HD Heads-Up: August 2

➢➢ Not surprisingly, Three is demoting Humans to late-night after weeks of low ratings. The Channel 4 sci-fi series will air after the network’s Sunday movies starting this weekend. Replacing it 9.30 on Mondays will be repeats of Killer Women with Piers Morgan. Three also is pulling its Speed season. The 1994 original was meant to air tonight and its dire sequel next week in the 8.30 Thursday movie slots. But they are now being replaced by repeats of Wanted (tonight) and Blade II (next week) …

➢➢ Deep State is the latest TVNZ OnDemand exclusive to win a primetime slot: it will air 9.00 Saturdays from August 11 on TVNZ 1. It stars Mark Strong as a former British spy caught up in a Middle East conspiracy. “The action is great fun and the show looks good, but there’s little to grab onto even as one knows the show ought to be getting incrementally more ‘tense,’” was Variety’s verdict …

➢➢ New to OnDemand from August 15 will be seasons one and two of Ru Paul’s Drag Race and top Australian true-crime dramatisation Deep Water. Said The Times: “Deep Water begins with the violent, pseudo-erotic murder of a young gay man and goes on to expose the vicious, bigoted underbelly of Australia’s paradise” …

➢➢ Prime will launch two newcomers in the week starting August 11: Life in the Air (7.30 Sundays), a series about critters that defy gravity; and Angel From Hell (10.30 Monday-Wednesday), in which Glee’s Jane Lynch plays a dermatologist’s unorthodox guardian angel. The latter was axed after one season and earned middling reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter summing it up thus: “The cast is terrific and there’s enough humour to spirit away 23 minutes, but it hardly seems, in this early going, purposeful or magnetic” …

➢➢ New to Duke that week will be Escape (8.00 Sundays), which The Times described as “part Scrapheap Challenge, part Robot Wars, part The Island with Bear Grylls” because it challenges a handful of engineers to build their way out of a dangerous situation …

➢➢ Returning for a 2pm Sunday run on Prime from August 12 will be Judge Judy while ending their runs that week are World’s Craziest, Once Upon a Time, Highway Cops, The £1 Houses: Britain’s Cheapest Street, The Great Indoors and Wellington Paranormal …

➢➢ The free-to-air premiere of The Jungle Book will screen on August 12 (TVNZ 2, 7.00). Other HD coming attractions that week will include:

• Maleficent (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Star Trek: Into Darkness (TVNZ 2, 8.40 Saturday)
• Lake Placid (Duke, 9.00 Saturday)
• The Other Side of the Door (Three, 10.45 Saturday)
• Signs (TVNZ 2, 11.15 Saturday)
• Before We Go (TVNZ 2, 1.15am Sunday)
• Shooter (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Godfather Part II (Maori TV 8.30)
• Hall Pass (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Sunday)
• Insidious: Chapter Two (TVNZ 2, 12.50am Monday)
• Panic Room (Prime, 9.30 Monday)
• Stolen (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• Hitman: Agent 47 (Three, 8.30 Thursday)
• Super 8 (Maori TV, 8.30) …

➢➢ Joining Jeremy Corbett, Paul Ego and Dai Henwood on Friday’s final of 7 Days (Three, 9.00) are Josh Thomson, Hayley Sproull, Sam Smith and Rhys Mathewson. Taking over the slot from next week will be season 12 and 13 re-runs of Live at the Apollo …

➢➢ This weekend current affairs hour Sunday (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Sunday) will explore the line between free speech and hate speech when it covers the controversial visit of Canadian right-wing commentators Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux …

➢➢ Scheduled for this week and next on Prime’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert: Ewan McGregor and a musical performance by Rick Ross (11.05 tonight); Chloë Grace Moretz and Bobcat Goldthwait (10.30 Friday); and Rob Reiner (11.35 Monday).