Tonight in HD: April 21
SoHo Highlight: Mad Men (Sky 10, 8.30, 5.1) A grossly overweight Betty discovers she has a tumour, Peggy interviews an obnoxious young copywriter for a job, the firm tries to get the Mohawk Airlines account back, and Don and Harry court The Rolling Stones to record a commercial. Said The Hollywood Reporter in an excellent analysis of the first episode that star Jon Hamm directed: “While there’s a lot of momentum to talk about Betty’s weight – one of the more jarring images we’ve seen on Mad Men, if only because Betty’s been perfect Ice Princess Grace since we first met her – it was another character who really stood out in this episode who truly deserves the attention: Roger Sterling.” Jane Clifton’s Dominion Post review of last week’s premiere also is a must-read to set the scene if you missed it and hopefully the gremlins that caused the HD image to occasionally break up won’t re-occur. Sky boffins were unable to identify the cause but it’s likely to have been a transmission interference issue given the source material was fine. ✮✮✮✮✮

Movie: The Wolfman (TV3, 8.30, 5.1) Benicio Del Toro is the screen’s first Puerto Rican werewolf in London – although in this re-make he plays Lawrence Talbot as a Victorian thespian whose love of the Bard takes a back seat to the lure of the beast: a wolf-like creature terrorising the English village where his family harbours a fearsome secret. Not surprisingly, the special effects are more startling than the storyline. Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt co-star. (2009) ✮✮✮
Hyundai Country Calendar (TV One, 7.00) Wool, meat and cropping fight for supremacy on a mixed farm. ✮✮✮✮
Terra Nova (TV3, 7.30, 5.1) Taylor and Mira square off in the jungle, where he learns more about her plans, and about his son. ✮✮✮
Movie: The Kingdom (TV3, 10.35, 5.1, R) The third act of this topical thriller culminates in a furious shoot-out behind enemy lines in Saudi Arabia that rivals the intensity of the downtown dust-up in Michael Mann’s Heat (Mann also produced The Kingdom). It ensues after extremists ambush an FBI team frustrated by the politics of trying to investigate a massacre of American civilians on Saudi soil. The screenplay, by Lions for Lambs’ Matthew Michael Carnahan, was inspired by a similar event in 2002 and succeeds as both a taut thriller and a succinct distillation of the intrigue that characterises US relations with Saudi Arabia. Battleship’s Peter Berg directs Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. (2007) ✮✮✮✮
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