Clint Eastwood bio reveals the man behind the movie star

TV editor Lyndall Crisp selects Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film as her pick of the week on pay television.

Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (1971).

TV editor Lyndall Crisp selects Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film as her pick of the week on pay television.

Clint Eastwood: A Life in Film

Sunday, 8.30pm, Bio

RICH with film clips, archival footage, personal photographs and a look behind various location shoots, this engaging profile of one of America’s most successful — and humble — actor-directors is a delight. Hard to believe that the Dirty Harry cult hero, Clint Eastwood, is 84 and still turning out brilliant movies. In his latest project, completed in June, he directed Jersey Boys, the musical biography of the Four Seasons group. This documentary was made in 2007 so it’s not current (and it’s a repeat), but French-born film historian Michael Henry Wilson spent 20 years gathering material. It’s certainly comprehensive. Modest, unassuming and notoriously private, Eastwood talks openly and with humour about his early life during the Depression. His career crosses many fields. Pianist, composer (responsible for the theme music for several movies including Million Dollar Baby), politician (Republican turned Libertarian), director of 30 films starting with Play Misty for Me and an acting career spanning television (Rawhide) and film that began with roles in spaghetti westerns. Films with which Eastwood’s been connected have grossed more than $US1.68 billion domestically — average $37 million a film — which has given him enormous clout in Hollywood and allowed him take on ambitious projects such as Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima.

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Walking Through History

Saturday, 5.30pm, History

With its dedicated, well-signposted paths weaving all over the country, Britain is made for walkers, or “ramblers”. In Rome in the Lakes, Tony Robinson sets out from Penrith, Cumbria, on a four-day, 74km hike south to Ravenglass on the west coast of England. Along the way he encounters the Lake District’s stunning scenery and many historic remains from Roman occupation. He starts at Brougham Castle, built on the site of a Roman fort, and continues on through Howtown, Ambleside and Boot, finishing at Muncaster Castle where the Roman foundations date back to AD79. Lucky Robinson gets to perambulate all over the landscape in this second season of his travelogue shown on SBS earlier this year.

Petals on the Wind

Saturday, 8.30pm, SoHo

This film is slightly weird but seductive. It makes more sense if you saw Flowers in the Attic first, both based on the novels by VC Andrews. It picks up the story in South Carolina in 1970, a decade after siblings Cathy (Rose McIver), Christopher (Wyatt Nash) and Carrie Dollanger (Bailey Buntain) escape from their grandparents’ house where they were held captive for three years and poisoned by their mother and granny. They’ve been living a fairly normal life courtesy of a wealthy benefactor, but then he dies. This is one twisted plot. Cathy and Christopher are a little too fond of each other, Carrie is abused by her partner and Cathy seeks revenge on her mother by sleeping with her husband Bart.

The Missing

Sunday, 8.30pm, BBC First

The story so far: while on holiday in France in 2006, Oliver, the five-year-old son of Tony (James Nesbitt) and Emily Hughes (Francis O’Connor), disappears from a cafe. Various leads come to a dead end, causing friction between the parents and police and each other. In Molly, episode five, the Hughes’s fail to convince police to question wealthy businessman Ian Garrett (Ken Stott), who they suspect is involved in Oliver’s kidnapping. Tony goes after Garrett, with bloody consequences. In Concrete, at 9.30pm, Tony and retired detective Julien Baptiste (Tcheky Karyo) travel to Brussels to pay a man for information that turns out to be useless. With only two episodes to go, I haven’t a clue who’s the villain, such is this dark but spectacular crime drama’s masterly plot.

How China Works

Sunday, 11.30pm, Discovery

Smart minds, fast trains, new cities built in a year: architect Danny Forster goes in search of what makes China such a thriving hub of ideas. With a population of more than 1.3 billion, an entrepreneurial spirit and can-do attitude, China seems to herald the future. In part one of this series, Forster travels the country talking to experts to find out how they are achieving these milestones and the impact on society.

Vera

Monday, 8.30pm, 13th Street

At a dinner I attended the other night, Vera was voted the consistently best crime series on television at the moment. In The Deer Hunters, episode three in season four, made this year, the wonderfully grumpy, dishevelled but brilliant Vera Stanhope (Brenda Blethyn) and Joe Ashworth (David Leon) investigate the murder of Shane Thurgood. Fifteen years after leaving, Thurgood had only just returned to the Northumberland moors having inherited an estate from his grandfather. Initially he planned to sell the farm to a wealthy couple but changed his mind. Vera digs deep to find the culprit.

Henry VII: Winter King

Monday, 8.30pm, History

In 1485, aged 28 and having spent half his life in exile, refugee and fugitive Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth, making him the last king of England to win the throne by force. Historian Thomas Penn distils his widely acclaimed 2012 book Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England into this one-hour documentary. No mean feat. Henry was not a popular king yet he ruled for 24 years. Ruthless, vengeful and manipulative, he introduced crushing financial laws that inspired fear rather than loyalty. “With a hunger for power and an iron determination to hang on to the throne at all costs, he would rewrite history,” Penn says.

The Knick

Wednesday, 6.30pm, Showcase

If you survive all the blood and gore (most of these patients don’t) and are prepared to stay with this 10-part period drama despite its slow start, you’ll be rewarded. Set in New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital in the early 1900s, chief surgeon, and coke addict John Thackery (Clive Owen) experiments with new operating techniques that often fail. He’s not happy that Dr Algernon Edwards, who trained in London and Paris and is black, has been appointed as his assistant. In the first episode, an operation goes horribly wrong when the new electrical system fails, killing a nurse. Inthe second, at 7.30pm, Edwards offers advice from his experience abroad but Thackery won’t listen.

Cesar to the Rescue

Wednesday, 7.30pm, Nat Geo People

Dogs are not allowed in Hong Kong’s cafes, so dog lover Brian decides to open a dog-friendly cafe. Trouble is, one of his four dogs, Sasa the huskie, is aggressive. She fights everything on four legs and after a contretemps with a chihuahua that ended in blood on the floor, customers stopped coming. In episode 4, Trouble at the Hong Kong Dog Cafe, dog behaviour expert Cesar Milan quickly establishes Brian, not Sasa, is the problem. He’s not behaving like her boss and Sasa takes advantage of it. Milan reverses the roles, Sasa calms down and customers return.

Keeping Up Appearances

Thursday, 4.35pm, UKTV

Hyacinth (Patricia Routledge) is looking forward to a few days on board the QE2 with fellow passengers “hand-picked from Debretts”. But in Sea Fever, she finds her frumpy sister Daisy and ocker brother-in-law Onslow are on board. A Christmas special episode made in 1993, but still worth a laugh.

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid

Friday, 9.30pm, History

No, this isn’t the 1969 movie that put Paul Newman and Robert Redford on the map. It’s a documentary about the two outlaws — Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. Their daring (and always bloodless) exploits captivated Americans during the 1890s. “Butch Cassidy was a charismatic thief who had elevated bank and train robbery into an art form,” the narrator says. “Though he would one day be known as the most fearsome bad man of the West, Cassidy was born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866 to a family of devout Mormons.” One of 13 children, life was tough and dull until he met Mike Cassidy, who taught him the finer points of cattle rustling. Longabaugh earned the nickname Sundance Kid after being jailed for robbing a bank (he got $US8.33), aged 21. Deciding the quick buck was the way for him, but lacking the skills to pull off the big jobs, he joins Butch and the Wild Bunch gang. Their careers end as refugees in Bolivia in 1908. Cornered by police, Butch shoots Sundance dead, then turns the gun on himself. Good stuff.