‘Unknown’ North Korea a prize for Palin
Python turned travel present Michael Palin says the harder a place is to get to the greater the prize to be won.
Eddie Cockrell gives his top recommendations for this week’s viewing on the box.
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FREE TO AIR
“My philosophy of travel, such as it is, is that the more difficult somewhere is to get to, the greater the prize to be won by getting there,” writes comedian, actor, author and presenter Michael Palin, who has now been hosting travel programs for nearly eight times as long as the five-year run of the comedy show he co-founded in 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He continues in the companion book to his latest adventure: “But when the prize was North Korea, I found that this was not a view shared by my wife, and a surprising number of my friends. To many of them, this was a step too far. The known unknowns were one thing, but the unknown unknowns were quite another.”
And it is precisely these unknown unknowns that render the two-part Michael Palin in North Korea an eye-opening, somewhat tense and finally triumphant return to form for the inveterate traveller, making a welcome return to the road seven years after his last foray, to Brazil (in fact, the North Korean jaunt gives Palin 98 countries visited to date).
This new trip came together quickly over a fortnight in May 2018, during a window of opportunity as he put the finishing touches on his book, Erebus: The Story of a Ship. It had originated with a phone call from ITN Productions, proposing the project in concert with Channel 5 (which aired it in England), but was delayed by Kim Jong-un’s threats to the US and President Donald Trump. When that cooled off, it was next stop Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
As always, Palin is a splendid travel companion, at once relaxed in the role of veteran journeyman yet mischievously and appealingly open to the sense of wonder new destinations and surroundings can summon. On his first morning in Pyongyang, he leans out his hotel window to hear a gentle tune wafting over the city, a call to work he later learns is titled Where are You, Dear General? Comparing the music to the soothing ambience of Brian Eno, he yells “Hi, Brian!” out the window. Later, as he and his crew wait for an aeroplane delayed by weather, someone produces a video of Monty Python sketch The Fish-Slapping Dance, which delights his minders (one of whom wants to know if the fish were alive). He even celebrates his 75th birthday with his crew and hosts.
“I’m glad to have seen it before it becomes like everywhere else,” he says on the last day of the trip. “Events are moving fast, and I hope positive change is coming for the people of North Korea.”
Earlier, he farewells his guides by earnestly telling them “you’ve made an old man very happy”. It would be just like Palin, a modern renaissance man if there ever was one, to conveniently forget just how happy he’s made generations of viewers and readers who appreciate a good laugh and an eventful adventure.
Michael Palin in North Korea, Sunday, 8.30pm, SBS.
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BITES
Spicks and Specks 90s Special, Sunday, 7.40pm, ABC
In this first of three specials promised during this year that will each focus on a specific generation of popular music, the rebooted Spicks and Specks gang is back to take an irreverent and very funny hour-long look back at the tunes and trends of the last century’s final decade. Sporting an even longer beard, host Adam Hills presides over teams managed by Alan Brough and Myf Warhurst featuring Tina Arena, Tom Gleeson, Spiderbait drummer/singer Mark “Kram” Maher and Anne Edmonds. From a dial-up tone, they segue into games that embrace grunge, hip-hop, pop and the flurry of nostalgia-themed one-liners for which they’re known. Long-time contributors Dave O’Neil and Denise Scott, along with Scott Edgar, show up to model authentic onstage fashions in the “Smells Like 90s Wardrobe” segment, while Melbourne muso Dave Graney shows up with long-time drummer Clare Moore and the Coral Snakes to stump the panel with reworked 90s standards. Worth the price of admission alone is the final number, a lilting duet of Crowded House’s Weather with You by Kram and Arena.
