Five shows that should keep couch potatoes glued to the box over the coming week.
Picks of the week: Heston's Fantastical Food and Jamie and Jimmy's Food Fight Club
Heston Blumenthal is like a big kid when he mixes food and science to create magical and madcap dishes.
In his new series he takes inspiration from his childhood to make, as the title suggests, fantasticalfood and super-sized versions of meals and treats he loved as a kid.
"I remember the wonder of being a child when food was always exciting," he says.
His show aims to make us all feel like kids again and recapture the childhood magic of food.
So it's by no means a practical cooking show, but then Blumenthal has never been your everyday chef.
And if you thought his famous snail porridge and parsnip cereal was a quirky breakfast, in the first episode he pushes brekkie boundaries even further with his "topsy-turvy fry up", a concoction of black pudding Nutella, sausages disguised as tomatoes, and "magic mushrooms" made out of brioche.
Also on the breakfast menu is "the world's biggest boiled egg", which is 800 times bigger than a hen's egg.
Later in the series he creates a Christmas pudding big enough to walk into, and "the world's biggest icecream cone", which holds a tonne of icecream.
Meanwhile, the Jamie Oliver cooking show empire expands yet again and this time his childhood mate Jimmy Doherty is helping.
The pair have opened a pop-up cafe on the Southend Pier in their home county of Essex - but, thankfully, this four-part series is about more than just their new business venture.
Each week they challenge a different European country in order to uphold the reputation of British "grub", host a celebrity guest, and delve into the science and psychology behind certain foods.
In the first episode, the focus is on cheese, and with Jamie and Jimmy taking on some French experts they get some help from cheese man Jason, who arms them with some of Britain's best varieties. "We are going to storm the beaches of Normandy with this instead of bullets," says Jamie, holding up a large, round roll of blue cheese.
Over the following weeks the pair will battle the Belgians for beer supremacy, take on the Germans for best sausage, and wage a dessert war with the Italians. Also in the opening episode, and in keeping with Jamie's promise of "loads of laughs just like in our schooldays", he dresses up as a cow and wanders the streets asking people what they think the essence of Essex is to inspire a new cheese variety.
And Jimmy makes a steak and testicle pie and dishes it up to a panel of food writers.
Picks of the week:
Heston's Fantastical Food
Heston Blumenthal doesn't go by the book.
Jamie and Jimmy's Food Fight Club When: Tuesday, 7.30pm Where: Prime What: Jamie and his best mate front up
Don't expect the sort of silly hilarity of Father Ted from this new BBC series. It does have comedic touches, but also a lovely charm mixed with some drama as a crime-fighting Catholic priest goes about solving cases in the Cotswolds' countryside. Set in the 1950s, and based on the novels by G.K. Chesterton (although new stories were written especially for the series), it stars Mark Williams, who is perhaps best known as Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films, as Father Brown. Although he has a natural knack for solving crimes he has also had the benefit of hearing his parishioners' confessions over the years, which gives him an insight, not only into their lives, but into how conniving and evil minds work. In the first episode Father Brown investigates the case of a man who is murdered with a hammer and he must find the real killer before an innocent woman cops the blame.
When: Sunday, 8.30pm Where: UKTV What: You're nicked, my son
Music pick:The Voice Australia
Can Team Seal make it two from two in tomorrow night's finale of the Australian singing competition? He won the first series of The Voice Australia last year with Karise Eden, and he's got talented Sinatra-styled singer Harrison Craig in his corner this year. But the Melbourne-based crooner faces stiff competition from dreamy chanteuse Celia Pavey, mentored by Delta Goodrem, Ricky Martin's former opera singing protege Luke Kennedy, and indie kid Danny Ross coached by Joel Madden. The format of the two-hour final show lends itself to being a bit of a nostalgia trip as it looks back on the highlights of the series, but also features a guest appearance by Robin Thicke singing Blurred Lines, as well as performances by Goodrem and Martin. The judges-cum-coaches also team up with their charges for duets of famous songs.
When: Friday, 7.30pm Where: TV2 What: The final showdown
Descent From Disaster has been an interesting walk through some of New Zealand's darkest hours, and in this week's final episode, Judy Bailey looks at one of the deadliest, yet most puzzling challenges ever faced. As the end of World War I seemed to be drawing closer in mid-1918, the world was hit by a wave of influenza. Though this first bout weakened populations, it wasn't until a few months later, when the virus morphed, that it became a truly deadly pandemic. About 50 million died worldwide, and New Zealand lost over 8500 people to the outbreak in two months - more than half the death toll of the Kiwi lives claimed by World War I battlefields in five years. And yet, exactly how that deadly strain of the flu arrived in NZ in the first place remains a puzzle, along with the mysterious way in which it spread through different communities.
When: Tuesday, 9.30pm Where: TV One What: Deadly pandemic
Documentary pick:Aftermath
How to move forward without losing everything that came before is the theme in this three-part series on Christchurch and Canterbury in the aftermath of the February 2011 earthquake. In the first episode, entitled Heritage Matters, the controversy surrounding many of the building demolitions is examined - the balance between safety and cultural preservation, and how these demolitions may affect the identity of the city, with interviews with representatives on all sides of the debate. The second episode looks at the human toll, and how 30 months of seismic unrest and perpetual insecurity have changed communities. The final episode will examine the economic effects - 50,000 people working for 6000 CBD businesses were left jobless, and as of January, 91 per cent of the CBD buildings had been demolished.
When: Monday, 8.35pm Where: Prime What: To repair or start over?
