Shows you don’t want to miss: Raw and real Elton John doco, plus a Will Ferrell Christmas classic
Elton John is refreshingly honest and raw in his new documentary, spy thriller Black Doves steps up and The Day of the Jackal builds to a white-knuckle finale.
Entertainment
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We’ve sifted through the latest offerings from TV and streaming platforms to find the best shows you should be watching this week.
ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE
FRIDAY, DISNEY+
Fitting a life and career as colourful and prolific as Elton John’s into a running 102-minute running time was always going to be a big ask, but this new documentary actually makes a pretty decent fist of it. While there are big chunks missing (which John himself would likely say of his years lost in booze and a blizzard of cocaine), most of the key moments are covered, particularly his spectacular rise to fame in the early 1970s when he was the biggest pop star on the planet. Despite it being an officially sanctioned project – it was co-directed by his husband David Furnish – John is refreshingly raw and honest when looking back on his career in tapes recorded for his autobiography, fresh interviews and archival footage. Flipping between past and present as he prepares to play three nights at Dodger Stadium as part of his farewell tour in 2022 – where he’d been the first solo act to play such a venue in 1975 – John opens up on the discovering that the emptiness that fame brought him couldn’t be filled with drugs, wrestling with his sexuality and finally finding peace with Furnish and their two children.
THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
THURSDAY, BINGE
One of the best shows of the year will wrap up this week and if the rest of the season it anything to go by, the finale should be an absolute cracker. In last week’s knuckle-biting episode – spoiler alert – Eddie Redmayne’s Jackal showed he truly does have ice in his veins by finally getting his quarry, tech bro disrupter UDC, with an impossible shot from a bobbing boat. But will he get away clean with the security detail hot on his heels and Lashana Lynch’s MI:6 agent clocking that a separate sniper kill in Spain had to be his handiwork too? While the Jackal swore the this big payday hit would be his last job, the spy-thriller based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel has already been renewed for a second season so you can bet he’s not ready to rack the high-powered rifle just yet.
I KISSED A GIRL
THURSDAY, BINGE
After hosting the UK’s first gay dating show, I Kissed a Boy, last year, Aussie pop star and gay icon Dannii Minogue is back to give the ladies their moment in the Italian sun. The premise is the same in that ten single gay or bisexual women from very different backgrounds are summoned to a very fancy villa where they are initially paired off meet for the first time with a kiss. And we’re not talking a chaste peck on the cheek either, I’ve seen Marvel movies that were shorter than some of these party pashes. Once everyone is there, all bets are off as they get to know each other, compare their experiences in the same-sex dating world and share some truly illuminating lesbian slang. With cameras everywhere and outrageous flirting, love is in the air, although some hearts will be broken along the way with the ever-looming of the unkissed singles having to leave the mansion.
GARDENING AUSTRALIA CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
FRIDAY, 7.30PM, ABC
“Hopefully at this time of year you have more time on your hands and that means more time for gardening,” says the ever effervescent Gardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis in this Christmas edition before launching into an exhausting list of jobs for the period, including which plants to harvest, how to protect against fruit fly and lovingly crafty gift ideas. He’s also visiting the cactus and colour-stuffed courtyard of a couple of retirees in inner-west Sydney to find out how they turned it into an award-winning community hub. Meanwhile, colleague Millie Ross loses herself in immaculately manicured hedge maze near Daylesford, Clarence Lockee discovers how an animal hospital in Port Stephens is bringing the local population of fussy-eating koalas back from the brink of extinction and craft queen Sophie Thomson demonstrates some easy to make Seed Balls that make the perfect budget present.
BLACK DOVES
NETFLIX
Once you get the voice of Paddington bear and his past as nerdy gadget man Q in Daniel Craig’s Bond films out of your head, Ben Whishaw is a revelation as Sam, a jaded, champagne-swilling and very deadly assassin in this hugely fun six-part spy series from the UK. Keira Knightley stars as a member of a shadowy, amoral, spy-for-hire organisation known as the Black Doves and is in the deepest undercover possible as the wife of the Secretary of State for Defence – from whom she is stealing secrets – and mother to their twins. But when her secret lover is killed and her life and family are threatened, she teams up with Sam to untangle a web of lies and intrigue to find out who is responsible.
ELF
SATURDAY, 7.30PM, CHANNEL 9
It turned 21 this year but Will Ferrell’s Christmas classic feels as fresh as ever and is surely worth a place on the Mount Rushmore of festive faves for putting the silly into the silly season. The former Saturday Night Live comedian is a riot as Buddy, a human raised by Santa’s elves who travels to New York City to find that father he never knew doesn’t really want him. The late, great James Caan, who plays a crotchety dad Walter – a big-shot book publisher – was apparently irritated by and dismissive of Ferrell’s hilariously over-the-top antics as the childlike Buddy on set but changed his mind once he saw the flawless family fun of the final film.
MEN’S BIG BASH LEAGUE
SUNDAY, 6.30PM, FOX CRICKET, KAYO, CHANNEL 7
With the WBBL done and dusted an already fascinating Test series in full swing (the third match begins in Brisbane on Saturday with Australian and India at one game apiece), it’s time to flick the switch into full summer cricket mode with the return of the men’s Big Bash League. The season kicks off in the West with the competition’s most successful team, five-time winners the Perth Scorchers taking on perennial underachievers the Melbourne Stars, still hunting for their first title. Then on Monday, last year’s runners-up the Sydney Sixers will be aiming to get off to a flyer hosting the Melbourne Renegades and on Tuesday, the Sydney Thunder take on the Adelaide Strikers in Canberra.
THE FOREST
MONDAY, 8.30PM, ABC
Data-driven ecologist Tom Crowther thought he was on to a good thing when his mission to plant more trees to help fight climate change was picked up and amplified by the world’s media. Unfortunately, his calculation that there was enough land available for an extra trillion trees to soak up excess carbon was taken out of context and some misguided governments and corporations went on a planting spree of identical trees that ended up doing more harm than good. But in this fascinating documentary he explains that the solution lies in diversity of the forest – and their complex relationships of plants, insects, bird and fungi – rather than the trees themselves and using field data, satellite imagery and AI, sets out to show how a natural solution to the climate crisis might yet be found.
THE STICKY
PRIME VIDEO
Fans of the Coen Brothers 1996 crime caper Fargo will find a lot to like about this six-part black comedy loosely based on the true story of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup heist, in which $18 million worth of the sweet sticky liquid was nicked from a storage facility in Quebec. Emmy-winning actor Margot Martindale is a long-time maple farmer who is faced with the loss of her livelihood when the detestable local syrup baron tries to take advantage of the fact that her husband is in a coma. With financial ruin looming, she teams up with a low-level, but nevertheless dangerous, gangster associate and dim but desperate security guard for an audacious robbery that will bring her the both cash and the revenge she desperately desires.
ROB AND ROMESH VS LAPLAND
MONDAY, 11.40PM, SBS VICELAND
Comedians and mates Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan have been terrorising people, professions, sports and countries in their quest for self-improvement for seven seasons now (available to stream on SBS On Demand) and in a festive season special head to the Arctic Circle to meet the big man in the red suit himself. The pair are tasked with seeing if they have what it takes to become Christmas elves through a series of gruelling challenges in the cold and snow. Driven by the manic pixie energy of head elf Vanilla, the endlessly bantering pair take delight in each other’s misfortunes as they go snowshoeing in -20C weather, race and feed reindeer, take a dip in a frozen lake and try to make sense of half a million letters Santa gets every year.
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