The Code. Thursday, 10.30pm, Ten Bold
There are a few good men, and women, in the military court procedural series The Code, which recently lasted for but a single season on the American CBS network. Chief among the former is the Gold Coast’s own Luke Mitchell as hard-charging Captain John “Abe” Abraham, a former marine now serving as a military lawyer who goes up against defence barrister Maya Dobbins (Anna Wood) when a soldier is seemingly caught red-handed stabbing a superior officer to death. That was last week’s premiere episode, directed by Marc Webb (that recent two-film Amazing Spider-Man Reboot), and this second hour is the work of feature director-turned-TV regular Guy Ferland (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Sons of Anarchy), suggesting the network had high hopes for the series. Though reminiscent of JAG and its ilk, it presents interesting characters well-written and played, though it could have done more with Dana Delany (China Beach) as a tolerant superior officer. In the second episode, Phillipa Soo (the original Eliza in Hamilton) joins as Lieutenant Harper Li — insert To Kill a Mockingbird joke here, the show does — and the crew juggle cases in Somalia and Spain.
My Way. Saturday, 12pm, Nine
What do happy people look like, and what do they do to stay happy? In this new half-hour lifestyle series from producer Charlotte Shallcross and narrator-presenter Tim Blackwell, a grinning cross-section of average Australians are profiled doing things their way on My Way. In Brisbane, four happy blokes who admired each other’s pictures of cured meats online form start-up Barbecue Mafia and promptly win a slow-cook contest in Texas. Amanda Powell trains 60 hours a week with her three horses for endurance rides up to 160km, even though she also works full-time. In the Scenic Rim region of southeast Queensland, the deliriously happy Innes Larkin has turned a childhood climb of Mt Barney into a lifelong obsession with nature that sees him running the Mt Barney Lodge. And relentlessly chipper Kelly has paired with engineer Nick (they met on Tinder) to turn their shared love of wartime memorabilia and vintage aircraft into retro photo shoots. In these tumultuous times, the heart-on-sleeve sincerity of My Way is a welcome respite from true crime and bad news.
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PAY TV
Feast more than a gamer film
It isn’t necessary to play, or even understand, video games and the multibillion-dollar industry that has sprung up around them since the table tennis arcade console, Pong, was released in 1972 to appreciate the new Apple TV+ workplace comedy Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet. It recently dropped a nine-episode first season (a second has already been ordered) on the still-new streaming service. As with such classic office comedies as, well, The Office (either one), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Parks and Recreation or anything by Rob Sitch, the fun is in the interactions among a disparate group of characters bound together against their will in a quest both mythic and often absurd to survive each workday and each other.
Spearheaded by single-minded and narcissistic creative director Ian (Eye-an, if you please) Grimm (series co-creator Rob McElhenney, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Mythic Quest has become a triumphant MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which means a lot of people play together online simultaneously) that demands an expansion. Before going any further, it’s important to understand that as good a comedy as the show is straight out of the gate, it’s also an immersive look at the mechanics and slanguage of a contemporary game studio. For instance, did you know that an “expansion” is a software pack that adds characters, weapons, props and/or an extended storyline to a pre-existing game?
In the fast-paced first episode, Eye-an and the brains trust that created Mythic Quest are on the verge of going live with their first expansion, Raven’s Banquet. There’s practical but headstrong lead engineer Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao), spineless co-founder David (David Hornsby), monetisation-obsessed producer Brad (Danny Pudi), adoring intern Jo (Jessie Ennis), single-minded game testers Rachel and Dana (Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim, respectively) and others — certainly the most recognisable of which to viewers of a certain age is Oscar-winning F Murray Abraham, Salieri in director Milos Forman’s 1984 Amadeus, as washed-up alcoholic science fiction author and gameplay writer CW Longbottom. At the other end of the age spectrum is 16-year-old Elisha Henig as Pootie Shoe, an online streamer and influencer whose overcaffeinated opinions of the game drive many of its creators’ decisions, for better or worse.
It all works because the show is not only consistently well-written but intuitively cast as well: McElhenney deftly balances Grimm’s dismissive abrasiveness with his drive for gaming perfection, while Nicdao’s Poppy is both winningly nerdy and inspiringly determined to make her own mark on the project.
Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet is the first live-action comedy series from the co-producing French video game company Ubisoft Film and Television, whose long list of titles include the popular Assassin’s Creed. Whether or not Mythic Quest bears any relation to this or any other Ubisoft game is a question best left to those who play but, thankfully, the snippets of gameplay that punctuate the show’s story arcs don’t slow the comedy down, but enhance the veracity of the milieu (reviews from veteran gamers suggest there are plenty of industry in-jokes embedded as well).
With a first episode showcasing the droll comic timing of directing jack-of-all-trades David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, the recent Halloween reboot) and a climactic half-hour capably helmed by Sydney’s own Catriona McKenzie (Satellite Boy), Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet stands proudly alongside the speculative science fiction series For All Mankind as not only the strongest and most consistently rewarding shows currently available on Apple TV+, but among the best recent examples of their genres. It’s even good enough to tear eyeballs away from video consoles, which is a feat in and of itself.
Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, streaming on Apple TV+.
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BITES
Better Call Saul. Monday, streaming on Stan
“I can’t go back to being Jimmy McGill,” says Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), who shed that persona at the end of season four to become Saul Goodman (s’all good, man), the eccentric shyster barrister first introduced in a 2009 episode of the great Breaking Bad. “I’m done with that.” After a pause to reflect, tolerant lawyer and sometimes girlfriend Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) leans back and admits “sorry, I just can’t see it”. Fortunately, the rest of us can, so after a year-and-a-half wait, it’s time to welcome back everyone’s favourite ambulance chaser from Albuquerque for season five of perhaps the most operatic prequel series ever. This is a complex yet immediately addictive show. Though under an embargo both polite and far-reaching, suffice it to say that fan favourites Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito are back as tough-on-the-outside ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut and back-from-the-dead meth distributor Gus Fring, respectively, with everyone on their way to circling around to the promised sixth and final season Breaking Bad milieu. As you watch, appreciate that it does indeed remain all good, man.
Girlfriends. Monday, streaming on Acorn TV
“The years we’ve spent on this Earth have given us a profound wisdom,” says Sue Thackery (Miranda Richardson) to friends of 40-plus years Linda Hutchison (Phyllis Logan) and Gail Stanley (Zoë Wanamaker). Replies Gail, ruefully, “Like never taking a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night”. This is as good a sample of repartee as any from the six-episode first season to date of the 2018 Acorn TV original drama Girlfriends, the latest from the pen of British actor, director and scriptwriter Kay Mellor (Band of Gold, Playing the Field, Fat Friends). Life is messy for the three friends: Linda’s drunken husband, Micky, has disappeared during an anniversary cruise; Gail’s son, Tom, returns from a 15-month prison term at the same time she receives confirmation of her divorce; and Sue’s on the verge of being made redundant from the bridal magazine she co-founded with the married lover who’s doing the firing. These girlfriends live in interesting times, and Mellor’s eventful, empathetic scripts are marvels of character and construction.
Bubble Guppies. Monday, 9am, Nick Jr.
Three years is a long time in the world of children’s television, but don’t tell Jonny Belt and Robert Scull. The creative team responsible for The Backyardigans is finally back with a 26-episode fifth season of their next hit animated show, the effervescent Canadian-British half-hour Bubble Guppies. For the uninitiated, the show revolves around the school day, under the tutelage of Mr Grouper, of lead characters Gil, Molly, their pet Bubble Puppy, Goby, newcomer Zooli and others as they learn about life in the undersea city of Bubbletucky and whatever the episode’s topic happens to be. Joining such fan favourites as the “outside song” is the bouncy Ocean Animals, and the structure has been slightly retooled to focus more on the classroom. “We take traditional preschool ideas and give them a funny twist,” says Scull, who knew he’d be an animator after watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as a kid (for his part, Belt wanted to be an illustrator and had to be talked into animating). With its cavalcade of guest voices ranging from Carol Kane to Alice Cooper, Bubble Guppies is a show guaranteed to bring a smile to the toddler in your life.