HD Heads-Up: April 1-7

➢➢ The networks are jettisoning their usual schedules for movies on Good Friday. TVNZ 1 has The Wizard of Oz (7.00), the Judy Garland bio Judy (8.45) and Best in Show (10.40). TVNZ 2’s triple-bill starts early, with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-rabbit (5.30) and continues with the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (7.00) and Snow White and the Huntsman (8.35). Three has the free-to-air premiere of  Dragon Rider (7.00) and Rush (8.40). Expect Oz to be in the same shoddy SD resolution as its last TVNZ broadcast, which is appalling for a classic of its calibre — especially one that has been remastered in 4K-UHD …

➢➢ Other HD coming attractions for the first week of April include:

• Frog Dreaming (Whakaata Māori, 7.00 Saturday)
• Fast & Furious 6 (TVNZ 2, 7.30 Saturday)
• Survivor (Eden, 8.30 Saturday)
• Marley & Me (Whakaata Māori, 8.40 Saturday)
• The Grudge 3 (Duke, 9.30 Saturday)
• The Divergent Series – Allegiant (TVNZ 2, 9.50 Saturday)
• Booksmart (Three, 10.30 Saturday)
• Sicario 2 – Day of the Soldado (TVNZ 2, 12.05am Sunday)
• The Happytime Murders (TVNZ 2, 2.20am Sunday)
• Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons (TVNZ 2, 2.55am Sunday)
• Stuart Little 2 (TVNZ 2, 4.05 Sunday)
• Central Intelligence (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
• Angel Has Fallen (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
• Jungle (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Imitation Game (Eden, 8.30 Sunday)
• Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (TVNZ 2, 10.25 Sunday)
• JFK (Duke, midnight Sunday)
• Gangs of New York (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• Midnight Family (Whakaata Māori, 8.230 Monday)
• Zero Dark Thirty (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• Summer 1993 (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Wednesday)
• A House With a Clock in its Walls (TVNZ 2, 11.10am Friday)
• How to Train Your Dragon 3 (Three, 3.15 Friday)
• I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Duke, 9.00 Friday)

➢➢ After lamenting the lag between the Sky and Prime premieres of premium drama series, the HBO mega-hit The Last of Us has landed a free-to-air run just weeks after ending its SoHo season. It’s scheduled for 9.45 Tuesdays from April 4 …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 is premiering a series spun off the Grease movies the same day it streams on TVNZ+. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (9.30 Thursday) is a Paramount+ prequel set in 1954, four years before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school, before there was Rizzo, Frenchy or Jan, and before Sandy and Danny became hopelessly devoted to each other. Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Isabel Wells, Ari Notartomaso and Tricia Fukuhara star as fed-up outcasts who spark a moral panic at Rydell High in an origin story with 31 original songs …

➢➢ Samurai Jack (Duke, 10.25 Monday) is a ‘new’ stylised action ‘toon from the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory, about a great warrior displaced to the distant future by an evil shape-shifting wizard. Four seasons of the award-winner screened in the US from 2001-4 but the fifth didn’t premiere until 2017. Duke’s run starts from S1  …

➢➢ The S15 premiere of Taskmaster (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Wednesday) launches the latest navel-gazing self-esteem series, Send Nudes: Body SOS (9.30). Reads the blurb: “People with highly personal body hang-ups use state of the art technology to see what cosmetic surgery could do for them – before making a life-changing decision”. Also returning are 20/20 (TVNZ 1, 9.30 Monday), Kura (TVNZ 2, 10.20 Monday) and Metalocalypse (Duke, 11.20 Monday) while ending their runs are Til Death, Aussie Bull Catchers, Fire Country, So Help Me Todd, The Dog House, NZ Love Triangle and FBI.