisis for Wilson on tonight’s House
Michael Moore and comedian Bill Burr are on Letterman.
An excellent short film, Dead Letters, is screening on Rialto at 8.10pm.
Needing a Nathan Fillion fix? Slither is on Sky Movies 2.

Wednesday 20/6
Read this after tonight’s episode of Lost; also this if you have a spare half-hour.
Go back to a time when Katie Holmes was actually cool by taping Dawson’s Creek on TV2, 3.25am.
Dead Like Me starts again on Prime.
Shameless is on UKTV.
Mike Myers and America Ferrara are on Letterman.

Thursday 21/6
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip starts on TV2.
Hugh Laurie OBE is on Inside the Actors Studio.
Animal expert Jack Hanna, Katherine Heigl, Patty Griffin and a Top Ten List presented by Christina Aguilera are on Letterman.

Friday 22/6
It’s the last National Bank Cup netball game (TV1) before the new trans-Tasman league next year.
Footballers’ Wives starts on TV1 – series five.
Matt Damon, 2007 Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchetti and musical guests Bright Eyes are on Letterman.
Death Metal Murders on Documentary could be interesting, or it could be the work of the devil.

Look at me! I'm doing another blog! Weee! Scoring fairly low on the Scale of Patheticness too, as I've only managed to miss Saturday and there wasn't much on anyway. Well done to throng for getting the number of complaints received by TV3 over Deal or No Deal. Here's something for TV insiders to think about. Highlight for the week: Heroes final, you lucky little geeks. No more until September, but Tom Kring is now the golden boy. He talks about the spin-off, Heroes: Origins here

Sunday
The Guardian's Sam Woollaston liked Murder in the Outback (TV1).
It's a regular old Angel/Buffy reunion on How I Met Your Mother (TV3)
Weird how Jericho (TV3) got a reprieve.
Magik and Rose (Maori TV) gets a seven from Philip Matthews in the Listener.

Monday
Heroes on TV3 literally goes off: it's the final and it's enough to make someone just explode! Read this after seeing the episode, although it's fair to say there was some disappointment out there in criticland.
It's also the final of Bones (TV3); don't worry, it's been renewed for a third season. Here's some E! Channel video of Emily D and David B, but careful about the text, there's a spoiler about Angela and Hodgins which, damn it, I just read.
Man Stroke Woman starts on TV1.

Tuesday
Quite Ugly One Morning is on Railto, stars Irishman James Nesbitt in a role created by Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre.
The Rich List on TV1 will have fewer breasts than Deal or No Deal, the merits of which you may wish to discuss.
See Great Barrier Island through the filter of British reality TV: Castaway starts on TV1. Didn't do so well in Britain.

Wednesday
It's the final of eye-candy Las Vegas (Prime). Josh Duhamel can next be seen in Transformers.
Ben takes Locke to see Jacob on Lost (TV2); it's a shocker and it also explains Hurley's Dharma Bus. Read this and this after watching "The Man Behind the Curtain".

Thursday
OMG, The Sopranos starts finally on TV1, its last season. Here's a charming retrospective of the best whackings.

Friday
Tony Robinson, aka Baldrick from Blackadder, has a new gig: The Worst Jobs in History. Naturally, it's on the History Channel (9.30pm); Victorian era this week.
Flying Nun documentary Heavenly Pop Hits repeats on Documentary Channel at 10.30pm. Here's a press release from May.

It will probably come as no surprise that television can be quite shit, but when there actually is shit on television, I think we’ve crossed a line. It came in the form of a set of doofus twins’ shitty toilet on an episode of How Clean Is Your House?, a show that breaks the first law of housework: the only thing more boring than doing housework is watching someone else do it.

How Clean Is Your House? isn’t really about the cleaning, of course, it’s about the pointing and the feeling good that, despite the fact that you haven’t cleaned the bathroom for two weeks, at least you’re not as grubby as a set of doofus twins on television.

Dirty little downloaders will know that all the good shows have now had their season finales in the US: Lost, Heroes, Grey’s etc are all on the summer break, although our favourite girl detective is on a break forever. Even suggestions that the creators could spin Veronica Mars off to a Miss Mars: Federal Agent – how cool would that be? – have been scuppered. However, the DVD is apparently going to have a six-minute trailer of Ronnie at the FBI academy. The final of Lost will blow your mind. That’s all I’ll say. Doc Jensen at ew.com is worth reading, his fun theories range from Nietzsche versus Kierkegaard to the Age of Enlightenment versus Postmodernism. Be careful about spoilers though.

I keep sitting down to Gilmore Girls and expecting to enjoy it more, but it ain’t got that zing since Amy Sherman-Palladino left. GG has done its dash forever as well, and Amy is working on a sitcom starring – wow – Parker Posey. It’s called The Return of Jezebel James.

The observant among you will have noticed that Battlestar Galactica’s second season has finally started on TV3 (late Tuesday nights), well after the season two DVD was released. Season three has finished in the US; season four will be its last, say executive producers Ronald Moore and David Eick.

And now, a new feature of Radiation, which I probably pathetically will not be able to maintain, the weekly rundown:

Sunday
Here’s a review of Whatever Love Means, which might be worth it just for the frocks. Put Simon Schama’s Power of Art on the PVR.

Monday
I think Angela Petrelli has the power of evil, don’t you? OMG, it’s Heroes penultimate episode. The brilliant A History of Violence is screening on Sky Movies 1.

Tuesday
Hyperdrive starts on Prime and the fifth season of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. Dorks doing stupid things on Auckland motorways: priceless. Motorway Patrol starts on TV2. Listener reviewer Philip Matthews gave Moolaade on Rialto Channel a 10.

