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The week’s best live action
Random Acts of
Flyness, Friday.RUGBY LEAGUE
International rugby league
gets a triple-header on
Saturday, with the Junior
Kiwis facing their Austral-
ian counterparts (Sky Sport
2, 2.30pm), then the Kiwi
Ferns taking on the Jil-
laroos (5.00pm) and finally
the Kiwis playing the
Kangaroos (7.00pm) in the
trans-Tasman showdown
at Auckland’s Mt Smart Sta-
dium. Recent form favours
the Aussies in every match, but it’s the women, in their
first match since last year’s agonising World Cup final
loss to the Jillaroos, who have the pedigree. Watch out for
back-rower Teuila Fotu-Moala, who was plucked from the
Otahuhu Leopards to become a standout for the Broncos
in this year’s NRL Women’s Premiership.played the lead as thoughtful
thug Ray Shoesmith, and now
reprises the role here over six
episodes. Talks to make the
show with other channels had
collapsed repeatedly and Ryan
had gone into pizza delivery
and taxi driving by the time
the call finally came.FRIDAY OCTOBER 19
7 Days Spring Break (Three,
9.00pm). The Bruce Mason
Centre was famously not open
to Canadian race grifters this
year, but it’s welcoming the
7 Days crew for a full-scale
celebration of the show’s
300th episode. Jeremy Corbett
marshalls team leaders Paul
Ego and Dai Henwood and
panel guests Mel Bracewell,
Josh Thomson, Chopper and
Justine Smith. There will also
be special surprise guests.Random Acts of Flyness (SoHo,
Sky 010, 9.30pm). Somethingwild for a Friday night. Terence
Nance’s creation is technically
a sketch-comedy show with
musical elements, but it’s also
an edgy, clattering surrealistic
dream about being black in
modern America. “It’s down-
right amazing that Random
Acts is on television in the first
place,” wrote the New Yorker’s
Emily Nussbaum, while the
Hollywood Reporter’s reviewer
called it “a beautiful sensory
overload”. HBO commis-
sioned a cautious first season
of six episodes, but announced
after only three episodes had
aired that a second season
would be made. The recent
news that Nance, who had
previously made just one
well-received short film, has
been hired to direct the sequel
to animated sports comedy
film Space Jam suggests that,
in America, when the going
gets weird, the weird turn pro
pretty quickly.7 Days Spring
Break, Friday.Lilieta Maumau
DRONE RACING
Drone racing exists in some still-being-defined space
between eSports and motorsport: those are real vehicles
zipping through real space at blinding speed – it’s just
that the pilots are sitting somewhere else, in chairs
and wearing video goggles. From its hobby days, when
enthusiasts actually developed some of the key technology
that makes the racing possible, it has suddenly become
a sport with rules, international competitions and even
a few pro players. It’s also rapidly evolving, with the
debut of the new X Class category offering metre-wide
drones that spectators can more easily see (and hear).
There’s no X Class in the Drone Champions League leg
at Lake Zurich in Switzerland, but there will be, for the
first time, a separate contest between robo-drones, which
fly the course autonomously. If you want a look at it all,
there’s live coverage from Zurich on Sky Sport 1 from 6am
on Sunday.Drone racing