WEEK 45: Saturday 7 November - Friday 13 November 2009

Factual - Extreme Fishing With Robson Green, Saturday 7 November, 7.30pm: Until very recently, Robson Green - the well-known British actor and passionate fisherman - thought nothing compared to a quiet days' fishing. That was until he went on an extreme adventure - a globetrotting, fish finding mission to some of the greatest fishing destinations in the world - in Extreme Fishing With Robson Green, tonight at 7.30pm.

The new TV ONE series sees Green on a mission to discover the weird, the wonderful and the way-off-limits of the fishing world. Green says he's been casting lines at the north east of England, in search of the wryly trout and salmon, for more than 30 years. "In my book, you can't beat a quiet days' fishing. Or can you?" "This is fishing like I've never seen it before, for creatures that don't look anything like trout or salmon, in waters that are a million miles away from the gentle streams that I'm used to. This is extreme fishing, and where I'm going there won't be any need for tweeds." From the Azores to South Africa, from the swamps of Louisiana, to the jungle of Costa Rica, he'll be going on boats, in canoes, up river and underwater, chasing some of the most elusive and terrifying fish on the planet. Green says he'll be learning new tricks, hearing old stories, and eating pretty much everything he catches - like a true hunter gatherer. This is something that Green believes in passionately. He doesn't fish just for fun. For the first leg of his global adventure, he's off to Costa Rica in Central America: land of rum, bananas, coffee, and very big fish. He says if ocean currents were railway stations, this would be grand central station. "It's the start of the rainy season, which means overflowing rivers pouring into the seas, in other words, lots of fish." Join Robson Green as he starts his journey at one of the top sport fishing destinations in the world. The fish they all want to catch is one of the fastest predators in the sea - the phenomenal sailfish.

Local - Mucking In, Sunday 8 November, 7pm: Jim Mora and the team head to the heart of the Waikato to surprise Sophia Verstappen - a humble human dynamo who is constantly going out of her way to help others in the community of Ngaruawahia, on Mucking In tonight at 7pm.

Verstappen can be found on the frontline and behind-the-scenes of many local sports including rugby league, kapa haka, waka ama, soccer, softball, supporting her marae and many tribal events. Her house is like a clubroom - kids will stay there to attend practice and games, they'll be fed, and as the washing mounts up at home, Verstappen is picking up kids from all over the place. She is a huge supporter of youth and believes if you look after the kids, the future will be a brighter place. For as long as her friends can remember, Verstappen, has always been getting stuck in, and she is the type of person to drop everything to come and look after you. Mucking In sees Verstappen's friends and family on a mission to transform her backyard as a way of saying 'thanks' for everything she has done for the community of Ngaruawahia.

Drama - Sunday Theatre: The Tudors, Sunday 8 November, 8.30pm: Singer Joss Stone joins the cast of The Tudors tonight, as Anne of Cleves, King Henry's fourth wife (at 8.30pm on TV ONE). Keen to take part in the acclaimed series, she says she had accepted the role before she knew who she would be. However, when she discovered she would have to speak with a German accent she was concerned.

