The 74th Primetime Emmy Awards (Midday, Tuesday, September 13, Vibe)
Can Melanie Lynskey become the first Kiwi actor to take home the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series? It won’t be easy up against Jodie Comer, Laura Linney, Sandra Oh, Reese Witherspoon and Zendaya, but the New Plymouth-born 45-year-old has won an army of new admirers and critical plaudits for her performance as Shauna Sadecki in Yellowjackets.
Among the shows expected to dominate the evening’s proceedings are Succession, The White Lotus, Ted Lasso, Dopesick, Severance, Squid Game and Only Murders in the Building. A prime-time encore screening will take place from 7.30pm.
Jordan Strauss/AP
Melanie Lynskey has already won a Critics Choice Award for her performance in Yellowjackets, but can she also take home an Emmy?
READ MORE:
* Kiwi actor Melanie Lynskey wins hearts with ‘sweet and charming’ speech after Critics Choice win
* Melanie Lynskey says she was body shamed on Yellowjackets set and her co-stars came to her defense
* Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and others prove Yellowjackets is more than a survival story
* Castle Rock’s Melanie Lynskey: ‘I’ve never really felt like I’ve made it’
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Kia Ora, Good Evening features Mike McRoberts as you’ve never seen him before.
Kia Ora, Good Evening (8.40pm, Tuesday, September 13, Three)
Documentary which follows Kiwi newsreader Mike McRoberts, as he attempts to reclaim a taonga lost to his whānau a generation ago – the ability to speak te Reo Māori.
Billed as a story of disconnection, trauma, reconnection and reawakening, it is not only a very personal journey, but also a look at what it means to be Māori in contemporary Aotearoa.
Speak No Maori (8.40pm, Tuesday, September 13, TVNZ 1)
Made to coincide with – and celebrate – the 50th anniversary of the Māori language petition being presented on the steps of Parliament in 1972, this documentary unpacks the history of te Reo Māori in Aotearoa.
From the days of it being the dominant language between tāngata whenua and the early colonists, to its gradual decline due to assimilation policies, through to the modern-day revitalisation efforts, this aims to reveal the legacy of te Reo Māori since the European arrival and explore the enduring vitality of a language that was suppressed for generations.
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Together sees James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan play a severely strained couple re-evaluating their relationship while locked down.
Together (8.30pm, Wednesday, September 14, Sky Movies Premiere)
Winner of the TV Bafta for best single drama in May, this two-hander is perhaps best described as a spiky, snarky, black, sometimes bleak comedy that offers Kiwis a very different view of Covid’s initial impact.
James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan are the severely strained couple re-evaluating their relationship while locked down with their 10-year-old son.
Told via a series of anecdote-laced discussions and monologues, mostly delivered direct-to camera, Together feels more like a more serious version of the David Tennant-Michael Sheen series Staged than any of the other Covid dramas unleashed on audiences so far.
Get the Name Right (9.30pm, Thursdays from September 15, Three)
Kara Rickard (Ngati Porou, Ngāti Kōata, Tainui) and Joe Daymond (Te Āti Awa/Fijian) team up for this new series which sees them travelling around Aotearoa and the globe in order to get to the heart of the origins of our place names, subsequently posing the question about whether it’s time for a change.
Billed as a provocative look at our history that will uncover the good, the bad and the ugly.
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Tanea Heke plays the oldest incarnation of Mata in Cousins.
Cousins (8.30pm, Sunday, September 18, Whakaata Māori)
Free-to-air debut for this 2021 adaptation of Patricia Grace’s 1992 novel of the same name. This is an understated, yet emotion-filled tale of love and loss, of identity and the institutions that try to deny and reshape it and of the power of whānau, all magnificently played out by a fabulous ensemble of homegrown actors of all ages.
As in the book, Cousins is the intertwining stories of Mata, Makareta and Missy. Each has their own journey to take and challenges to face, as events bring them together and then pull them apart.
Four Lives (9.35pm, Sundays from September 18, TVNZ 1)
Stephen Merchant, Sheridan Smith and Jaime Winstone star in this three-part BBC true-crime drama about the 2014-15 deaths of four gay men at the hands of Stephen Port (Merchant).
For weeks, police refused to treat the deaths as either linked – or suspicious. However, the victim’s loved ones would not give up in their efforts to uncover the truth of what really had happened.
“Powerful and moving. That’s critic-speak for ‘they made you weep and shout at the telly at the sheer bloody injustice of it all’,” wrote The Herald’s Alison Rowat.
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