Wednesday
The horror … the horror … it’s How Clean Is Your House? night on TV1. Deal or No Deal starts on TV3. Read this after the Lost episode "The Brig". Also this. Little Fish is screening on Rialto; nice turns from Martin Henderson and Sam Neill there. Adi Dick and PNC are on Live at Yours; the latter with guests Scribe and Mareko.

Thursday
Hunting Aotearoa is on Maori TV. New eps of Family Guy on C4 from season four.

Friday
There seems to be a lot of boxing on TV1.

I’ve discovered a new and exciting game you can play with pause button on the PVR: your own version of The Many Faces of John Campbell. It works with other TV presenters as well – I have high hopes for Mark Sainsbury – but is best with The Campbell. Carly Ryan and Jeremy Wells not so much.

Last year turned out to be the year of the PVR, which has totally ruined me for watching live television. It’s got to where I’ve found myself trying to fast-forward the ads when I’m watching something in real time – and then feeling unreasonably peeved when I can’t. D’oh!

Plus, so shortened has my attention span become that waiting three to four minutes for the ad break to be over is like an eternity and I’m inevitably flicking around between channels and miss the restart of my original programme.

Then there’s the recording everything in sight, stuff you’ll never find the time to watch but “looks interesting”, until the PVR is precariously saying “12% free”.

The damn thing isn’t perfect, though. We frequently have to do a “soft reboot” and I repeatedly missed the end of programmes until helpful readers pointed out that you can add extra recording time. Another weird one: occasionally I’ve set it to record and got two minutes of some other programme on a completely different channel – missed the final of ER, got Animal Planet. Say what? ER returns soon on a Wednesday night considerably sexed up by the addition of John Stamos, who seems like quite a cool guy and is also the Beach Boys’ drummer.

There’s some discussion on Throng about Shortland Street’s replacement Justine Jones, which was cutely referred to on Monday’s first ep of the season: “It’s a brand-new me,” was Justine2’s first line. Nice. The new Justine doesn’t seem quite bitchy enough, yet anyway, but I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s a tough call. Looking forward to the Mark/Maia/Tania/Jay love square this year. I still think that Mark and Maia will decide to make a baby the old-fashioned way. Maia will be so hyped up on hormones that she’ll just jump him. What’s the bet? Also hinted at: Alice and Craig. Yes.

Heroes is way fun, no? Except for the pompous voice-over. Bummer for the Indian guy who has to say portentous crap like “Where does it come from, this quest? This need to solve life’s mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered? Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?” Yada, yada. Just get on with the bending of space and time, thanks. And the flying. No surprises, Heroes has been picked up for another season.

Quite the British invasion of the Golden Globes. Funniest speech: Sacha Baron Cohen of course, closely followed by Hugh Laurie. The Brits so have it over the Americans when it comes to speeches, although Meryl Street and Warren Beatty were okay. Was Isaiah Washington missing from that cast line-up of Grey’s? TR Knight has talked about what happened on set Ellen. Makes you wonder how long Isaiah’s got. The frocks were really classy this year at the Globes, hardly an embarrassing one among them, although this one’s rubbish. And Ali Larter was showing an awful lot of breastbone.

Good news, fanboys and girls: Nathan Fillion has a new show; and the lovely Jane Espenson has penned an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Frakking heck, season two of Battlestar Galactica is soo good and you should all go out and buy it immediately, because TV3 says that it might not screen it until late next year. Yes. By then, season three will be out in a box set of course.

Talk about metaphors, Trev: terrorism, religious fanatic Cylons, prisoner interrogation, peace activists, the abortion debate, politics, way intense relationships. Oh, and Lucy Lawless. I love science fiction. BSG is also really nicely designed, from the uniforms to the order papers that arrive in CIC. Here’s a good interview with the executive producers about updating the original and what’s left of those designs – like the Vipers, the Galactica and some of the fleet. “Frak” is also from the original series and is my new favourite f-word. Also, thanks to Sarah, a link to a Slate story about executive producer Ronald D Moore, who has an excellent 70s haircut btw, and how you can get a podcast of a four-hour writers meeting. OMG.

Fucking hell, Outrageous Fortune is soo good and TV3, or rather SPP, has a bright and shiny $10 million to cook up another – count ‘em – 22 episodes. That’s a whole US season-type number, but the question is whether TV3 will show them continuously or split them into two, which is what TV1 did with Mercy Peak. Plays havoc on the writers, I’m told, because they have to plan for a cliffhanger in the middle of the season.

The current season of OF ends in a couple of weeks, although there is a two-hour Christmas special on Boxing Day. Hurrah! You may need to be getting in the DVDs, or your stolen television you dirty downloaders, for Christmas Day though, it’s not looking pretty.

Reasons to be cheerful include Entourage of course. It really is, finally, the boys behaving badly drama we’ve been waiting for and which wasn’t delivered in a bunch of wannabe sitcoms and dramas – even the Aussie series Last Man Standing was an failed attempt. HBO once did something called The Mind of the Married Man which apparently was a dog. Entourage is the neat Hollywood satire we’ve always wanted to. I love the way Vince is so lazy; in Friday’s ep he turned down the chance to deflower a famous singing virgin because he didn’t want the responsibility. Heh. Here’s an EW review of the first season DVD that doesn’t contain spoilers, except that they think that Kevin Dillon steals the show.

And now something for the lay-dees. Blokes, no need to read further. If, like me, you dislike underwire bras, and if, like me, you’ve been frustrated by the lack of range and colour and styles available, can I recommend here. The whole ordering thing was a total breeze and the order has arrived quite promptly too. And the bra is RED. Not black, not white, not flesh-toned. Bloody red. Fantastic.