"I said I'd play anything, I just wanted to do anything on The Tudors. It didn't have to be one of the Queens. I just wanted to be part of it. I wanted to be involved because it's such a great thing to do. I was really worried when I found out I had to do a German accent because I'd already agreed to do it, and then I realised as well as speaking in a German accent, I had to learn to play the harpsichord, so there was those two things that were a little bit worrying - but it's fun to scare myself with these missions." Singing on stage definitely helped with Stone's acting ability, but she says they are not quiet the same. "On stage I'm not pretending to be somebody else. I'm just going to an emotion that I'm not in at that moment. I can walk on stage and have the happiest day of my life, and then go into a song that's really sad and just become sad for that three or four minutes, however long it is, but then when it stops, I come straight out of it. You just have to change your emotion like that. It is similar like that, but on stage I'm not pretending to be anybody else, I'm just being myself in that particular emotion." Stone says she was really happy to be Anne of Cleves: "It's such a different thing to do, she isn't exactly the most beautiful of the queens apparently, which is cool, and the accent is interesting, it just meant it was more of a challenge. "She's nervous all the time, which is great because I am, nervous, all the time. The first thing we did was the wedding scene, and she's getting married to Henry VIII and he is very frightening, she knows what he's done before, he's chopped off heads and done horrible things to a lot of people, and he clearly doesn't like her that much. He's not making an effort, he's not loving towards her, so I think she's a bit worried. "Then she's walking up the isle with him and she's thinking oh my god, which is how I was feeling inside anyway because it was the first scene. Thankfully I didn't have to say anything that day, but it was easy to do because I was worried." Stone believes Anne was smart to survive her marriage to Henry: "She was a very intelligent young lady. She didn't lose her head, she managed to come out of it with a little bit of cash, and a castle to live in, and the King wanted to call her his sister. She came out of it pretty good." However, she believes it would have been heart-breaking for the young woman. "It's heart-breaking when anybody is rejecting you like that. I think more than being upset that he didn't fancy her, she was more scared that he was going to kill her. Combine the two, it's not a happy time for her, poor girl." On The Tudors tonight, it is November 1537 and gloom hangs over England. Despite the assassination of an English parliamentarian, which Cromwell suspects is a warning to him, he is more concerned with finding a new bride for his King. Henry has shut himself away in sadness and grief following the death of his much-loved third wife, Jane Seymour, mother to his only male heir. The infant - Edward - is being looked after by his half-sister Lady Mary and several of Jane's ladies-in-waiting. With the King in isolation, law and order are beginning to break down at the political heart of the Kingdom. Cromwell takes matters into his own hands and begins to search for a new Queen. He hopes to counteract the Catholic influence of the late Jane Seymour by finding a new Protestant wife for his widowed King. Kolling recalls Duke William of Cleves - a stronghold of the Protestant League - has two unmarried sisters, Anne (Joss Stone) and Amelia.

Local - Line Of Fire, Monday 9 November, 8.30pm: As the 1980s dawn, the New Zealand Armed Offenders Squad (AOS) is under public scrutiny like never before, in the second episode of the three-part documentary series Line Of Fire (tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE).

Despite all the incidents that ended without a fatality, it was those in which the AOS took a life that shaped the squads and drew the most criticism. In 1983, the fatal shooting of Paul Chase rocked even the squad members themselves. Former AOS member Murray Forbes says he will never forget it. In April 1983 he had just joined the squad. "Paul Chase shooting in Petone was the first call out I ever had. The understanding we had was that it could well have been a gang place and for all we knew the firearm was still in the building. It was dark and we needed to go through all these stairs and bang on the door. We kicked the door in because he could well have had the firearm." Into the darkness appeared Paul Chase holding something the officer thought to be a gun and he fired a shot, but what had appeared to be a shot gun turned out to be a steel exercise bar. After Paul Chase's death the media went ballistic - a man killed for wielding an exercise bar? The squads became hyper-vigilant - every move they made would be under enormous scrutiny. Forbes says the newspapers attacked the squad for months and the toll on the officers involved was enormous, even if the impact wasn't visible to outsiders. "Taff and I who had sent the troops forward were as much responsible as the man who pulled the trigger." He says the impact took a while to go away. Accused of being trigger-happy, 'to shoot or not to shoot' became something members would consider and re-consider, time and time again. Squad members felt the pressure of making life-and-death decisions in a split second. Then just six months later, a very public call-out in Queen Street, where members were hesitant to take action - even though the offender was clearly putting the lives of others at risk - changed everything. In public mayhem where anything could have happened, it was by luck that a Police dog got the full impact of a gun shot. Once again, the question was debated: who holds the responsibility? Is the individual squad member simply following orders, or being asked to make life and death decisions in a split second? Key interviewees share some of their scariest 'war stories' - the moments in which they were faced with the terrible decision of whether to take a life or not. Wives and partners tell of their fear and apprehension, as their partners disappeared on operations for days on end. The 1980s also saw the rise of another tactical response unit - the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) - with members drawn from the Armed Offenders Squad. The first official deployment of the ATS would take place in 1990, at a quiet seaside community near Dunedin. But no previous training prepared squad members for the carnage that would unfold in the quiet seaside town Aramoana. One ATS squad member says Aramoana was "a sniper's paradise".

