HD Heads-Up: April 18-24

My Kitchen Rules will no doubt do just that when the Australian foodie phenomenon returns for a 7.30 Monday-Wednesday run on TV2 the same week the network launches new HD comedies Galavant and Schitt’s Creek.

TV2 will springboard the latter off the 90-minute season premiere on MKR on  April 20.

It stars a great cast — Eugene Levy, Chris Elliott, Catherine O’Hara — in the fish-out-of-water scenario about a rich family that hits hard times and has to sell up and move to Hicksville.

US reviews were decidedly mixed. The Los Angeles Times thought it “very funny, beautifully played, sometimes touching” while the New York Post tipped “the culture clash and comic splendour on display might make Schitt’s Creek the funniest outpost of progress since Green Acres.”

But the New York Times dismissed it as “a show that’s drab and underwritten, with potentially amusing (if familiar) situations that never build to more than a chuckle or a nod of recognition,” and Variety quipped it left “everyone concerned looking adrift without much of a clue, much less a paddle”.

Variety was more excited about TV2’s other new comedy, Galavant, a musical fairy tale romp that will 7.30 Sundays from April 19.

“Owing a strong debt to Monty Python and a lesser one to spoofs like When Things Were Rotten, Galavant largely overcomes the challenges that have traditionally bedevilled TV musicals with rambunctious energy, cheeky lyrics and music.”

Similarly enthused Entertainment Weekly: “Fans looking for wit and whimsy can expect a happy ending.”

But USA Today argued: “Nothing about Galavant is quite as good as it needs to be — or nearly as good as the multiple spoofs it seems to be copying, in part because it never seems to be quite sure about what exactly it’s spoofing.”

New to TV1 the same night is the Rebecca Gibney series pilot, The Killing Field, in which the Packed to the Rafters star plays a city cop investigating small-town serial murders.

According to The Australian, “The Killing Field, for all its promise, fails to deliver but there are still some entrancingly gothic moments.”

The Sydney Morning Herald thought it “gritty and adult” with a ‘’Scandi-noir” sensibility.

“Plot-wise, it bites off more than it can chew, leaving a number of significant backstories dangling, which will be developed in the short-run series to be commissioned on the back of this 90-minute telefeature.”

The Killing Field will follow the 8.00 premiere of Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up, which screens 24 hour after the Our World special, Search for the Ocean Super Predator.

Replacing Our First Home on TV1 are new seasons of Code 1 and Border Patrol on Mondays, and fresh runs of Dog Squad and SCU on Tuesdays.

Another NZ series bows out that week, I Am Innocent (TV1, 8.30 Wednesday), ending Thursday is Offspring (TV1, 8.30) and starting Friday is season 17 of The Graham Norton Show (TV3, 8.30).

The week’s coming attractions in HD include the head-to-head network premieres of Grown Ups 2 (TV2, 8.30 Sunday) and Fast & Furious 6 (TV3, 8.30 Sunday) as well as:

• Playing for Keeps (TV2, 8.45 Saturday),
• People Like Us (TV2, 10.50 Saturday)
• London Boulevard (TV2, 1.05am Sunday)
• Chloe (TV2, 11.25 Sunday)
• No Strings Attached (TV3, 8.30 Wednesday)
• Six Days, Seven Nights (TV2, 8.30 Friday).