Today's TV highlights

9.50PM, TV ONE
NZ FESTIVAL: THE NEW OCEANIA

This TVNZ-commissioned documentary about Samoan-born writer Albert Wendt has been shown at film festivals here and overseas.

As a child, Wendt was fascinated by his grandmother's many stories and this sowed the seeds of his career as a writer. He came to New Zealand as a 13-year-old after winning a scholarship to a New Plymouth boarding school.

While here, he fell in love with a white girl and that liaison provided the stimulus for first novel, Sons for the Return Home (1973), about a cross-racial romance.

After attending Victoria University, Wendt chose to split his time living in the Pacific Islands and New Zealand, working as a writer and educator. He has produced works such as the novel Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) and the more recent play The Song Maker's Chair.

The New Oceania, directed and produced by Shirley Horrocks, combines drama and documentary elements to tell the story of Wendt's life.

- Steven Shaw


7.30PM, TV3
MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE

After seven seasons, this double episode farewells the family that's so dysfunctional it doesn't even have a surname. The lack of surname and the fact that no one really knows how old Malcolm and his four brothers are - or where they live - helps to give this comedy universal appeal.

And many people can identify with Malcolm, a kid with a genius IQ who struggles with social niceties and is constantly embarrassed by his family.

Tonight, Malcolm joins other social outcasts to form an anti-prom group called Morp. Meanwhile, dim-witted but deviant brother Reese gets paid to take a geeky girl to the senior prom. And Malcolm is elected valedictorian of his graduating class but can't seem to come up with a worthy speech.

His domineering mother Lois has no sympathy, and reveals that she wants him to become President of the United States. Reese goes to extreme lengths to secure his dream job of high school janitor. And could Lois be pregnant again?

- Steven Shaw


MOVIES
Rated out of 5 stars

8.30PM, TV2
xXx
* * *
After becoming a movie name in Pitch Black and The Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel tried a new spin on James Bond. Here, he stars as hard man Xander Cage, an adrenaline junkie with little regard
for authority. An undercover operative has been killed by a Russian crime ring,led by the merciless ex-Russian Army commander Yorgi (New Zealander Marton Csokas) and national security agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) enlists Xander to go undercover and prevent the imminent destruction of the world.(2002)

8.30PM, TV3
KATE AND LEOPOLD
* *
Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman star in a whimsical romantic comedy about a duke from the 1870s (Jackman) who is transported through a time portal to modern-day New York. Feel-good humour and a fish-out-of-water plot
that's not hugely different from Crocodile Dundee. (2001)

8.30PM, SKY MOVIES 1
THE BONE COLLECTOR
* * *
A young policewoman (Angelina Jolie)and a quadriplegic forensics detective (Denzel Washington) team up to profile the mind of a serial killer, in order to defeat him at his own game. The policewoman becomes his eyes, ears and legs on the scene while he maintains contact via radio. From director Phillip Noyce, also responsible for Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American. (1999)

11PM, TV2
CONSPIRACY THEORY
* *
Mel Gibson plays a cab driver who is constantly coming up with conspiracy theories, which he posts to the internet.One of his theories is bang on target and he is pursued by someone who wants to silence him. Julia Roberts also stars.(1997)

11.20PM, TV ONE
PSYCHO
* * * * *
Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh star in Hitchcock's best-known thriller, the adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel about a cross-dressing, serial killer with a split personality.

The film opens with Leigh as Marion Crane, a dissatisfied secretary who wants to marry her lover (John Gavin), but can't while he's paying alimony. She steals cash from her employer and hits the road to hook up with her beau in California. Stopping for the night at a roadside motel, she meets friendly proprietor Norman Bates (Perkins), who argues off-camera with his domineering mother.

Psycho was a huge achievement for its time. It is best remembered for its shower scene, with viewers sure they had seen red blood going down the plug hole when the movie was filmed in black and white. Hitchcock also employed manipulative tricks, such as superimposing a skull over the killer's face to enhance his menacing stare - but it's the score by Bernard Herrmann with its piercing violins, that stays with the viewer. (1960)

- Steven Shaw


SPORT

SKY 1 LIVE 7PM
NRL: WARRIORS V PANTHERS
With three successive wins under their belts, including a belting of the Rabbitohs, the Warriors are finally playing with belief and commitment. The Panthers' form has been patchy but they had a strong win over Wests Tigers last weekend.

SKY SPORT 1 LIVE 12.45AM
CYCLING: TOUR DE FRANCE
The retirement of seven-times winner Lance Armstrong has thrown this race wide open. Germany's Jan Ullrich is one of the top contenders, having won the race in 1997, two years before Armstrong took a stranglehold on the event. Among the riders Ullrich will have to watch is Italian Ivan Basso, who finished second last year and third the year before. The time trial begins in Strasbourg.