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Aline (8.30pm, Saturday, December 31, Rialto)
A glitzy, sweeping 2020 biopic of a Quebec-born youngest child of 14 who become a global singing sensation.
Valérie Lemercier’s soapy, but sensationally compelling tale might be billed as a work of fiction, but as it’s opening title card boldly states, it is clearly inspired by the life of Celine Dion. In Aline Dieu’s world, she wins the Dublin Singing Award (rather than Eurovision) and marries her much-older manager Guy-Claude Kamar (instead of Rene Angélil). But there are snatches of her singing All By Myself, I’m Alive and THAT boat movie song and everything from her vocal troubles to her Vegas residency are present and correct.
Gloriously bonkers, it features a stunning performance from writer-director Lemercier herself in the title role.
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Doc Martin Christmas Special (8.40pm, Friday, December 30, TVNZ 1)
After 10 seasons, 18 years and almost 80 episodes, Martin Clunes plays everyone’s favourite grumpy medic for one final time.
The sleepy Cornwall town of Portwenn is full of festive fun, until Doctor Martin Ellingham has the grotto closed down because he fears Santa has something contagious, upsetting the children, including his own son James. Can the Doc learn the magic of Christmas – before it’s too late?
This special episode promises to include the return of Claire Bloom as the Doc’s mother.
La Dolce Vita (8.30pm, Saturday, December 31, Whakaata Māori)
Federico Fellini’s beloved 1960 dramedy is the movie that gave the world the word paparazzi and Swedish star Anita Ekberg (who had actually previously spent five years in Hollywood without much success).
Marcello Mastroianni is the philandering Rome-based tabloid journalist – Marcello Rubini – whose series of stories across a week we follow.
“It’s a comic, cutting and prophetic poem to Rome, movie stars, gossip and the lifestyles we have hungered to know more about ever since the first ‘celebrity’,” wrote The Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Moore.
The Graham Norton NYE Special (8.15pm, Sunday, January 1, Three)
Airing here just hours after its debut in the UK, the avuncular Irish raconteur has assembled a top line-up of guests for the traditional year-ending episode of his long-running chat show.
The stars of Sam Mendes’ new 1980s-set dramatic feature Empire of Light – Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward – will be joined by comedians Hugh Laurie and Romesh Ranganathan and successful England football captain Leah Williamson (there to relive and celebrate the Lioness’ European Championship win from the middle of the year), while the multi-talented duo of Callum Scott Howells and Madeline Brewer will perform a medley of songs from the latest West End production of Cabaret.
The Courier (8.30pm, Sunday, January 1, Eden)
Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel Brosnahan and Jessie Buckley star in this inspired-by-fact 2020 Cold War thriller about English businessman Greville Wynne who was enlisted by the American and British spy agencies to help them defuse tensions with the Russians in the early 1960s.
Part of the charm of director Dominic Cooke (On Chesil Beach) and screenwriter’s Tom O’Connor (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) take on this true-life tale is their focus on the effect of the secrecy surrounding Wynne’s “work” on his marriage. A previous indiscretion has left their relationship on slightly shaky ground and Cooke and O’Connor exploit that tension, crafting domestic conversations as fraught and knife-edge as any meetings with “friendly” Soviet Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze).
The Royal Variety Performance (7.30pm, Monday, January 2, TVNZ 1)
Would I Lie To You?’s Lee Mack hosts the 2022 edition of this famous annual event, the first since the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Attended by her youngest son Prince Edward and his wife Sophie – more formally known as the Earl and Countess of Wessex and Forfar – this year’s line-up includes the casts of Cabaret, Disney’s Newsies and Cirque Du Soleil’s Kurios, German magicians the Ehrlich Brothers, Giffords Circus, soprano Fatma Said, singers Ellie Goulding, Gary Barlow, George Ezra and Sam Ryder, disco sensations Nile Rodgers & Chic and Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and The Lightning Seeds reuniting for a special rendition of their 1996 football anthem Three Lions.
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