HD Heads-Up: April 24 – 30

➢➢ The best of this year’s ANZAC Day commemorations, the free-to-air premiere of Peter Jackson’s extraordinarily restored and ingeniously colourised Great War documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old, will screen the following day (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Monday). TVNZ 1 also will carry live ANZAC Day ceremony coverage, from 6m=-7.15am and 11am-12pm, while Maori TV will follow three-and-a-half hours of the Auckland Dawn Service with:

• Paradise Soldiers (9am), the untold stories of Cook Islanders who have fought largely unrecognised alongside NZ soldiers since WWI (it also will air 8.10am on TVNZ 1)
• Children of Gallipoli (10am), in which descendants of soldiers who fought at Gallipoli – two Turks and two Kiwis – meet face-to-face at the scene of the battle
• Pixie (11am), how two unknown Māori artists composed, recorded and released the first song in NZ
• Churchill (12.00), the 2017 Brian Cox movie
• Te Rongo Toa (5.30), a Francis Tipene-presented showcase of war songs
• 25 April (7.30), in which the diaries, letters and memoirs of six New Zealanders who witnessed the Gallipoli campaign are brought to life using animation …

➢➢ The last Tuesday in April will see a raft of new-season premieres across the HD channels — Eat Well for Less NZ (TVNZ 1, 7.30), David Lomas Investigates (Three, 7.30), The Dog House (TVNZ 1, 8.30), NCIS: LA (9.30) — along with the launch of Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime (Prime, 7.30), in which TV’s intrepid adventurer reflects on how he became an accidental traveller …

➢➢ Also returning for new seasons will be Call the Midwife (TVNZ 1, 8.50 Saturday) and Naked Attraction (TVNZ 2, 9.30 Wednesday) while ending their runs will be Mighty Machines, Mayday and The Graham Norton Show (with guests Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Brit Felicity Jones, Wunmi Msaku and John Bishop) …

➢➢ TVNZ is rolling out the red carpet for this year’s Oscars ceremony on April 26. Coverage will starts from 10.30am on TVNZ 2, with Tinseltown’s finest showing off their finery on the red carpet ahead of the Academy Awards’ presentation from midday. Duke will repeat the ceremony at 8.30 …

➢➢ Duke will double-bill two new series from April 28: Secret Nazi Bases, which explores the remnants of Third Reich tunnels, towers and artillery sites (8.30); and Mega Shippers: Land, Air & Sea, which goes behind the scenes of some of the biggest ports in the UK and Europe (9.30) …

➢➢ Two other documentaries will premiere the same week: Framing Britney Spears (Three, 9.00 Monday), which has been streaming on ThreeNow, and the self-explanatory Ireland’s Youngest Grandparents (Prime, 9.45 Wednesday) …

➢➢ They Shall Not Grow Old is not the only network movie premiere in the last week of April. Also making its free-to-air debut will be Juliet, Naked (Three, 8.50 Saturday). Other HD coming attractions will include: