Channel hop
American entertainer Betty White's career is as merry as the day is long. In her 72 years (and counting) in showbiz, the 89-year-old Hollywood veteran has starred in radio shows, late-night talk shows, variety programmes, sitcoms, television dramas, films, soap operas ... you name it; she was the first woman to receive an Emmy for game-show hosting and that's just one out of her seven wins and 20 nominations.
Of late, this Golden Girl has hit her umpteenth hot streak: starring in 2009 blockbuster The Proposal - and making a lifetime fan out of co-star Sandra Bullock in the process; becoming the oldest guest-host of comedic institution Saturday Night Live; and publishing her fifth book. Now, she's back on the TV sitcom circuit with Hot in Cleveland (Diva Universal; Wednesday at 8.30pm).
The sitcom follows the adven- tures of Los Angeles-based self-help author Melanie (Valerie Bertinelli; Touched by an Angel) and her show- biz friends Joy (Jane Leeves; Frasier) and Victoria (Wendie Malick; Just Shoot Me!), which begin when their plane makes an emergency landing in Cleveland, and the women make a beeline for the nearest bar. After realising that 'we appear to have landed in a dimension where men hit on women their own age' and 'everyone is eating and no one is ashamed', Melanie decides to extend her stay indefinitely, in search of a new life.
Enter Elka (White), the sassy housekeeper who comes with the house the women rent on a whim. It's hard not to see traces of The Golden Girls and Frasier in the humour; Hot reunites the latter show's Leeves with writer and creator Suzanne Martin. However, the familiar gags about sex, weight and ageing along with the familiarity shared by the women do create a refreshing spark. White and her younger cast members have a ball playing off each character's issues; it's truly enjoyable to watch. Leeves, in particular, has choice lines, which she milks with impeccable timing.
Timing appears to be a problem at Diva Universal, though, the channel not seeming to have allocated a regular timeslot for Hot in Cleveland. The pilot airs on Wednesday and the second episode on Friday. The third episode airs on Tuesday next week followed by the fourth on Thursday. If you don't have a personal assistant to organise your TV nights around such a puzzling schedule, you are better off catching the weekly reruns on Saturdays, starting on March 26 at 8pm, when two episodes will air back to back.
For insight into another of the world's great puzzles, tune in to Machu Picchu Decoded (left; TVB Pearl, Monday at 9.30pm). One of the few great Inca structures left intact after the Spanish conquistadors did their worst in Peru, this engineering marvel has long fascinated historians and archaeologists.
This National Geographic programme attempts to define the exact nature of this 500-year-old castle in the sky and share insight into the powerful yet mysterious Inca civilisation. Was it a religious centre, a military base or a pleasure palace for the first Inca emperor? The programme is not only impressive in its high-definition aerial footage and 3D modelling graphics, but also the exhaustive way it presents the research and theories of niche experts bearing titles such as high-altitude archaeologist and palaeoengineer.
Interestingly enough, as famous as Machu Picchu is today, experts posit that it only escaped demolition by negligence all those centuries ago.
