SERIOUS AMAZON (Mon Oct 22, ABC- 4:30pm)
Excellent reality show/natural history documentary in which hundreds of high-school kiddies across the UK compete to be one of eight winners sent on a journey through the Amazon Basin by boat, in an attempt to either a) educate people about the plight of the animals and plants of the famous, threatened rainforest, such as the piranha, jaguar and anaconda, or b) become food FOR the animals and plants of the famous, threatened rainforest, such as the piranha, jaguar and anaconda. Either way, everybody wins!
CALIFORNICATION (Mon Oct 22, Ten-9:45pm)
Not only does my David Duchovny nude up again in tonight’s episode, he also acknowledges to a friend he wants to bonk Johnny Depp. Aww, how sweet! David’s trying to win my affections back after that unpleasantness with Tea Leoni…
OZ (Mon Oct 22, SBS-10:55pm)
Violent, sad, heartwarming and sexy, even in repeat, this excellent, searing look at life in ‘experimental’ prison Emerald City is one of the best dramas on TV. And not many drama serve up so much male nudity every week (well, there was that all-nude episode of CSI, but that turned out to be just a dream I was having, dang it…)
THE BRADY BUNCH (Tues Oct 23, Nine-5:30pm)
In this cynical day and age, is there anyone on this planet who can watch the Brady’s impossibly perfect brood and not believe that Mike and Judy keep the reject, bad-mannered kids in a well in the basement? Like Wes Craven’s THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, only scarier and with more Sunday Roasts?!
FAMILY PLOTS (Wed Oct 24, Seven-1:30am)
-Basically a real life SIX FEET UNDER, this superb corpse fly-on-the-wall doco series looks at a family who’ve been in the Mortuary business almost as long as that Reaper chap, and their various comings and goings (mostly goings) as they try and balance the books, placate grieving customers and get people to date them who aren’t fazed by the whole embalming fluid smell thing. Deserves better than its current (although ironically appropriate) graveyard timeslot.
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (Thurs Oct 25, Ten-7:30pm)
IDOL for feet instead of tonsils, this show puts a bunch of regular people who think themselves capable of busting a move in front of a panel of (typically bitchy) judges and sorts out the Baryshnikovs from the Britneys. As always with these shows, playing Pick the Poof is half the fun.
THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE (Tues Oct 2 and Oct 9, ABC-8pm)
Benter than a pink bucket, this four-part series showcases two new bizarre competitions, or perhaps that should be ‘camp’etitions, this month. For all the limp wrists and lisps you can handle, journey into HAIRWORLD (Oct 2), which features snippits of snippers at the ‘Hair Olympics’ in Moscow. A week later, dive into a pool full of fit men in speedos (read: poofters) as they dance through the water in perfect harmony for a chance to win the US Open of SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING (Oct 9).
