HD Heads-Up: August 29-September 4

New local dramas dominate the week starting August 29: the premiere of Abandoned and the return of Step Dave (above).

The former will screen in TV1’s Sunday Theatre slot and the latter 8.30 Tuesdays on TV2.

Abandoned dramatises how the crew of the Rose Noelle survived being adrift on the yacht’s upturn hull for 119 days — only to barely survive media scrutiny of their story when they reached shore.

Step Dave resumes Dave and Cara’s relationship eight months on, opening with a disaster that threatens her family’s livelihood and continuing with the return of a face from the past.

Also new that week are natural disaster doco World’s Worst Storms (TV2, 9.30 Tuesday), the comedy Selfie (TV2, 2.30 Sunday) and Bullseye (TV3, 7.30 Friday), a reality show where eight contestants use their bodies as human darts on targets on land, air and water to try to win $50,000.

The Hollywood Reporter described Selfie as “a modern social media retelling of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady.”

“Both the title and the first few minutes … nearly ruin what could turn out to be a charming show,” the Boston Globe warned. “Fortunately, the tone starts to shift, soften, and gain stronger comic footing.”

But TV Guide thought otherwise: “The stars’ charisma could help lift Selfie beyond its narrow premise, but at first glance, it seems too inconsequential even to qualify as an epic fail.”

Bullseye is a Fear Factor/Wipeout wannabe that challenges competitors to attempt feats like hanging from a transparent sphere beneath a helicopter.

“They had to climb all over it and release bullseyes from the sphere while the sphere was being blasted by the rooster tail from a jet boat as the helicopter was flying out to sea,” executive producer Jon Kroll (The Amazing Race) says.

He told USA Today he hopes the fun he and his colleagues have had making Bullseye transfers to the viewers.

“My wife came to the set and said, ‘You’re like six years old now. You have helicopters, you have cranes, you have planes. You shouldn’t get paid to do this.’ And I said, ‘Well, don’t tell the network.'”