Relive your favourite moments – from “Life is like a box of chocolates” to “We go together like peas and carrots” – in the classic Forrest Gump, and see Tom Hanks in a very different guise in the moving drama The Green Mile.

Legs akimbo and guns a-blazing, Unforgiven breathes new life into the traditional Western, while The Untouchables has aged well and remains a stylish and gripping gangster movie.

Top-drawer reality TV comes in the latest season of the multi-awarded series The Amazing Race, featuring pipped-at-the-post teams from previous seasons. Exciting news for CSI-aholics is that this premier police drama series is being screened from the beginning on Sony from this month onwards.

Rounding out the month with a dollop of humour is Everybody Hates Chris, narrated by superstar comedian Chris Rock.

SERIES

The Amazing Race: Unfinished Business (season 18: South African premiere)
Starts: Sunday, 12 February at 19:45
Continues: Sundays at 19:45

Prepare to take up residence on the edge of your seat during this humdinger of a race, as 11 teams from previous seasons who fell short of winning the $1-million prize now return for another shot at glory. As the title suggests, it’s unfinished business – and this time the claws really come out!

Bursting with adventure and interpersonal fireworks, the latest season of this highly acclaimed travelogue reality series shows once again why it’s won 12 Primetime Emmys® and keeps reeling in the awards and audiences.
This time, the returning teams will be travelling more than 65 000km around the globe in their quest to be the first over the finish line. Welcome back father-and-daughter team Ronald and Christina, dating goths Kent and Vyxsin, mother-and-son team Margie and Luke, former cheerleaders Jaime and Cara, engaged couple Amanda and Kris, and sisters LaKisha and Jennifer, among other contestants.

They’ll depart from the second-windiest place on the planet and embark on an epic trek that will see them swimming with sharks in Sydney, measuring the length of the tiny country of Liechtenstein, and enduring the freezing waters of Mount Fuji in Tokyo. Watch the sparks fly in this high-stakes, high-adrenaline cross-continental odyssey!

Everybody Hates Chris (season two and three)
Season two continues: Tuesdays and Thursdays at 19:30; Saturdays at 12:30
Season three starts: Thursday, 23 February at 19:30

Comedian Chris Rock narrates this hilarious sitcom inspired by the funny man’s own childhood experiences in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1980s.
Echoing the problems faced by teenagers globally, we meet the adolescent Chris (Tyler James Williams), who is sent by his hard-working parents to a predominantly white middle-class school, where he struggles to fit in. The irrepressible Rock brings his distinctive style and humour to the trials and tribulations of growing up in this hit comedy series.

This single-camera series won the 2006 NAACP Image Award for best comedy, and was nominated for Golden Globe®, Emmy® and People’s Choice® awards. In addition, the American Film Institute praised Everybody Hates Chris as one of the best ten television series of 2007, stating that the show “provides a very real look at growing up in America — a challenge that demands a discussion of race and class often absent from television today”.

CSI (season one)
Starts: Monday, 27 February at 21:40
Continues: Mondays at 21:40

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has become such a global television phenomenon since it premiered in the US 12 years ago, that today it – together with its spin-offs, CSI: NY and CSI: Miami – is regarded as the most-watched scripted series in the world. Show creator Anthony Zuiker once joked that “CSI airs in every country but six: North Korea, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq and a couple of others I probably can’t even name.”
Now, for hard-core fans and new converts, Sony Entertainment Television will be screening the original series from the beginning. This gritty crime drama’s recipe for success is a simple one: it blends intrigue and character-driven storylines revolving around a group of Las Vegas forensic investigators as they piece together physical evidence to solve grisly murders.

The series stars William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger and Jorja Fox. It has won six Emmys®, a Screen Actors Guild Award and several other industry accolades since its inception. Expect to hear the familiar strains of the show’s signature 'Who Are You?' theme tune a lot more often from this month onwards.

MOVIES

Unforgiven
Wednesday, 1 February at 20:30

Clint Eastwood gave the Western genre a new lease on life with this engrossing, uncompromising masterpiece that snagged four Academy Awards®, including for best picture, best director, best supporting actor (Gene Hackman – The French Connection, The Royal Tenenbaums) and best editing, as well as more than 30 other industry awards.
Eastwood stars as William Munny, a hardened gunslinger in the old West. Several years before, he laid down his weapons and went 'straight' in order to look after his family. However, he has fallen on hard times and he is lured out of retirement to seek one last bounty – and face his destiny.
Skilfully blurring the lines between heroism and villainy, the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys', Unforgiven unquestionably redefined and reinvigorated the genre. Also featuring fine performances by Richard Harris (The Field, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) and Oscar® winner Morgan Freeman (Invictus, The Shawshank Redemption). Directed by Clint Eastwood (1992)

The Green Mile
Wednesday, 8 February at 20.30

Adapted from a Stephen King novel, this extraordinary drama about the power of the human spirit won two People’s Choice Awards® and was nominated for four Academy Awards® – including best picture and best supporting actor (Michael Clarke Duncan – Armageddon, Sin City).
Oscar®-winning actor Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan, Philadelphia) stars as Edgecomb, a guard on death row in a Louisiana penitentiary in the 1930s. When he encounters John Coffey (Duncan), a hulking black inmate convicted of killing two white girls, the last thing the guard expects is that under the doomed man’s menacing exterior beats a gentle heart.
When Edgecomb is stricken with an infection, Coffey mysteriously heals him – leading him to question whether the prisoner is, indeed, guilty of the horrendous crime for which he has been sentenced to die. Unforgettable film, directed by Frank Darabont (1999).

The Untouchables
Wednesday, 15 February at 20.30

The inimitable Sean Connery (Goldfinger, The Hunt for Red October) won both an Oscar® and a Golden Globe® for his superb supporting turn in this riveting mafia movie that recounts the fraught and dangerous journey to bring Al Capone (played by Robert de Niro – Raging Bull, Goodfellas) to justice in 1920s Chicago.
Kevin Costner (Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves) stars as government agent Elliott Ness, who is hell-bent on dealing a death blow to organised crime during the Prohibition era, despite having to navigate a sea of corruption that includes the cops. He assembles a crack team in a bold attempt to bust Capone’s illegal liquor racket and bring the gangster down.
Ennio Morricone also received a number of accolades for his musical score, as did David Mamet’s elegantly written script. Directed by Brian de Palma (1987).

Forrest Gump
Wednesday, 22 February at 20.30

This iconic and uplifting audience-pleaser was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry in 2011 for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. Tom Hanks (Saving Private Ryan, The Da Vinci Code) deservedly won an Oscar® for his keenly insightful portrayal of Forrest, a mentally challenged man with a naïve yet refreshingly simple approach to life.
He accidentally finds himself smack-bang in the middle of key moments in contemporary history, from meeting JFK to fighting in Vietnam, inspiring people such as Corporal Dan (Gary Sinise – CSI: New York, The Green Mile) along the way. But this remarkable everyman always comes back to his troubled childhood friend, Jenny (Robyn Wright – Beowulf, The Princess Bride), ultimately making selfless love his most extraordinary achievement.
Engaging and whimsical, this charmer won six Oscars® in total. Also starring Sally Field (Brothers and Sisters, Steel Magnolias) as Forrest’s mother. Directed by Robert Zemeckis (1994).

Sony Entertainment Television airs on DStv channel 113.