Channel hop
Mark Peters
If you were to be stranded, pants and socks, on a desert island, action man Ed Stafford may not be your first choice of companion. I would opt for Milla Jovovich, for more than obvious reasons. Nevertheless, you could do worse than pick the former British Army captain and survival expert, especially if you planned on staying alive for a while without any obvious supplies of food or water.
We saw Stafford's toned buttocks and blurred-out man bits when he spent 60 lonely days struggling to survive on the uninhabited Pacific island of Olorua, in the reality experiment . Now, the Guinness World Record-setting adventurer (he was the first human known to have walked the length of the Amazon River, which he did in an epic 860-day trek) is back for a series of all new, "ultimate" tests of endurance, in (Discovery Channel, Tuesday, 8pm).
Each of the nine episodes sees our Ed stranded once again, naked and vulnerable, with no tools or supplies. He must survive a monsoon in Thailand's Golden Triangle and exist for 10 days alongside the wild creatures of the Rwandan savannah, in Africa. I'm pretty sure I couldn't go the best part of a fortnight without Wi-fi and Twitbook, let alone tea and biccies.
Given only a first-aid kit and video equipment, Stafford's physical and psychological limits are pushed ever closer to breaking point as he battles to prove that he can not only make it out alive, but also thrive in the deadliest of environments.
This week, the serial wanderer-off is lost in the wilderness of Asia's largest island, Borneo. Food is scarce and the jungle climate soon begins to take its toll on his body. Failed attempts to create fire leave him with no choice but to eat raw the few crabs and shrimp he manages to catch.
More affable and down to earth than his survivalist peer Bear "I stay in five-star hotels" Grylls, the glass-half-full Stafford rises to almost every challenge with enthusiasm and positivity, which makes an entertaining and insightful psychoanalysis of the resilience of the human spirit.
The aurora borealis is one of the planet's most striking natural phenomenons. I'd rather see all my Mark Six numbers come in, of course, but the Northern Lights are right up there on the list of things I'd like to witness.
TVB Pearl documentary (above; Wednesday, 9.30pm) takes us to the extremities of Canada, Norway, Greenland, Alaska and New Zealand for a look at the mysterious polar lights that have intrigued people from time immemorial. As the scientific causes of the aurora are investigated, indigenous Sami and Inuit people relate ancestral tales and legends that are connected to the natural spectacle.
The photography is stunning and the programme reminds you of what a wonderful place this planet we're busy destroying with our pollution and wastefulness actually is.
By now you've probably enjoyed what some would say is this magazine's most enlightening read, , the column that presupposes everyone is linked to everyone else by six or fewer connections. This idea has become synonymous with the once-upon-a-time-prolific Kevin Bacon, as it was suggested that every actor could be connected to the star in the same manner, possibly making him the centre of the universe.
Now, Mr Bacon may not claim to be the point around which everything else revolves but he is certainly the star of psychological thriller , the second series of which begins tomorrow on TVB Pearl, at the not-so-fan-friendly time of midnight. Bacon plays hapless FBI agent Ryan Hardy, who spent the whole of the first season one step behind Edgar Allan Poe-inspired death cult leader Joe Carroll (James Purefoy; ), as the producers resorted to shockingly gruesome pulp to make up for the lack of a talented script writer.
As season two begins, a year later, Carroll is presumed dead, until another series of murders drags Hardy back into the hunt.
Bacon is easily the best thing about , although he's criminally underused. You can imagine that the acclaimed actor will soon be looking for more than six degrees of separation between himself and this dog's dinner of a cat and mouse show.
