Entertainment picks: Sharp talking in marketplace

TV

It's a big night for TV2 with the launch of three new shows, but you'll need some strong coffee if you want to catch them all. The Market (10.25pm) is a South Auckland-style Romeo and Juliet, about two families, one Maori, the other Samoan, feuding after the death of one son and the jailing of another for his murder. Taking liberty of the late timeslot (why isn't it scheduled after Desperate Housewives?), there is swearing, sex and violence but it's the sharp dialogue that makes the show credible: "If you exercised your body like your mouth, you'd have a boyfriend by now." Written by Rene Naufahu, Brett Ihaka and Matthew Grainger, The Market stars the stunning Alina Transom in her first major TV role, plus Once Were Warriors' Taungaroa Emile, Pete Smith, Cherie James and bro'Town's Dave Fane.

Stick around after The Market for TV2's new gay talk show, The Outhouse (10.55pm) with hosts Greg Mayor, Andy Curtis and Amanda Betts. Touted as a gay Sports Cafe meets Rove, it kicks off by covering civil unions, the Lesbian Ball and internet dating. "We want to be a positive show," says Mayor. "But we want to be the naughty show, as well."

Then it's The L Word, (11.25pm) a sort of lesbian Sex & the City which doesn't deserve its night-owl timeslot, either. Jennifer Beals, the chick from Flashdance, stars as Bette, a high-flying museum director trying to find a sperm donor with her partner, Tina. But the focus is on Jenny, a writer who moves to LA to be with her boyfriend, only to discover she's more curious about his lesbian friends. Yes, they're all fabulously good-looking, but it's LA, dahling.

Prime picks up on a couple of comedy hangers-on: re-runs of Frasier (tonight, 7), then on Wednesday Dawn and Jennifer are back in the sixth season of French and Saunders. On Thursday it's the return of 24 (TV3, 8.30pm), the Kiefer Sutherland drama that unfolds in "real time". This week government agent Jack Bauer tackles terrorists.

Movies

Yipee, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has finally arrived. Starring a scarily effeminate Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and with Tim Burton at the creative helm, it promises to be even more surreal than the psychedelic fantasy starring Gene Wilder in 1971. Be prepared for a choccie splurge, though, afterwards and for theatres to be chocca for the first few weeks.

Also opening this week is A Common Thread, a French film about a 17-year-old who works as a supermarket checkout girl but indulges a secret passion for embroidery. As scintillating as that sounds, she is also secretly pregnant to a young man she doesn't like and is hiding this fact from her family by renting a room in a nearby town. There she finds work with a famous embroiderer who has contracts with big fashion houses.

Music

Reserve your Wednesday for some mid-week r'n'r - Gramsci play Galatos every Wednesday this month. Doors open at 9pm, and it costs just $10. Recloose, the Detroit-raised producer now living in Wellington and his live band play Rising Sun on Friday and the Leigh Sawmill Cafe on Saturday to promote his funky new album Hiatus On The Horizon. The band features Riki Gooch (Trinity Roots) on drums, Deva Mahal on vocals, Mike Fabulous (the Black Seeds, Fly My Pretties) on guitar and bass, Isaac Aesili (Open Souls, Solaa) on trumpet and percussion, James Illingworth on keys, Adan Tejerina (the Eggs) on percussion and Recloose himself (Matthew Chicoine) on tenor sax, melodica and sampler. Also touring is the New Zealand three-piece on everyone's lips, Die! Die! Die! Having stripped critics of superlatives to describe their jagged, obnoxious but exciting sound, the band are heading off on a 12-date tour around the country, playing Fu Bar, the cave-like basement usually reserved for drum'n'bass, on Saturday. Support them or they'll ship off to Australia, England or somewhere else their "hardcore magnificence" is appreciated.

Theatre

Footballers Wives fans will have to restrain themselves when Zoe Lucker, who played bitchy Tanya Turner, stars in Then Comes Love, opening at the Civic. Also starring Dancing with the Stars and Shortland Street bad boy Shane Cortese, written by acclaimed New Zealand scriptwriter James Griffin and directed by David McPhail, it's the tale of a love affair that begins one New Year's morning between Jane, an accountant about to be married and John, a married romance novelist.