HD Heads-Up: August 17

Can Aussie Survivor survive? … Back in the Room won’t be back the next week … Deadwood does Dallas? … Galaxy and Gone Girl go free-to-air …

TV2 will premiere Australian Survivor on August 28, a week after its launch across the Tasman. The series will air on Sunday and Monday nights, and has been dubbed “the modern day Hunger Games” by one of the contestants. Apparently it “looks and sounds exactly like the US format“. Two previous efforts to make an Australian version have failed but Channel Ten believes the broad family appeal of the latest attempt will prove a winner. “But despite the marketing blitz and high confidence from network executives, the show has been widely panned on social media by die hard fans of the US version,” the Daily Mail reports …

Australian Survivor will open with a 90-minute premiere and continue post-Shortland Street 24 hours later. Screening this Sunday at 7.00 on TV2 is a local version of another international format, You’re Back in the Room NZ. But whereas the UK original aired in two series of four hour-long programmes, TV2’s approach is to screen it as occasional 90-minute specials, with Jason Gunn hosting instead of Phillip Schofield and Aussie hypnotist Peter Powers (Mesmerised) stepping in for Keith Barry …

Frustrating news for fans of TV One’s American Crime and Indian Summers. The network completes its late-night season one re-runs of the former on August 26 but instead of launching season two the following week, will run double-episodes of Battle Creek. And having already repeated Indian Summers isn’t stopping TV One from doing so again, starting August 27. Sadly, the network is unable to say when new episodes of each will screen …

Inexplicably, these two top dramas are being neglected for lesser fare like Wicked City and Blood & Oil, which will premiere on August 27 at 10.35. Most US critics scorned Don Johnson’s comeback flop — The Hollywood Reporter dubbed the North Dakota oil fields soap “the illegitimate offspring of Dallas and Deadwood” — but the Boston Herald reckons it “harkens back to the best elements of Dallas and Dynasty”…

Comings and goings: Restoration Man will return for new episodes on September 1 (TV One, 7.30), the same night the low-rating Beauty & the Beach leaves the schedule … Prime resumes Psych as the stablemate for Lewis from August 28 … Piha Rescue ends its first season on Prime on August 30 and CSI: Cyber signs off the next night … Home and Away returns from its Olympic Games break on August 29 (TV2, 5.30) …

Two network movie premieres are lined up for the week starting August 27: Guardians of the Galaxy (TV2, 8.30 Sunday) and Gone Girl (TV3, 8.30 Monday). Other coming attractions in HD for that week include: Cars (TV2, 4.50 Saturday), Brave (TV2, 7.00 Saturday), Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (TV3, 7.00 Saturday), The Help (TV2, 8.45 Saturday), The Perfect Catch (TV3, 8.50 Saturday), Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (TV2, 11.30 Saturday), Striptease (TV2, 1.10am Sunday), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (TV3, 7.00 Sunday), Savages (TV3, 9.45 Sunday) and Die Hard With a Vengeance (Prime, 8.35 Thursday) …

Monday’s 60 Minutes (Prime, 8.30) examines prisoner rehabilitation in liberal Germany, meets a 16-year-old tech guru who owns his own company and believes learning digital technology in school is the key to success, and shows how the creators of South Park are the new darlings of Broadway …