HD Heads-Up: August 21 – 27

➢➢ Prime will revitalise Thursday nights with a new line-up anchored by Prime Icons: A Life in Ten Pictures (8.45). It unlocks the private lives of iconic celebrities based on 10 revelatory photographs. The BBC seres will open with Freddie Mercury and continue with Tupac Shakur, Elizabeth Taylor, Muhammad Ali and John Lennon. “It’s a beautiful and intimate approach to storytelling, where the subject is thrown into focus through the lens of their nearest and dearest,” said Radio Times …

➢➢ But another critic thought the premiere was “hampered by its central conceit, which had more than a whiff of lockdown programming, and just didn’t work. Telling a story through still images is a magazine feature rather than a TV show, and every time we returned to more lingering footage of one of the chosen 10 photographs (desperately trying to liven things up by changing angles, blurring in and out or focusing on small details), it felt like we were being dragged away from something else more interesting” ….

➢➢ The 2020 Sky Atlantic series Little Birds will screen overnight Saturday on TVNZ 1 from August 21. The six-part adaptation of Anaïs Nin’s erotic short stories has been streaming on TVNZ OnDemand and was dubbed “risqué and resonant” by The Guardian: “Juno Temple and Hugh Skinner star in this lush, intelligent reimagining of the author’s short stories, set in a land of unsuspected delights and fabulous degenerates” …

➢➢ The series earned mixed notices from other critics, averaging a 58% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The consensus? “Little Birds‘ sumptuous style draws the eye like a peacock’s plumage, but its aimless story keeps it from truly taking flight” …

➢➢ The 11th and final season of The Walking Dead (TVNZ 2, 9.45 Mondays from August 23) will surprise fans, star Norman Reedus told TV Line. “It’s very surreal. Every season feels like a different show in a certain sense, but this season, it’s a whole new backdrop, a whole new colour palette, a whole new attitude. It’s sort of in Technicolor all of a sudden and it takes some getting used to, which you can see in our group [of survivors] — we’re having trouble getting used to it, too. It’s like Alice fell down the rabbit hole, and she doesn’t know where she’s at. We just stepped into a Salvador Dalí painting, so we’re like, ‘Whaaat?’” …

➢➢ Other highlights for the week starting August 21 will be Duke’s daily coverage of the Paralympics from August 24, a Russell Howard double-bill (Duke, 8.30 Sunday), and new seasons of American Pickers (Prime, 7.30 Monday), LA’s Finest (Three, 8.30 Wednesday), The Great Celebrity Bake Off (Prime, 7.30 Thursday), Bull (Prime, 9.50 Thursday) and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (TVNZ 2, 9.30 Friday) …

➢➢ HD coming attractions for the third week of August will include:

• The BFG (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Bee Movie (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• The Last Castle (Duke, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Lobster (Maori TV, 8.30 Saturday)
• Homefront (Three, 8.45 Saturday)
• The Spy Next Door (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Saturday)
• Magic Mike XXL (TVNZ 2, 10.50 Saturday)
• Fatal Frenemies (Three, 10.50 Saturday)
• Moulin Rouge! (TVNZ 2, 1.10am Sunday)
• The Bourne Supremacy (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Equalizer (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
• Dead Man Walking (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (TVNZ 2, 10.50 Sunday)
• Backdraft (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• Ocean’s Thirteen (Three, 7.30 Friday)
• Get On Up (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday)
• Stalked by My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (TVNZ 2, 2.40am Saturday).