4VF News – Daily News Channel

The end of the world is nigh… not quite but certainly the end of Mad Men on television.

Like other long-running shows, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The West Wing, The Thick of It, Sex in the City and The Wire , the end is coming and many viewers will mourn.

Unlike those other shows Mad Men is drip-feeding the final series. The seventh episode and final for this year will air in New Zealand next Sunday. In 2015, a further seven episodes await. Then that will be it.

When the end comes, some will turn their phones off to make sure they are not disrupted by the uninitiated. Others will save the last episode for a specific night in or invite friends over and make a party of it. It will be a TV event.

The leap from iconic Australian cop show Blue Heelers to Broadchurch is one that Simone McAullay calls, “A gift, a privilege, an opportunity that as an actor you hope will come flying through the door”.

Which it did after the 38 year old, best known as Susie Raynor on the long-running Blue Heelers, was invited to audition for the British thriller, which has become a benchmark for the new wave of sophisticated crime mini-series.

Armed with nothing more than the scripts of the first two episodes, and a sketchy outline of its small-town setting, she recorded an audition at her home in Sydney and sent it to the show’s writer and producer, Chris Chibnall.

Several months later she found herself at a seaside town in England filming Broadchurch, which turned out to be as much of a mystery for her as it is for the audience consumed by the show’s final moments.

Broadchurch revolves around the hunt by a pair of detectives, played by David Tennant and Olivia Colman, for the murderer of an 11-year-old boy, Danny Latimer.

Mystery clouds many of Broadchurch’s inhabitants, all of whom are, in one way or another, implicated in Danny’s tragic demise.

While McAullay’s character, Becca Fisher, who manages Broadchurch’s struggling hotel, is soon eliminated as a murder suspect, she has a significant role in the unfolding drama with revelations of an affair with one of the main suspects.

According to McAullay , Chris Chibnall always wanted Becca to be an Australian.

“Being Australian made her instantly an outsider and also that kind of brassiness – that Australian sensibility of saying what you think,” she says.

Becca’s partner left her with unpaid taxes and bills after they set up the boutique hotel in Broadchurch.

She is a tall poppy in a community whose residents were born and raised there.

She had dreams of travelling the world and is something of a “good-time girl”, which leads to a rather awkward encounter with David Tennant’s DI Alec Hardy after he tries to hit on her and is rejected.

“In different circumstances, she would have (slept with him), but she’s reining it in because she’s been exposed as the other woman. She flirts, it’s part of her nature, but it’s all gone tits up. No one is who they were any more.”

According to McAullay, Becca’s backstory has been deliberately left open, in part to be explored in a second season of the show, which has been confirmed, and in part to make it difficult for the audience to judge her.

Working with David Tennant and Olivia Colman was something of a leveller for her.

“There’s no ego about them, they just get in and do their jobs,” she says. “Everyone was thinking on some level, ‘I hope I get this right’. No matter how many jobs you’ve done, everyone goes in on that level. No one sails in going, ‘I’ve got this sewn up’. There is that kind of equality.”

The show struck a nerve in Britain and is being remade for the American audience.

“It swept the nation, the figures were off the charts (in the UK)” Simone says. “Chris (Chibnall) is still confounded by the success.

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“Gambling agencies were running books on it. Everyone was swept up in the whodunit part, but I think it was a lot more than that.

“(Chris) has managed to write about something so horrific and so tragic and so sad but in a way with such tenderness and soul that it’s strangely healing. And I think that’s a key to such writing because it’s not gratuitous, it’s respecting its own material.

“Its redemptive, almost healing quality comes from putting humanity in something so awful. I think that sets it apart. It’s a tough watch but it’s not exploitative.”

For now, McAullay calls London home, at least as much as a jobbing actor can. She has no inkling of what Becca’s role in the next season will be, but is content simply to be involved.

NZ on Screen is releasing a new edition of TV’s most legendary TV moments. This time the public has spoken. Here is a list of the 10 most watched clips.

Police Ten 7 (always blow on a pie)

It has been a tough year for Pua Magasiva’s character Vinnie Kruse on Shortland Street.

He has been unlucky in love, taken his fitness training too far and had a vending machine fall on him.

Now another challenge is in store for Vinnie with the son he left six years ago coming back into his life.

“The year has been up and down for Vinnie,” Magasiva says. “Vinnie is on a journey where I think they’re setting him up to start learning to become more mature.

“He makes all these mistakes with Nicole and the training and him trying to chase his love and stuff like that but that’s what happens in life and reality. You make mistakes but you’ve got to learn from them.”

Magasiva says the return of Vinnie’s past love Jemima (Leisha Ward Knox) with his seven-year-old son Michael (Duane Evans Jr) will definitely be daunting.

“He left when Michael was quite young,” Magasiva says. “He left and was basically caught up in his own ****… So it’s a big shock and a big responsibility for Vinnie as well.

“It would be scary for any dad in reality – you’d never seen them for six years, you’d just seen photos, you’ve talked to them on the phone, but then they’re in front of you. What do you do It’s scary to me and I’m a dad.”

Ward Knox’s character Jemima has been busy in the past seven years. She has remarried, lives in Kenya but returns to Ferndale when Michael wants to get to know his real father.

“Michael gets the impression that Vinnie might come to Africa,” Ward Knox says. “So she’s doing some damage control in the beginning, but she would more than anything love to reunite her family.

“To have his actual father in Michael’s life I think is quite important to her. It’s always scary because, knowing Vinnie, you never know what he’s going to do.”

