Battle of Anzac coverage

Peter Cosgrove features in Maori TV's programmes. Photo / Supplied

It would seem Maori TV laid down the challenge with their live Anzac Day coverage two years ago and now both the big networks are picking up the wero. However, Maori TV is still mounting the longest campaign. On Saturday it has 18 hours of commemorative programming - entitled Anzac: Kotahi te Wairua/One Spirit - starting with the live broadcast from the dawn service at Auckland Museum presented by Judy Bailey, Wena Harawira and Julian Wilcox.

Along with programmes and documentaries discussing different aspects of New Zealand's war history throughout the day, there will be crosses to the dawn services in Tonga (10.30am) and Gallipoli (3.30pm).

The channel's evening schedule includes The Anzac Address (8pm) from former head of the Australian Defence Force Peter Cosgrove, best known as the leader of the international peacekeeping mission to East Timor and who, among his many honours, is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Then it's two music shows - Yolande Gibson singing the songs of Vera Lynn in We'll Meet Again (8.30pm) and Hei Kinaki, a musical variety show featuring stars including Eddie Lowe, Elizabeth Marvelly, John Rowles, Tina Cross and newcomers such as last year's Homai Te Pakipaki winner Pikiteora Mura-Hita.

On TV One's The Nation Remembers, Miriama Kamo presents a live broadcast of the dawn service from Mt Maunganui with the morning's schedule including "Kiwis at War" profiles leading up to live coverage of the wreath-laying ceremony at the National War Memorial in Wellington (10.30am).

The afternoon schedule includes two new documentaries. Saving Face (12.05pm) is about four New Zealand surgeons - Sir Harold Gillies, Henry Pickerill, Sir Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem - who pioneered cosmetic reconstructive surgery for those scarred in the two World Wars.

Lost In Libya (1pm) follows three amateur historians, led by New Zealander Brendan O'Carroll, who venture into the Sahara to find what out happened to a Kiwi unit of the Long Range Desert Group, which was ambushed in 1941 by an Italian patrol in the remote valley of Gebel Sherif.

TV One News also crosses to Anzac Cove at Gallipoli for live coverage of the dawn service (2.30pm).

Meanwhile, TV3's Sunrise is working overtime on Saturday with Oliver Driver presenting its Anzac Special (7am to midday), which includes a series of mini-docos on five World War II New Zealand airmen, plus repeat screenings of docos The Time Of Our Lives and The Shadow of Vietnam, along with Mike McRoberts breaking out his trusty flak jacket to present a special report on NZ military postings around the world at present.

Prime has a repeat screening of a 2005 Holmes Anzac Special (6.30pm) focusing on the Victoria Cross - although the programme was made before Willie Apiata won his. Then there's a British documentary about conscientious objectors, Not Forgotten (7.30pm), followed by Flyboys at 8.30pm, a movie about Americans flying for the French in World War I, which is up against a screening of Saving Private Ryan on TV2. Sky's History channel has been restaging both World Wars for the past week or so and continues its blanket bombing until the end of the month. National Geographic and the Documentary Channel get in on the act on Saturday, too: the latter with an intriguing mix of World War history studies and a modern peacenik doco or two.

Anzac Day coverage

When: 5.50am onwards Saturday
Where: Maori TV, TV One, TV3
What: Lest we forget