HD Heads-Up: April 10 – 16

➢➢ TVNZ 1 will lift the lid on a new Saturday night menu from April 10, with the double-billing of Nigella Lawson’s latest cooking show and the premiere of a warm-fuzzies wildlife series. Cook, Eat, Repeat (7.00) took a leaf out of Jamie Oliver’s most recent TV cookbook and showed Britons how to make the most of their larders during lockdown. “Fish fingers! Banana skins! Klingon stew! Lawson gives us four soothing, simply explained recipes for lockdown,” The Guardian drooled of the premiere. Observed the Telegraph: “Only she could make old banana skins sound so tempting” …

➢➢ Paste dubbed Baby Chimp Rescue (7.35) “adorable, heartbreaking, essential” while Salon said: “As the title promises, each episode is overloaded with primate cuddliness as it is experienced day in and day out at Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue & Protection, the only chimpanzee sanctuary in Liberia. There, the caretakers spend their days chasing after rambunctious tiny primates, each with an individual personality, a sense of humour and a deep appreciation for nuzzles” …

➢➢ Three will refresh Wednesday nights with the return of Bondi Rescue and Hawaii Five-O from April 14. The former will be double-billed with the 7.30 premiere of a local variation called Bay Patrol, which is named after Mount Maunganui’s life-savers. The Rookie will move forward to 8.30 and the 10th and final season of H5O will air 9.30 …

➢➢ Making a change from the property porn that pervades primetime will be the investigative documentary A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters (Prime, 7.30 Wednesday), in which leaky home experts John Gray and Roger Levie uncover the “shocking truth about the dangerous state” of many NZ apartment buildings …

➢➢ The latest first-run drama series to be buried late-night Friday on TVNZ 1 is the highly acclaimed Guilt (post-1 News Tonight from April 16), which TVNZ OnDemand has been streaming since July. The Guardian thought the Jed (Line of Duty) Mercurio thriller “a darkly delicious tale of a botched hit-and-run” while The Telegraph hailed it as “at long last, a drama that stays good to the end episode” …

➢➢ Returning for new seasons will be Beat the Chasers (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Sunday), Taskmaster UK (Duke, 8.30 Sunday) and Hypothetical (Duke, 9.30 Thursday) while S2 of The Damned will premiere on the back of the first (TVNZ 1, midnight Saturday) …

➢➢ Liam Neeson, Micheál Richardson, Tahar Rahim, Cush Jumbo, Rob Brydon, Deborah Meaden and Laura Mvula will guest on the December 14 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 9.30) …

➢➢ There will be three network movie premieres in the week starting April 10: Second Act (Three, 8.50 Saturday), The Hustle (Three, 8.30 Sunday) and Untouchable (Maori TV, 8.30 Monday). Other HD coming attractions will include:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (TVNZ 2, 6.30 Saturday)
•  Ice Age: Collision Course (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• Paycheck (Duke, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Dark Knight (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Saturday)
• Nocturnal Animals (Three, 10.55 Saturday)
• Michael (TVNZ 2, 11.50 Saturday)
• Stalked By My Doctor 3 (TVNZ 2, 1.50 Sunday)
• Bride Wars (TVNZ 2, 12.40 Sunday)
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Sunday)
• The Great Beauty (Maori TV, 8.40 Sunday)
• Visions (TVNZ 2, 9.15 Sunday)
• Jackie Chan’s First Strike (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• 27 Dresses (TVNZ 2, 8.35 Monday)
• Conan the Barbarian  (Duke, 9.30 Tuesday)
• Pacific Rim: Uprising (Three, 7.30 Friday)
• Big Trouble in Little China (Duke, 8.30 Friday).