HD Heads-Up: August 23

➢➢ September 1-2 will be a blockbuster weekend for free-to-air movie premieres on TVNZ 2, Three, Prime and Duke. TVNZ 2’s Father’s Day double-bill of Daddy’s Home (7.00 Sunday) and Bad Moms (8.50 Sunday) will overlap Three’s Jason Bourne (8.30 Sunday). And on Saturday, Prime’s Richie McCaw: Chasing Great (8.30) will kick off against TVNZ 2’s The Duff (8.30) and Duke’s Z for Zachariah (9.00). Other HD coming attractions that week will include:

• Toy Story (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Beverly Hills Cop (Three, 8.50 Saturday)
• Savages (Three, 10.55 Saturday)
• Getaway (TVNZ 2, 12.25am Sunday)
• The Wrestler (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (TVNZ 2, 12.35am Monday)
• Knockaround Guys (Prime, 9.30 Monday)
• Deep Impact (Three, 8.30 Thursday)
• Young Adult (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday) …

➢➢ Premiering in the week starting September 1 will be Unchartered With Sam Neill (Prime, 8.30 Sunday), in which the actor journeys in the wake of Captain James Cook; Eat Well for Less spin-off Shop Well for Less (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Tuesday); and Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation (TVNZ 2, 9.30 Wednesday), an intergenerational game show from across the Tasman …

➢➢ On September 3 at 8.30, Maori TV will premiere SECTION 501. The documentary follows displaced New Zealanders deported back here under Australia’s controversial law. Filmmakers Prisca Bouchet and Nick Mayow spent more than two years working with Auckland prisoner rehabilitation organisation PARS (People at Risk Solutions), filming deportees and the men and women working alongside them …

➢➢ Also new that week will be the documentaries The Truth About Sleep (Prime, 7.30 Sunday) and Millennium Teens (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Tuesday), and The Laughing Samoans: Fink About It (Maori TV, 8.00 Tuesday) while ending their runs will be The Exorcist, Travel Guides, Emergency Helicopter Medics, Death in Paradise, A Place to Call Home and Unforgotten …

➢➢ Returning the same week will be season six of Blue Bloods (Three, 10.55 Sunday). The previous season aired 9.30 Mondays to ratings that were better than its new slot suggests. Like its stablemate, Chicago Med, the network has given up on its primetime prospects, even though persistence with historically low-rating Hawaii Five-O at last has paid off, with the crime show regularly winning its 9.30 Wednesday hour …

➢➢ Also resuming will be Car Crash TV (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Friday). It will replace Japan-demonium from September 6 as TVNZ 2’s latest attempt to foil the enduring appeal of Three’s 7 Days …

➢➢ New to TVNZ OnDemand from September 3 will be In The Long Run, a 1985 London-set comedy about family, community and what home really means to first-generation immigrants. Created by and featuring Idris Elba in an ensemble cast that includes Bill Bailey, it was dubbed a “joyful portrait” by The Guardian but The Telegraph thought it “too meek and mild to be anything more than a good soundtrack with pictures”. Exclusive to OnDemand from September 6 will be Edgewalkers, a 10-part gritty docu-soap about what it’s like to be young, African or Muslim in Auckland …

➢➢ New to stream from today are season two of Mr Mercedes on Lightbox, Netflix’s newest Nordic noir Deadwind and its fly-on-the-newsroom wall of Buzzfeed documentary, Follow This. If only someone in NZ would pick up Showtime’s superb New York Times series, The Fourth Estate.