HD Heads-Up: August 24 – 30

August 15, 2019 0 Comments

➢➢ TVNZ 1’s new 8.30 Monday crime drama, Wild Bill, which was postponed until August 26 to avoid facing off against the conclusion to Jonah, now will launch opposite another local newcomer on Three: The Gulf. The six-part German co-production set on Waiheke Island stars Kate Elliot (Fresh Meat) as a detective who suspects the car crash that killed her husband and robbed her of her memory was an attempt on her life. Ido Drent (Offspring), Jeffrey Thomas (The Hobbit), Pana Hema-Taylor (Westside) and Mark Mitchinson (Mortal Engines) co-star …

➢➢ Wild Bill stars Rob Lowe as a top US cop who shakes up the East Lincolnshire Constabulary in an ITV series that critics weren’t wild about. “If you can avoid getting trampled by the hooves of insanity galloping through it, there’s enough to make Wild Bill a good way to fill the commercial hour,” The Guardian acknowledged. But The Times dubbed it “an odd hodgepodge that tries to be tragic and comic simultaneously” while the Daily Mail quipped: “Drug-addled it may be, but Wild Bill isn’t very addictive”. It also scored the lowest debut audience for a new ITV drama so far this year (3.7 million viewers) …

➢➢ TVNZ 1 will open its latest Sunday Theatre season on August 25 with A War Story, a documentary about NZ journalist Peter Arnett’s pre 9/11 interview with Osama bin Laden. Also scheduled for the 8.30 Sunday slot are: Runaway Millionaires, which dramatises how a Kiwi couple went on the run after millions of dollars were mistakenly deposited into their account; Ablaze, which dramatises New Zealand’s worst fire disaster, the Ballantyne’s department store in Christchurch; and the 1987 Ruby World Cup doco, By the Balls …

➢➢ TVNZ 1’s premiere of The Story of Rugby has been delayed until 8.40 August 24. Screening this weekend instead is another episode of The Hotel Inspector …

➢➢ World’s Busiest Train Stations (TVNZ 1, 8.40 Wednesdays from August 27) goes behind the scenes of the world’s great railway stations, starting with New York City’s Grand Central and Penn Stations …

➢➢ Mayday Air Disaster: The Accident Files (Prime, 7.30 Saturdays from August 24) uncovers the truth behind the most devastating aviation disasters via eyewitness accounts, captivating re-enactments, state-of-the-art CGI, and interviews with the investigators who ultimately determined what went wrong. It opens with the mistakes that brought tragedy to Quincy Airport in Illinois and the crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 …

➢➢ Inside The Red Arrows (Prime, 7.30 Sundays from August 25) is a fly-on-the-cockpit look at one of the most important and challenging years in the history of the Red Arrows on the eve of the RAF’s centennial celebrations …

➢➢ Appearing on the August 30 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00) will be Rowan Atkinson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Gary Barlow, Jeff Goldblum and Imelda May …

➢➢ Returning to Prime will be SEAL Team (9.45 Tuesdays) and Best of Top Gear (8.30 Wednesdays) while ending their runs will be Happy Together, Queen Victoria and Her Nine Children and World’s Wildest Weather …

➢➢ The only network movie premiere for the week starting August 24 will be Marshall (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions will include: