HD Heads-Up: April 1

Doctor Who fans can look forward to the latest series airing here from Easter. Prime will premiere it 7.30 on Easter Monday following a re-run of the 2016 Christmas special on Easter Sunday. The season premiere will screen here two days after the UK, with the BBC set to air it on Easter Saturday. New to the Tardis team will be Pearl Mackie, as the Time Lord’s first openly gay companion. She told the BBC her character’s openness about her sexuality was important to represent onscreen, but not her defining characteristic. “It shouldn’t be a big deal in the 21st century. It’s about time, isn’t it?” …

Three is dumping This Time Next Year two episodes short of its six-week run. The last, or fourth, episode will air 9.00 Wednesday and will be succeeded by movies in the short term, starting with a re-run of Just Married. Despite being a hit in Britain, and the format rights being snapped up around the work, the “time travel” show never fired here. Wednesday’s episode averaged only 2.0% of Three’s 25-54 demographic compared with Mom’s 6.9% and 20/20’s 2.5%. What’s worse, it was 3.4 rating points off lead-in Married at First Sight (5.4%) …

Three is dusting off one of the BBC’s best HD wildlife series, Operation Snow Tiger (4.55 Sundays from April 9), which aired in Britain four years ago. It captures for the first time on camera the elusive and endangered Siberian Tiger. “A tiger in a frozen landscape seems the very definition of incongruous,” said The Guardian. “Also more beautiful still, a splash of colour and fire in an icy monochrome emptiness. Very cool. Quick, save them” …

No word on when The Son will rise here. AMC’s drama about a Texas clan, based on the novel of the same name, launches this weekend in the US.  Trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were lukewarm but TV Guide dubbed it “a terrific dynastic saga, a darker-than-dark Giant” and Entertainment Weekly called it “a brash American epic filmed with cruel enervating tastefulness”. Many of AMC’s best series have been SoHo staples, including Taboo, which is distributed by the same company. But there’s no sign of it on SoHo or any of Sky’s other entertainment channels over the next two months and with Sky executives at the MIP TV market, a publicist was unaware of its availability …

In an update to my earlier Twin Peaks post: While SoHo subscribers can watch episodes three and four back-to-back on Sky Go or On Demand on May 29, they will be streamed in SD, not HD. It beggars belief that in an age of UFB and Netflix 4K streaming that Sky is still unable to offer subscribers a fully-fledged service. It’s not only Twin Peaks that’s a throwback to the past …