What to watch this week: Ryan Reynolds’ return to Wrexham; musical madness from Eurovision
With the news that Ryan Reynolds’ and Rob McElhenney’s Wrexham FC is coming to Australia in July, there is no better time to return to their life-affirming sports documentary.
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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.
WELCOME TO WREXHAM
FRIDAY, DISNEY+
Hardcore football fans will already know whether Wrexham FC – the Welsh team owned by Hollywood heavyweights Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney – achieved the unprecedented feat of three consecutive promotions in their quest to one day join the elite English Premier League. But watching this funny and uplifting sports documentary spoiler-free is even more rewarding in its fourth season, although it’s always been about so much more than the results on the pitch. Having been promoted to League One – the country’s third top tier – last season, the owners and management are faced with the dilemma of consolidating their rapid rise or spending an eye-watering amount of money on players, staff, facilities and infrastructure to have a real crack at moving up again. The fans are split, with some daring to dream and others already managing expectations, but the formerly down-at-heel mining down is buzzing with the new lease of life courtesy of the spotlight the show has brought. While the snarky banter from celeb pals Reynolds and McElhenney is always welcome, the show truly shines with the personal stories that demonstrate the bond forged between teams and the communities when sport is at its best.
EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
WEDNESDAY, 5AM, SBS
Even a decade after Australia’s surprise acceptance into the world’s biggest song competition, I have to confess that I still don’t carry the Eurovision gene but have nothing but respect for the passionate fans who’ll drag themselves out of bed at all hours for the musical mash-up of kitsch, class and downright craziness. Our representative at this year’s event in Switzerland is singer-songwriter Go-Jo, with his track Milkshake Man, and steering viewers through the wildly eclectic genres and looks will be Tony Armstrong and Courtney Act. The Grand Final will go out live at 5am on Sunday and there will be Access All Areas wrap-ups on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at 7.30pm.
MARTIN CLUNES: ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC
THURSDAY, 8.50PM, ABC
Having already done documentaries on Britain, Australia, and America, Doc Martin star Martin Clunes is becoming quite the island expert and this time sets his gaze on tiny specks in the vast, pole-to-pole Atlantic Ocean. His first stop is the island nation of Sao Torme and Principe, off the coast of Africa, with a combined population of less than a quarter of a million people. The wry and self-deprecating Clunes makes for a wonderful guide, barely containing his joy at shepherding endangered baby turtles into the ocean, while also showing the appropriate respect and gravitas while talking to locals who endured the islands’ dark slavery past thanks to Portuguese colonists and the rapacious sugar plantations that exploited them.
DUSTER
THURSDAY, MAX
Come for Alias and Lost legend JJ Abrams first foray into the TV world in six years and stay for the fast and furious wheel work and fabulously funky soundtrack (there’s also an excellent official soundtrack playlist on Spotify). Abrams, who co-wrote the ‘70s set crime thriller with LaToya Morgan, has smartly tapped his Lost star Josh Holloway to play Jim Ellis, a cocky, good old Southern boy and the best wheelman in Arizona in his cherry-red Plymouth Duster muscle car. Jim plies his trade at breakneck speed (with nary a seatbelt to be seen) for local gangster Ezra with no questions asked, until Nina (Love, Victor’s Rachel Hilson), the FBI’s first black female agent – who has battled sexism and racism her entire career – makes him question his loyalty in her mission to make him an informer.
MURDERBOT
FRIDAY, APPLE TV+
If this sci-fi comedy adapted from the book series The Murderbot Diaries isn’t the best thing that Alexander Skarsgard has done since True Blood, it’s certainly the most fun. The shredded Swedish hunk is fabulous with an awkward, nerdy inner monologue as the title character, a cyborg who has hacked his code to become self-aware, and thereby developing a love for cheesy soap operas (the Star Trek meets Days of Our Lives show-within-a-show is hilarious) and a contempt for the vast bulk of humanity. When he’s reluctantly hired to protect a bunch of clueless hippy scientists on a hostile planet – and haunted by memory flashes of terrible past deeds – he has to hide his true nature, or risk being scrapped.
LONG WAY HOME
APPLE TV+, NEW EPISODES FRIDAYS
Actor Ewan McGregor and his bestie Charlie Boorman conquered some hostile, remote terrain and brutal conditions in their previous motorcycle treks across Eastern Europe, Africa and South America. As befits their advancing years – and the fact that Boorman nearly died in a 2016 bike crash – their latest jaunt around Europe on refurbished vintage motorcycles is a much more genteel affair. But what it lacks in drama as they travel through Holland, Germany, the Arctic Circle and the Baltic States, it makes up for in humour as the affable pair lean more into travelogue territory, investigating local customs, like the obscure Dutch sport of far-leaping and having surprise encounters such as the German shooting and drinking club. What could possibly go wrong?
ROUX DOWN THE RIVER
SATURDAY, 7.30PM, SBS FOOD
Never mind the Michelin starred restaurants and the gastronomic marvels whipped up by French-English chef Michel Roux as he floats down the Thames, the true MVP of this new cooking-travel series is the saliva-inducing, heart-attack-beckoning cheesy chips dish, available at pub that’s only accessible by boat. Roux’s own version looks even better and his enthusiasm for food and family is infectious as the retraces the steps of his famous father and uncle, who founded The Waterside Inn and helped turn the tiny riverside village of Bray into the high-end food capital of the UK. Watching him cook with his cousin Alain is a joy and his Roux’s easily ability to put at ease the nervous chefs cooking for him is charming.
FA CUP FINAL
SUNDAY 12AM, OPTUS SPORT
It’s been a bit of a dud season for Manchester City by their own lofty standards of recent years, with no shot at winning the league and bundled out early in the Champions League. But a win in the oldest national football competition in the world would give Pep Guardiola’s billion Euro squad some consolation and a guaranteed place in the Europa League. In their way is Crystal Palace, who are currently in the bottom half of the Premier League and haven’t won a major trophy in more than two decades. But the FA Cup final has rich history of upsets (and one day I’ll get over unfancied Wimbledon knocking off mighty Liverpool in 1988, but probably not this century) so anything can happen. Game on!
THE UNBELIEVABLE WITH DAN AYKROYD
MONDAY, 8.30PM, SBS VICELAND
Spook enthusiast and former Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd, who claims to have had four alien encounters himself, is exactly the right person to host this documentary about strange experiences and phenomena from around the world and beyond. His clipped tones and matter-of-fact delivery – backed up by news reports and various experts – make the extraordinary stories of people bossed around by nature somewhat more credible. There’s close encounters with meteors, tornado survival tales, fish and gelatinous blobs falling from the sky and the man who apparently had his sight restored by a lightning strike. It veers into woo-woo territory occasionally, but does it in a briskly entertaining fashion.
TRAIN RESCUE DOWN UNDER
TUESDAY, 8PM, 7MATE
This doco might be aimed at squarely as the gunzel community (that’s trainspotters to you and me) but anyone who’s ever stepped on to a train might be astounded by the amount of work and tech that goes into keeping your daily commute on track. This week’s first episode spotlights a group of mostly blokes living their best lives by working on the Ghan, Brisbane’s passenger train network and at the heritage-listed Ipswich Rail Workshop, home to Queensland’s longest running steam locomotive. There’s a lot of animated talk about flange rollers, gudgeon pins, keeper plates, capdabblers and smendlers (I might have made a couple of them up) but their passion, knowledge and skill can’t be faulted.
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