Paul Keating opens up to Kerry O'Brien

TV editor Lyndall Crisp selects Keating: The Interviews as her pick of the week on free-to-air television.

Paul Keating

TV editor Lyndall Crisp selects Keating: The Interviews as her pick of the week on free-to-air television.

Keating: The Interviews
Tuesday, 8.30pm, ABC1

Four hours on a politician, any politician, is a big ask, but let's face it -- whatever your feelings for Paul Keating, he makes a fascinating profile. Kerry O'Brien spent 14 hours between March and July interviewing the former prime minister in his elegant Sydney office, stuffed with antiques, for this fascinating four-part series. Why did Keating decide to do it? O'Brien says the boy from Bankstown who left school aged 15 is comfortable with his place in history; perhaps it was to protect his legacy. Certainly no other Australian politician has agreed to the length and scope of these interviews which started last week with Keating talking poignantly about how his grandmother, mother and father influenced his early years, his hero and mentor Jack Lang, and his obsession, from the age of 18, with politics. (If you missed it catch up on www.abc.net.au/iview.) This week, Keating reflects on the heady years (1983-91) when he was prime minister Bob Hawke's treasurer. It was a powerful combo, one of the best, but put two such strong, single-minded bulls in the same paddock and they will occasionally lock horns. Keating and O'Brien obviously enjoy engaging (sometimes sparring) with each other here; urbane, witty Keating with his whimsical smile and O'Brien doing what he does best: thoroughly researched, intelligent journalism.

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New Tricks
Saturday, 7.30pm, ABC1

Will UCOS, or indeed the program, survive without the gorgeous Amanda Redman as its leader, Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman? Last week she departed the unsolved crimes squad after 10 years to join a UN team tracking down war criminals. Of the original cast, that leaves only Dennis Waterman (as the much married ex-detective Gerry Standing), who's not a happy chap now Pullman has left. Tonight her replacement, Sasha Miller (Tamzin Outhwaite, Eastenders) takes the reins. It is not a smooth transition.

The Abolitionists
Saturday, 7.30pm, NITV

Another historical event to commemorate, this time the abolition of slavery in the US. On January 1, 1863, Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, leaders of a fringe movement, received word that all African-American slaves were to be "forever free". Not surprisingly, given the scope and complexity of the subject, this three-part series took four years to make. A mix of documentary narrative and dramatised re-enactments, it tells the story of how Douglass, Garrison and their allies Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin), John Brown and Angelina Grimke overcame violent opposition to change the course of US history. This first episode shows how the five -- from very different backgrounds -- came together to fight for an unpopular cause.

Bodyline: The Ultimate Test
Sunday, 7.30pm, ABC1

Adam Zwar (The Agony of Life) does a terrific job with this look at the cricketing tactic devised by the English team for its 1932-33 Ashes tour of Australia in an effort to outwit our Don Bradman. Scratchy archival footage shows fast bowler Harry Larwood's ball smash into batsman Bert Oldfield's head during the third Test in Adelaide to the sound of the crowd roaring its disapproval. "Bowl at the wicket, not the head," yells one outraged Aussie. Zwar, who's always hankered to "wear the baggy green", has fun talking to cricket tragics such as Matthew Hayden, who admits he'd have been scared of Larwood.

Sliding Doors
Sunday, 8.30pm, Gem

This 1998 British-American romantic comedy starts with Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) waiting for her train on the London Underground, having just been sacked from her job with a public relations company. Here the plot splits in two: what direction her life takes when she catches the train and what direction it follows when she misses the train. There are good performances by the cast -- John Hannah, Virginia McKenna -- but overall it's a bit gimmicky. Nevertheless, it grossed $US58 million worldwide.

Chateau Chunder: A Wine Revolution
Sunday, 9.30pm, ABC1

Forty years ago, Australian wine was a joke. You didn't take a bottle of wine to a dinner party, you took a six-pack. This documentary, made last year, kicks off with the hilarious Monty Python sketch that neatly sums up the situation back then: "This is a bottle with a message, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding." But all that changed when Australian winemakers began to get noticed overseas and their wines started winning international awards. Wine critics James Halliday, Max Allen and Jancis Robinson, winemakers Bruce Tyrrell and Chris Hancock (Rosemount), together with that connoisseur of all things refined, Sir Les Patterson, explain how a quality product and clever marketing put Australian wines on the global map.

Hellfjord
Monday, 11.30pm, SBS One

At this rate we'll all be fluent in Scandinavian languages given the number of dramas being produced there that flood our screens. Here's another one: urban police officer Salmander (Zahid Ali), a second-generation Pakistani immigrant, is banished to Hellfjord, an isolated town in northern Norway, after he accidentally shoots his police horse dead in front of horrified children. Odd things happen when he arrives in Hellfjord, where he has to deal with simple-minded people, a dim-witted journalist, Johanne (Ingrid Bolso Berdal), murders and the local sea monster. Such is the popularity of Scandinavian programs, this one sold around the world before it was made, in 2011.

The Red Shoes
Tuesday, 11.30pm, SBS Two

Don't be fooled: this is not the 1948 British film about a young ballerina (played by Moira Shearer) who becomes a lead dancer, although both films are based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. This horror version was made in 2005 in South Korea starring Kim Hye-su as Sun-jae, who finds a pair of rose-coloured satin stilettos in the subway. The shoes bring nothing but trouble, including the grisly death of a friend who takes them. HCA would not approve.

Hostages
Wednesday, 8.30pm, Nine

Slowly, slowly we're inching towards a conclusion: will respected thoracic surgeon Ellen Sanders (Toni Collette) kill the US president, as ordered, while she's operating on him? Only two more episodes of this drama before we know whether she finds a way to wriggle out of the situation and save her family. Bet she does. In Loose Ends, rogue FBI agent Duncan Carlisle (Dylan McDermott), who's holding the Sanders family hostage, is ordered to get rid of one of his team members when word of the plot leaks.

Opening Shot: Growing up Gayby
Wednesday, 9.30pm, ABC2

The first episode in this new season of documentaries made by directors aged under 35 explores the impact on children of same-sex parents. Growing Up Gayby is narrated by Maya Newell, 25, whose mothers, Liz and Donna, have been together 27 years. Maya didn't question whether her childhood was normal -- until other people did. She interviews children in similar circumstances -- including wonderful Gus, 10, who knows he's the product of a "spam" donor -- and the leader of the Christian Democratic Party, Fred Nile. He's still labouring under the delusion that men are necessary in a family as "protectors and providers". Tell that to the thousands of working women, many of whom are breadwinners.

JFK: One PM Central Standard Time
Friday, 9.30pm, SBS One

George Clooney finds out how, 50 years ago, journalists -- including Walter Cronkite, who could hardly say the words -- reported the news that US president John F. Kennedy had been shot. Now we can all take a breather from programs on the Kennedys.