TV travel shows are overpacked with celebs – but this actor can’t be beaten

WATCH /That’s amore!

Oscar-nominated Stanley Tucci is back with yet another foodie travel series in Italy.

If there’s a better sight than Stanley Tucci shovelling pasta in his mouth and looking absolutely delighted, I’m yet to find it (with apologies to husband and child). The Oscar-nominated actor is back with yet another foodie travel series in Italy. This one, Tucci in Italy, is produced
by National Geographic after CNN cancelled his original show, Searching for Italy (which you can still watch on SBS On Demand) – and Tucci once again pops on the chinos, loosens his belt and hits the road, eating his way around Italy’s regions and exclaiming “Mangia! Mangia!”

And yes, while I understand all the eye-rolling about the dozens of inane celebrity travel shows scattered about, Tucci can’t be beaten for his enthusiasm, generosity and sheer love of the country of his forebears. It also helps that he can cook and isn’t afraid to eat (pizza, pasta, offal, mouldy cheese – he’ll try it all). So leave the cynicism behind and embrace Tucci, his travels and his chinos. From May 19 on Disney+. Louise Rugendyke

READ / East African company

Theft: Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Theft ($33), by Tanzanian-British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, is his first novel since he won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. Set in Tanzania in the 1990s, it explores the interconnected lives of three young people: Karim, Badar and Fauzia. Karim, abandoned by his mother, Raya, when she remarries, later lives with her and her second husband, Haji, while at university. There, he befriends their servant, Badar, an orphan boy. When Badar is falsely accused of theft, Karim, now married to Fauzia, takes him into their home and helps him to find a job in a boutique hotel. Tensions arise when Karim and Fauzia struggle to cope with the arrival of their first child. A morality tale featuring themes of abandonment, indebtedness, jealousy and betrayal with a deeply satisfying ending. Nicole Abadee

LISTEN / Plot twist

Featuring tragicomic audio recorded by FBI bugging devices, this podcast explores the foiled plot to kidnap a US governor in 2020.

In 2020, a ragtag collection of anti-government, self-styled militia dudes plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. What they didn’t know was that there were government informants embedded in the group who were setting up a sting operation. In the podcast Chameleon: The Michigan Plot, investigative reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison expertly tell the bizarre but true tale, aided by tragicomic FBI audio retrieved from bugging devices. What we hear is like a cross between The Big Lebowski and a Quentin Tarantino film, which would be funny if the plot didn’t involve a plot to harm a human being. But were they really criminal masterminds or just paranoid, hyped-up stoners who believed misinformation and ultimately fell victim to FBI entrapment? Barry Divola

WEAR / Fast forward

The Alemais sweater: one way to record a nostalgia for the cassette tapes of yore.

In a cruel blow to Boomers and members of Gen X, cassette tapes have officially become symbols of nostalgia. And yet today’s fashion consumer – perhaps never having experienced the torment of an unspooled tape in a car stereo – still finds the idea of a carefully cultivated mixtape, perhaps one that starts with Ultravox’s Vienna and fades out to Soul II Soul’s Back to Life, appealing. This cosy sweater by Alemais, featuring an illustrated Walkman by Anouk Colantoni ($450), hits all the right notes. Damien Woolnough

SHOP / Blanky space

Blankets with a story, woven in Auckland from 100 per cent wool.

Fancy getting cosy under a blanket whose design is based on a lovely slice of cosmology? Aotearoa textile company Noa Blanket Co. has just released Kurawaka, a limited-edition collection inspired by the Maori creation story of Hineahuone, the first woman, formed from clay at a place called, you guessed it, Kurawaka. The three blankets, Te Ha, Te Awe and Kauhou ($519), channel “the wairua [spirit] of creation and ancestral wisdom”, says Noa’s co-founder, Josh Te Kani. Featuring intricate geometric shapes and rich, earthy tones, they’re woven in Auckland from 100 per cent Kiwi wool. Deborah Cooke

GROOVE / The odd couple

Music duo brothers Russell (right) and Ron Mael have been playing together since 1971.

It’s safe to say there’s no one in the music biz quite like Sparks. For a start, the group’s two members, brothers Russell (the one with suspiciously lush and dark hair) and Ron Mael (the one with round glasses and pencil-thin moustache, who looks like a scowling butler in a 1920s silent film), have been playing together since 1971 and are now, respectively, 76 and 79 years old. The LA duo has always been idiosyncratic, arch and theatrical, their output spanning genres from classical to synth-pop, and now their 26th album, Mad!, proves that age is just a number. Lead single Do Things My Own Way is a driving, fuzzed-out ode to believing in yourself, while JanSport Backpack is equal parts vaudeville and Beach Boys-style harmonies on a song where the protagonist obsesses about a girl’s bag as she walks away and leaves him. Their quirks remain intact as they mix pop with the avant-garde and emerge with something strangely beguiling and forever young. Barry Divola

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