Holiday Family Movie Premiere: MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA HD (SKY MOVIES - Sunday 18 April, 5.15pm)

Animation/Comedy: All the loveable characters are back Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Melman the giraffe and Gloria the hippo, King Julien, Maurice and the penguins in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

Left marooned on the distant shores of Madagascar, the New Yorkers have hatched a plan so crazy it just might work. With military precision, the penguins have repaired an old crashed plane - sort of. Once aloft, this unlikely crew stays airborne just long enough to make it to the wildest place of all - the vast plains of Africa itself -- where our zoo-raised crew encounters species of their own kind for the very first time.

While discovering their roots, they quickly realize the differences between the concrete jungle and the heart of Africa. Despite long-lost relatives, romantic rivals and scheming hunters, Africa seems like a "crack-a-lackin" great placebut is it better than their Central Park home? Voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen and Alec Baldwin.

New Zealand Premiere

JESSE JAMES IS A DEAD MAN

The BOX - Sundays from 18 April, 8.30pm

Jesse James takes on the role of a modern-day daredevil and does some of the things he's always wanted to do.

Each episode follows James as he readies himself for a different death-defying stunt.

Preparing for the risky stunt can often be as dangerous as the stunt itself as he endures a battery of tests to prep for the challenge. With CGI effects, viewers get a taste of the enormity of the stunt, revealing the physiological stress James' body will endure.

Some of the dangerous challenges he'll be facing include the harrowing, gruelling and lawless off-road race the Baja 500 and hitting over 200 mph on a Nitro bike supercharged by ultra-combustible nitrous oxide.

All of the stunts are extremely dangerous "We've made a few trips to the hospital. That's how you know I am hurt, when I come home and voluntarily go by the emergency room. I've busted a few ribs and bruised my back and cracked the bone in my elbow. I think I got a concussion. It's my job."

James is world renowned for his West Coast Choppers bike shop in Southern California, his former hit series "Monster Garage" and for being Mr. Sandra Bullock. Motorsport

FIA FORMULA ONE CHAMPIONSHIP: CHINA GRAND PRIX, SKY Sport 3, Sunday 18 April, 6.55pm

The 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship moves on to Shanghai, China for the Chinese Grand Prix. Join SKY Sport for coverage of the grand prix.

World Event

EARTH DAY SPECIAL

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - Thursday 22 April, from 4.30pm

4.30pm - UNDERWATER OASIS: Off the southern coast of Africa lies an underwater metropolis like none other on the planet: Aliwal Shoal.

A fossilised dune of towering pinnacles and deep caves hidden five kilometres out to sea, Aliwal Shoal is a place where sharks flock and fish walk on the bottom of the ocean. Home to the greatest congregation of rays and sharks - including tiger sharks and ragged toothed sharks - Aliwal sees the comings and goings of thousands of migrating species.

Millions of sardines are pursued to the shoal by the ocean's great predators, with huge pods of dolphins numbering in the thousands and the shoal's ubiquitous sharks feasting side-by-side. Humpback whales migrate around the shoal, and cameras capture the vision of hundreds of sand sharks - never seen before - to reveal their secret world and behaviour.

Evolutionary adaptations are at their most spectacular, as marine species showcase the remarkable tools Mother Nature has gifted them with to avoid predators or stalk prey.

5.30pm - DIVING THE LABYRINTH: Some of the world's best cave divers have travelled to the Bahamas Islands to plunge into the unique abyss found in blue holes - underwater caves that can go hundreds or even thousands of feet down and feature a maze of passages and tunnels that act as liquid time capsules

Led by National Geographic emerging explorer and anthropologist Kenny Broad, a team of divers and archaeologists investigate these caves to unlock the mysteries of an ancient Bahamas teeming with life that quickly vanished, leaving the islands now mostly barren.

What caused these animals to disappear, and could 800-year-old human skulls provide the answer? Cave-ins, poisonous gasses and potentially deadly effects from the pressure of venturing too deep, cave diving is a dangerous sport - a lesson the team learns firsthand after encountering the remains of a diver wearing a 1970s wet suit and flashlight whose visit to one blue hole proved to be his last.

6.30pm - SHARK EDEN: In a remote corner of the South Pacific, National Geographic Explorer Enric Sala - one of the world's leading marine ecologists - leads an elite team into an isolated underwater Eden.

Sharks reign in the Line Islands, where humans rarely visit and survival is still of the fittest.

Completing a daring survey of life on the reef from the micro to the mega, the research team uncovers secrets in what could be the last unspoiled archipelago on Earth.

Covering nearly 3,300 kilometres on the 30-day expedition, the team faces a host of dangers - exposed to powerful currents and huge waves. What they find calls into question everything we know about a healthy reef ecosystem.

Along the journey, they find over three times as much coral as any other reef in the Indo-Pacific on Flint Island. Surrounding Malden Island - the test site of three nuclear bombs in 1958 - the team finds a reef exploding with life and ten times more sharks than any other studied reef on the planet.

Millennium Atoll offers a surprising refuge for blacktip reef sharks while Starbuck Island has the second largest biomass of any reef ever studied.