Ward Knox has also been busy in her time away from the drama, working in both TV and theatre and says she was surprised when she was asked to return to Shortland Street.

“I didn’t think (Jemima would return) because she was quite quirky and, dare I say, slightly annoying,” she says. “Mind you, they need someone to stir it all up again.”

Jemima is married, but Ward Knox does not rule out the possibility that she still has feelings for Vinnie.

“It’s a bit of a weird one,” she says. “I haven’t been married myself, or divorced, or had a child but I guess when someone is the father of your child there’s always going to be quite a strong connection albeit a strained or strange one.”

As a father himself, of three-year-old daughter Jasmine, Magasiva has tough words of advice for Vinnie who he thinks has some growing up to do.

“Man-up and take care of your responsibility because you chose to have a child and that is the way life is,” he says. “It’s to teach those people out there who ran away from their children that, you know what, you’re weak. You’re weak for running away from your responsibility, you’re weak for running away from your kids…

“Vinnie is just making a stand for all those people who haven’t been there as a father for their children.

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There’s always time to make up for the mistakes you’ve made in your life. You can never hide away from them because they will creep up and get you eventually.”

When it comes to giving advice to their onscreen son Michael, played by 10-year-old Duane, the seasoned actors are not sure they are qualified. In fact, Duane might be teaching them a thing or two.

“He has taught me a lot of things about myself,” says Magasiva. “How to be respectable, how to have fun, how to take my work seriously and have fun at the same time.

“It’s nice to have someone there as a reminder because, honestly, he’s like a mini-me.”

Michael has also taught Ward Knox some practical skills.

“I couldn’t work the TV,” she says. “I sat down and I felt like such an idiot. Then Duane just came in and picked (the remote) up and (made it work).”

Shortland Street, TV 2
Weeknights, 7pm

-TV Guide is out every Thursday

Steve James’s portrait of much-loved film critic Roger Ebert didn’t exactly turn out as expected. However, the trials involved in creating Life Itself probably resulted in an even more fitting tribute to him, the documentarian tells James Croot.

Attending screenings and hosting a dinner party.

It’s been a sad, traumatic weekend for Marvel fans.

Quirky British director Edgar Wright’s eight-year quest to bring Ant-Man to the screen has ended after he walked away over creative differences with Marvel Studios.

The hotly-anticipated new superhero franchise had Paul Rudd pencilled in as a scientist who had the power to control ants and was scheduled to open July 2015.

Wright, who was behind the British offbeat comedies Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End – known collectively as the Cornetto Trilogy, had been developing Ant-Man for some time as a passion project.

Social media erupted in shock, bemusement and widespread speculation over the split,

REVIEW:

Vision and skill. That’s what the early settlers had to have and every time I walk through Wellington Botanic Gardens I mentally thank whoever it was who had foresight to imagine those gardens, and to make them happen.

Prime’s Sunday night documentary series Making New Zealand sets out to show who made things happen. It looked at roads last week. A few years ago my sister drove my mother down from Auckland to visit. Dementia was well on its cruel way and my mother spent the trip musing: “All these roads. I wonder who made all these roads”

Just as my sister was about to turn the table and do to my mother what my mother had done to her decades earlier – stop the car, remove her from it and drive off – my mother turned her wily eyes on my sister and said “All these – bridges. I wonder who made all these bridges” Good question Mum. And if you wondered who made all those railway lines, last night’s documentary showed you. A nice comparison was made between the 19th century and now.

Rail had already transformed the UK, so coming here and not having it was not unlike going somewhere now that had no internet access. With a country to connect and open up, rail was perfect. And we were so good at it – tunnels, viaducts, the Raurimu spiral, built with cavalier lack of regard for workers’ safety. This was a quiet, thorough documentary, not given to emotive comments, but full of reference about what it is to build – and be – a community.

The history of rail is an excellent parallel to a history of us, so deeply involved was it in the settling of our country, the building up of our industries, the growth in tourism. As times changed, so did the railways, culminating perhaps in the 1980s when nothing mattered more than profit and other things were simply taken out of the equation. What was often referred to was the nostalgia element of train travel and there can’t have been many viewers – especially baby boomers – who didn’t feel a certain wistfulness. You can gloss over the fact that the jobs were dangerous and dirty and that Taumarunui became a smoke-filled smog pit thanks to the steam engine, and that it wasn’t much different in Thorndon – the documentary speculated it was only because Parliament was nearby that the move to electric and diesel trains happened when it did.

One question I’ve wanted answered for years – why on earth did they use a narrow gauge, causing our trains to wobble at speed The all too common answer: cost.

ONE TO WATCH The Comedy Channel has Live at the Apollo at 9.50pm. Jack Dee is my comedic hero.

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– The Dominion Post

Sorry to ruin your day. There’s no Game of Thrones tonight.

Before you go home and get cosy with your chocolate and Sky remote or set up that download (naughty, naughty) you need to know that Game of Thrones is taking a break for Memorial Day holiday in the United States.

Fans will have to wait until next Monday to find out whether Prince Oberyn can beat Ser Gregor “The Mountain” and save Tyrion Lannister’s life.

So now you have Monday free. What will you do with it

Here’s some suggestions.

1. Read the Game of Thrones books: That way you can be the know it all who is one step ahead and says “but in the book”.

2. Watch last week’s episode again: Because one viewing of GOT is never enough.

3. Have a GOT party. Invite your friends around and console each other as the show fails to air at 7.30pm.

4. Read anything you want on the internet: There’s no spoilers out there today.

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– AAP