HD Heads-Up: February 1

➢ TVNZ 2’s The X-Files is going off-air for a couple of weeks because it’s being pre-empted in the US (it screens here within 24 hours of its Fox TV broadcast). TVNZ 2 will replace it with First Dates Australia on February 15 and 22, which coincides with the network re-instating its wall-to-wall reality block, with the return of  Police Ten 7 (7.30) and The Big Ward (8.00) while I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here Australia will continue at 9.35 …

➢  TVNZ 2 is doubling down on making us double up with laughter in the week starting February 10, with new episodes of The Big Bang Theory, Mom, Will & Grace and the premiere of Young Sheldon. It’s also quietly launching American Housewife (5.30 Sundays) in-between repeats of The Simpsons and Big Bang. “Not since Roseanne has there been a prime-time comedy so poised to poke fun at economic class,” said the Boston Herald. But The Hollywood Reporter thought it “a paint-by-numbers sitcom that’s relentlessly stupid around the edges and deeply misguided at its centre” …

➢ Prime is using its free-to-air coverage of the Olympic Winter Games to bed in a slew of new series. The Eighties started this week, Prime Rocks and SEAL Team debut next week, and pending are new runs of Making New Zealand (8.30 Sundays from February 11) and Bull (8.30 Thursdays from February 15). The season two premiere of Making NZ profiles the engineering, building and architectural luminaries behind some of our most iconic buildings, such as the Dunedin Railway Station, Auckland’s Civic Theatre and The Christchurch Town Hall …

➢ Prime’s also sprinkling specials through its Olympics schedule, including Nature’s Perfect Partners (7.30 Sunday), Carole King – Natural Woman (8.30 Monday) and A&E When Patients Attack (8.30 Wednesday), in which a Channel 5 TV crew recorded some of the tens of thousands of assaults committed against NHS staff each year at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The Daily Telegraph praised the BBC’s unusual animal alliances doco’s “truly remarkable images” but thought it felt like “recycled droppings swept into an unwieldy pile” …

➢ TVNZ 1 will give Wednesdays a makeover from February 14 with the return of Heathrow: Britain’s Busiest Airport (7.30) and two series premieres: The Aussie Property Flippers (8.30), in which 12 couples bet everything on buying, renovating and selling homes for a profit; and The Secrets of Your Food (9.35), which reveals the delicious science behind what we eat …

➢ “The show is like a bellows blowing air into a real estate bubble,” quipped the Sydney Morning Herald of Aussie Property Flippers. “This is the television that is made when no-one can remember a time when property prices weren’t going up” …

➢ Ending their runs that week will be Pretty Little Liars, Yellowstone and Criminal Minds …

➢ Guesting on February 16’s Graham Norton Show (Three, 9.00) are Will.I.Am, Imelda Staunton, Cuba Gooding Jr. and musician George Ezra …

➢ Appearing this week and next on Prime’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert are Rose McGowan, Senator Rand Paul, stand-up comedian by Jacob Williams, and Curtis Harding, who sits in with Jon Batiste and Stay Human (10.50 Thursday); Michael Shannon and Meghan McCain (10.30 Friday); and Uma Thurman (10.30 Monday) …

➢ And if you’re a fan of TVNZ 2’s Movie Juice (4.30 Saturdays), this weekend’s edition interviews Clint Eastwood about his true-life action thriller The 15:17 To Paris, previews Phantom Thread and meets the cast of Fifty Shades Freed …