Your guide to the week’s best on Sky and free-to-air TV
The Traitors NZ (Mondays and Tuesdays from July 1, Three)
A clairvoyant, a council manager, a teacher and an MMA fighter are among the 22 contestants signed up for the second “local” season of this hit reality competition.
Ranging in age from 22 to 70 and from locations spanning Invercargill to Auckland, they all gather at Claremont Manor, near Timaru, to try to outsmart each other to win up to $100,000.
Keeping an eye on them all – and offering withering assessments – is returning host Paul Henry.
Robin’s Wish
(8.30pm, Thursday, June 27, Rialto)
Billed as an “intimate portrait of Robin Williams and his invulnerable spirit”, Tylor Norwood’s 2020 documentary aims to tell the story of “what really happened to one of the greatest entertainers of all time – and what his mind was fighting” when he took his life in 2014. “A documentary that's honest and scary, wrenching and moving,” wrote Variety’s Owen Gleiberman.
Mānawatia a Matariki (6am, Friday, June 28, TVNZ 1, Three, Sky Open, Whakaata Māori)
Join hosts Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu) and Mātai Smith (Rongowhakaata, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri) at Kā Papa Toitoi (Treble Cone, Wānaka) for live coverage of national Matariki celebrations, beginning at dawn with a traditional Hautapu ceremony.
The four-hour broadcast will also feature reports from across the motu and special performances from The Modern Māori Quartet.
The Dog House (7pm, Saturdays from June 29, TVNZ 1)
The team at Cambridge's Wood Green Animal Charity return to play cupid with more lonely people and pooches. Resident dog handlers meet prospective adopters, before matchmaking them with the dog of their dreams. At times it's love at first sight and – sometimes – it's complicated.
This offers mostly family-friendly (sometimes the doggie backstories can be a little overwhelming for more sensitive viewers) fun that packs a punch when it comes to delivering heartwarming and heartrending tales.
May December
(8.30pm, Saturday, June 29, Rialto)
Julianne Moore stars opposite Natalie Portman in Todd Haynes’ (Far From Heaven, Carol, Dark Waters) 2023 romantic-drama about an actress who travels to Georgia to meet and study the life of the woman she is set to play in a film.
Told straight, May December could have been simply an absorbing family drama and meditation on the nature of memory.
But, from the moment Gracie somewhat hysterically wails that they “might not have enough hot dogs”, then reveals to Elizabeth that the box of human excrement delivered to her door isn’t the first, you know that this world view might be just a little askew – the story all the more compelling for it.
The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson (8.30pm, Mondays from
July 1, TVNZ 1)
From an ascent characterised by scandal, cunning and betrayal to a spectacularly disastrous downfall, this 2024, four-part Channel 4 documentary series explores the privileged, yet chaotic path that led to Boris Johnson’s controversial political career.
Includes testimony from those closest to him, both friends and enemies.
”This horrifying series makes it way through years of splutter-bumbles and shouting at yucca plants and wrecking everything, until even his champions declare him friendless. Still, it’s way too soon for this – isn’t it?,” wrote The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan.
Razor
(7pm, Sunday, June 30, Sky Open)
Ahead of his first test in the hot-seat, Sky Sport goes behind the scenes with new All Blacks supremo coach Scott Robertson.
This promises to reveal his philosophy and the secrets to the legendary “connection” he has with his players and fellow coaches.
A day earlier on the same channel,
All Blacks: In their Own Words (9.30pm, Saturday) goes behind the scenes of the team’s attempt to win the Rugby World Cup in France last year.