HD Heads-Up: August 8-14

TV3 has quite a story to tell in the week starting August 8: it will launch Campbell Live successor Story amid a raft of new dramas and specials, including the Channel 4 sensation Humans.

The robot dramas that’s been a critical and ratings hit in the UK will air 8.30 Tuesdays, against soft competition on TV1 (The Mentalist) and TV2’s new renovation contest, Reno Rumble.

An adaptation of a Swedish series, Humans was C4’s biggest original drama launch in more than a decade when it went to air in June.

“It’s sci-fi for the non sci-fi fan, sci-fi that has more than a foot in sci-fact,” said The Guardian. “It’s also a clever, high-energy thriller.

“So you’re sitting on the edge of your seat, but maybe you’re also resting your chin in your hand, as you ponder technology, intelligence, consciousness, humanity, who we are and how we live now, and so on.”

The Daily Mail said it “combined a witty script with a superb cast” and there Daily Express thought it “undeniably good” if “exhaustive, and exhausting”.

“Humans has done a particularly good job of creating an uncomfortably plausible setting in a parallel-present London,” The Independent said.

“It allows the show not only to play on our age-old fears about out-of-control technological advancement, but also on a more mundane middle-class unease.”

But The Times was grudging in its praise: “Originality is a problem for Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley’s serial.

“Yesterday’s first episode of eight was nothing like as thrilling as Blade Runner, while Black Mirror would have wrapped up its ethical dilemmas in an hour. Humans is properly unsettling, albeit in a familiar way.”

TV3 is double-billing it with the return of Caught on Camera and will launch another reality-drama duo on Monday: Shark Tank and Odyssey.

Odyssey is another Homeland-like thriller that earned mixed reviews and was axed after 13 episodes while Shark Tank is Australia’s answer to Dragon’s Den.

TV3 will use the network premiere of The Heat (TV3, 8.30 Sunday) to promote its bold new line-up, which also includes the documentary Emergency Medicine (9.30 Thursday) and the return of Lip Sync Battle (7.00 Friday) on the one week night that Story won’t air.

Other coming attractions in HD for the week starting August 8 include: Zoom (TV3, 7.00 Saturday), Here Comes the Boom (TV2, 8.45 Saturday), 50/50 (TV2, 10.50 Saturday), Whip It (TV2, 12.50am, Sunday), Conviction (TV3, 10.55 Sunday), The Stepfather (TV2, 11.40 Sunday) and War of the Worlds (TV3, 8.40 Wednesday).

TV2 is pre-empting the start of its Sunday Premiere Movie, The Proposal, by an hour to screen the documentary, Gloriavale — Life & Death (TV2, 8.30 Sunday), on the back of the premieres of two entertainment series — Repeat After Me (7.00 Sunday) and I Can Do That USA (7.30 Sunday) — that replace the Sunday edition of The Voice Australia.

TV2 also is reinstating its two-hour Wednesday comedy block but it will start an hour later, with season seven re-runs of The Big Bang Theory from 8.30 spearheading new episodes of Mom in its new 9.00 slot, the season five premiere of Mike & Molly at 9.30 and the resumption of Brooklyn Nine Nine, from episode three of season two, at 10.00.

Also notable in HD for the week starting August 8 are The World’s Fattest Man (TV2, 9.05 Tuesday) and the season finales of Indian Summers and Sexy Beasts.