Top 10 TV picks: Oct 27 - Nov 2

GOING MAD: Season three of Mad Men screens on Sunday nights on Prime.

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Television critic Philip Wakefield chooses the best shows on the box this week, for Tuesday, October 27 to Monday, November 2.

1. Mad Men: The New York Times provocatively acclaimed season three as "an artfully imagined historic re-enactment of an era when America was a soaring superpower feeling its first shivers of mortality."
Prime, 9.35pm Sunday

2. Inside the Actors Studio: In this 2006 interview, the creator of the franchise that nearly 20 years ago changed primetime's law and order landscape, Dick Wolf, discusses Law & Order's impact with Chris Noth, who played the same cop in L&O and Criminal Intent, and S Epatha Merkerson, who's the original's longest-surviving star.
Arts Channel, 8.30pm Thursday

3. Apparitions: This creepily compelling series concludes after only six episodes. Star Martin Shaw's next new role is as Inspector George Gently in a whodunit franchise of the same name.
Prime, 9.35pm Tuesday

4. Line of Fire: Members of New Zealand's Armed Offenders Squad reveal what it takes to be a top gun. Part one of three.
TV One, 8.30pm Monday

5. Side Order of Life: Variety thought this late-night newcomer, about a photographer who reflects on her own life when her best friend gets cancer, was "superior to most chick-lit-inspired TV drama".
TV2, midnight Thursday

6. Inside New Zealand: Are Vitamins Killing You? Eight volunteers experience life for six weeks without popping their pep pills.
TV3, 9.30pm Wednesday

7. Don't Die Young: Quipped The Independent of this new self-improvement half-hour: "The series effectively alerts you to your inner workings; so much so, in fact, that you will probably end up with worrying twinges in your lower back and have to go to another doctor to make sure everything's working as it should be."
Prime, 7pm Saturday

8. Survivor: Samoa: The network that pulled a repeat of Aftershock because it was deemed inappropriate so soon after the 'quakes in the South Pacific is gingerly promoting this adventure lark as a reminder that Samoans still need the world's help.
TV3, 7.30pm Thursday

9. The Diet That Time Forgot: Ironically scheduled after Heston's (Medieval) Feast, this documentary explores how four junk food addicts go cold turkey in Northern Pakistan.
TV One, 11.30pm Sunday

10. Dark Days in Monkey City: Meerkat Manor meets the movie, 300, in this strange beast about Sri Lanka's toque macaques that plays like an apocalyptic, natural history graphic novel.
Animal Planet, 10pm Tuesday

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