HD Heads-Up: August 28 – September 3

August 19, 2021 0 Comments

➢➢ Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! The lockdowns may be worse across the Tasman but TVNZ 2 will be celebrating Australian TV as if NZ was the Lucky Country’s seventh state in the last week of August. The final of MasterChef Australia (7.30 Monday) will be succeeded by Travel Guides Aussie Week (7.30 Tuesday-Friday), in which a family of self-professed “holiday snobs” visit Byron Bay, Red Centre, Whitsundays and Tasmania. Returning for its final season on Tuesday at 8.30 will be Wentworth while back for its third run on Thursday at 9.05 will be Ambulance …

➢➢The Aussie invasion will continue the following week on Three when Aussie Gold Hunters, which will end its 9.00 Thursday night run on September 2, will replace Millionaire Hot Seat as the new 5.00 lead-in to Newshub Live. Can the long-running Discovery hit deliver the flagship newshour the viewership it needs to compete with 1 News? Maybe, but a better strategy would be to equip Three’s crews and studios with more HD cameras rather than relying on the SD footage that visually makes Newshub Live the inferior choice …

➢➢ Patrick Gower: On Hate (Three, 8.40 Tuesday) will investigate the March 15 terrorist attack: should we have seen it coming and will there be more? …

➢➢ Million Pound Pawn (TVNZ 1, 8.45 Thursday) is a three-part series about how Britain’s pawnbrokers, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, are helping to turn people’s prized possessions into cash, from helicopters to houseboats, designer watches to the family jewels. “If you’re really asset rich/cash-poor – a business owner or even an ex-pop star like Black Lace’s Dene, who’s flogging his Rolex – you might use one of the UK’s 800 pawn brokers to raise some dosh quickly and without credit checks,” Radio Times said. “Or not, because inevitably there are disappointments. As one pawn broker, says, ‘I’m going to go as low as I can without pulling your pants down’” …

➢➢ Maori TV has a raft of new series starting in late August, including Survive the Wild (8.30 Tuesday), the series that first aired on TVNZ 2, The Walkers (8.00 Wednesday), and On Country Kitchen (7.30 Thursday), in which indigenous chef Mark Olive (aka ‘The Black Olive’) and comedian Derek Nannup fuse native bush ingredients with contemporary cooking …

➢➢ Two lifestyle series will premiere off-peak — Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country (TVNZ 1, 2.00 Saturday), in which the property expert and her family swap London for a new start in the country, and S2 of Rescue My Renovation (Three, 2.50 Saturday) — while ending their runs will be Anne Boleyn, Kura and NCIS: Los Angeles …

➢➢ There will be two network movie premieres in the week starting August 28: The Equalizer 2 (Three, 8.30 Sunday) and The Banana Splits Movie (TVNZ 2, 12.30am Monday). Other HD coming attractions will include: