Burton and Taylor’s private lives to enthrall us again

The BBC’s Burton and Taylor revisits the private lives of the famous couple and is our TV editor’s pick of the week.

Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter as Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in the BBC production Burton and Taylor.

The BBC’s Burton and Taylor revisits the private lives of the famous couple and is our TV editor Lyndall Crisp’s pick of the week on free-to-air television.

Burton and Taylor

Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC

The tempestuous love affair and the on-again, off-again marriages of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor kept gossip writers and audiences enthralled for decades. This biographical drama jumps over those years to 1983 when Taylor persuaded Burton to appear with her on Broadway in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. It was an apt (some might say cynical) choice, given the play is about a divorced couple who meet while honeymooning with their new partners. Taylor (played here by Helena Bonham-Carter) and Burton (Dominic West) were married from 1964 to 1974 and 1975 to 1976. Their version of the play was slammed by the critics, but of course it was a huge commercial success as audiences flocked to see them together. Tonight’s biopic opens with Taylor, addicted to grog and pills and determined to punish Burton, arriving for rehearsal without having read the script. Burton is appalled. After opening night they go out to dinner, fight and she calls in sick the next day. It’s a big challenge for Bonham-Carter and West to play such well-known stars, but they both come as close to pulling it off as is possible. West captures Burton’s incredible voice and Bonham-Carter looks pretty good as the exquisite but fragile Taylor, who was 50 at the time. Burton was 57 and died a year later. It was the last time the famous couple appeared together. Taylor died in 2011.

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Scorpion

Sunday, 6.30pm, Ten

In 1988 aged 13, Irish computer nerd Walter O’Brien allegedly hacked into NASA servers using the pseudonym Scorpion. Whether true or not — it’s not clear — he is the inspiration for this drama series. O’Brien started Scorpion Computer Services, an IT tutoring service that expanded into security and risk management, as a teenager and moved it to the US in the 1990s. Here Elyes Gabel plays the eccentric genius who teams up with behaviour expert Toby (Eddie Kaye Thomas), mechanical prodigy Happy (Jadyn Wong) and statistic guru Sylvester (Ari Stidham). Based in LA, they hit pay dirt when they’re hired as Homeland Security’s think tank. In Charades, episode 14, this bunch of genius social misfits is charged with uncovering a mole inside the CIA.

Ultimate Tutankhamun

Sunday, 7.35pm, SBS

Ninety years ago Egyptologist Howard Carter made the most intriguing find of all time: the 3000-year-old tomb of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. No burial chamber or mummy could have undergone a more thorough examination, yet the mystery remains: how did he die? This two-part documentary brings together a team of international archeologists who try to answer this and other questions, such as why is Tut’s tomb the only one to survive intact and why was his body burned? They use 21st-century forensic science, stylised reconstructions, and extensive CGI to arrive at some fascinating conclusions.

Rugby World Cup

Sunday, 8.30pm, GEM (SA, 8pm; WA, 6.30pm)

After Australia won its first match in the series last Thursday against Fiji (28-13), the Wallabies limber up for their second match, this time against Uruguay at Villa Park in Birmingham. Expert commentators including former team members Phil Waugh, Brendan Cannon, Andrew Slack and Nathan Sharpe present this live coverage. (You can also watch every game of the Rugby World Cup on FoxSports.)

Escape to the Continent

Sunday, 9.30pm, 7Two

A series to make you grind your teeth if you’ve had to put up with Sydney’s inflated property market, or if you just long to live in the country. Yorkshire couple retired cop Jo and teacher Hilary have been planning their move to France for 35 years. He can’t wait, but she’s nervous about adapting to a foreign culture. With a budget of £500,000, they set off last year to the Poitou-Charentes region on the west coast of France. Outside Availles-Limouzine their first viewing is a magnificent, sprawling 19th-century farmhouse with two barns and a pool on 2.5ha. The asking price is £408,000 — and that’s negotiable. Makes you want to weep.

Peaky Blinders

Monday, 9.20pm, ABC 2

Traumatised soldiers and criminal gangs haunt the suburbs of Birmingham, England, in 1919. Former war hero Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is the shrewd and ruthless leader of the Peaky Blinders, so named because members keep razor blades concealed in their caps as weapons. The gang is into everything from race fixing to threats and deception, mostly organised by the Shelby family. In this first episode, Shelby takes possession of a shipment of guns. Determined to get them back, Winston Churchill sends Chief Inspector Chester Campbell (Sam Neill) from Belfast to find them. The series, launched in 2013 and now into its third season, is beautifully shot around Leeds and Liverpool.

Restoration Australia

Tuesday, 8.30pm, ABC

The NSW town of Orange is divided about Emmaville, a Californian modular home that was shipped out and pulled over the Blue Mountains by bullock dray 150 years ago. A lot of people believe it was the birthplace of Banjo Paterson, others have their doubts. Whatever, suburbia is encroaching on the little timber cottage, originally sitting on the Narrambla estate, so it’s being shifted a kilometre down the road to safe council land. The move, on the back of a truck, is hair-raising and bits fall off, but it gets there. A team of volunteers restores it using heritage skills and a small budget. This is the fifth episode in this series, hosted by designer Sibella Court, which explores historic houses at risk of being lost forever. Let’s hope there’s a second season.

800 Words

Tuesday, 8.40pm, Seven

If you haven’t caught this new locally produced series, fear not. It’s easy to catch up here with episode three. Background: widower George Turner (Erik Thomson) leaves his job with a Sydney newspaper, packs up his two teenage children and moves to the small town of Weld in New Zealand. He gets folks offside with a column he writes, interpreted as demeaning the town, but thankfully he’s forgiven. The single women are thrilled to have a single heterosexual man in their midst. But in this episode, gossip has it Turner murdered his wife. And then he gets the unlicensed school bus driver fired, and he’s the bad guy again.

Deception by Design

Tuesday, 9.30pm, ABC

Inspired by nature, designed by artists, used by the military — this terrific documentary tells the story of how the armed forces secretly recruited artists to produce camouflage that would help win wars in the 20th century. The military and artists collaborated to come up with bizarre decoys, dummy tanks and elaborate sets to conceal military installations. By copying what nature does every day, artists used their creative genius to dupe, confuse and outsmart the enemy. Riveting archival film shows their ideas at work.

Utopia

Wednesday, 9.05pm, ABC

A reader wrote saying Utopia is not a patch on The Games, the mockumentary series leading up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics starring John Clarke, Bryan Dawe and Gina Riley. I say there’s space for both and both rate in my books as two of the best locally produced satirical series. In Utopia, Tony (Rob Sitch) is in charge of government mega projects, but keeps running into brick walls. Here, in Reporting for Duty, the business case for an $11bn cross-city tunnel proves it will be a costly white elephant.

The Real Mary Poppins

Thursday, 8.35pm, ABC

Born in Queensland in 1897, Pamela Travers went on to write many children’s books. But it was the first of her five Mary Poppins novels, published in 1935, that made her an international bestselling author. Julie Andrews brought the “cosmic nanny” to life in the 1964 film, and in 2013, Saving Mr Banks, starring Emma Thompson, told the story of Walt Disney’s battle to turn the books into the film. This fascinating profile of PL Travers, who died in 1996, had its genesis in Out of the Sky She Came by Valerie Lawson.