Drama - Packed To The Rafters, Tuesday 10 November, 8.30pm: Tonight on Packed To The Rafters, the moon is nearly full and something strange is in air (at 8.30pm on TV ONE). Ben begs the moon goddess for five minutes with the lost Melissa; Rob wants to make Rachel the mother of his children; and Carbo waits for his ominously silent mother to explode.

Going off in search of Melissa, Ben calls every Bannon in the Perth phone book, and finds her mum, but she knows less about Melissa than Ben. Dave is the only one who helps when he discovers a camera he found is Melissa's. He sets up a meeting, and Ben apologises to Melissa and bares his heart. At a dinner party with Julie and Dave, Carobo's mother, Rita, remains politely silent as long as she can. She finally makes one comment which sets Julie off, and the two old friends argue in the street. Julie insists it is not her fault Rita's house was burgled, and Carbo is old enough to choose his own girlfriends. But Rita feels Julie has let her down, and Ben is a bad influence on her son. When she tries to apologise the argument gets worse, and a tearful Julie attacks a contentious tree with a chainsaw. Over lunch with Rachel, Rob raises the idea of taking custody of his sons, and implies they can all be one big happy family. Seeing Rachel's reaction, Rob back-pedals, but he decides to experiment by having the boys over for dinner with Rachel. The ploy backfires, and though things seem to go well, Rachel suddenly flees.

Movie - The Village, Saturday 7 November, 8.30pm: From the filmmaker of The Sixth Sense and Signs, comes The Village, tonight at 8.30pm on TV ONE. The stellar cast, including Award-winners Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas In The Mist), Adrien Brody (The Pianist) and William Hurt (Kiss Of The Spider Woman), assemble to bring to the screen the tale of an isolated village confronting the truth that lies just outside its borders.

At first glance, this village seems picture perfect, but the close-knit community lives with the frightening knowledge that creatures reside in the surrounding woods. The evil and foreboding force is so unnerving that none dare venture into the woods beyond the borders of the village. But when curious, headstrong Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix, To Die For) plans to step beyond the boundaries of the town and into the unknown, his bold move threatens to forever change the future of the village. Phoenix regards his character as rebellious, but in a quiet kind of way. "When the story of The Village begins, it is the starting point of Lucius' journey on his own and with Ivy. Like all the characters in the story, he is richly unique, but also fully realised," he says. Lucius' strength is matched only by Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard, Manderlay), a mesmerising, young blind woman with an unusual wisdom beyond her years. Her fearless nature and gift-like perception are outside anything Lucius has ever known. The Village introduces Dallas Howard to the big screen. Playing the young girl who becomes a woman at the core of the complex story, Dallas Howard says she was thrilled to get the part. "I am so grateful that Shyamalan had this amount of faith to cast an unknown actress like myself in this beautiful love story. This unbelievably potent love story of Ivy and Lucius is a love that I think everyone should strive to have," she says. For the films director, M Night Shyamalan, the process of storytelling has always been the most important thing. "When I write I gravitate toward having a streamline of suspense. I like to surprise people and that just feels natural. At the same time I try and give humanity to my stories. Hopefully audiences leave with something to think about that is worthwhile," he says. Throughout the film the ominous presence of the unknown boils over into chaos for the town, with one person's bravery being the only thing that can save them.