HD Heads-Up: February 27

❏ Prime is picking up a sister channel whodunit, UKTV’s Father Brown, from series one but will screen it in HD. The period mystery series, based on the GK Chesterton stories about a village priest-cum-sleuth (The Fast Show’s Mark Williams), is a daytime drama on the BBC, where it’s been popular enough to be commissioned for a fifth season. So far UKTV has aired the first three and Prime will screen the first 7.30 Saturdays from March 5. The Daily Mail hailed it as a “rare gem” in daytime in a review headlined: “Father Brown’s biggest mystery – why is he stuck on daytime TV?” …

❏ The BBC’s also just ordered another series of Prime’s Death in Paradise, the next season of which should screen here for the first time in HD. It ended its run this week in the UK, drawing a consolidated average viewership of 8.1 million. “Prior to that, it ranked as the third-highest rated UK drama of 2015 and the fourth widest-selling British export around the world; having been bought in 237 territories,” the Daily Express reports …

❏ The Great British Bake Off’s Sue Perkins stars in another of Prime’s HD coming attractions. Koltaka With Sue Perkins (March 10, 8.40) explores the challenges facing India in a documentary that Radio Times said proved she was “a match for Michael Palin”. But The Telegraph thought it was “never wholly convincing … Sometimes this felt like a socially minded documentary and Perkins’s exploration of the charities that help Kolkata’s street children was effective. But at other times she seemed unaware of the world around her” …

❏ Prime’s also confirmed that Zoo, American Idol and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon are full HD rather than upscaled SD. It’s not clear if another of its highlights for next month, Prime Rocks: Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall (March 9, 8.30), will be in HD but chances are it will be given Spike Lee’s “anatomy” of Jackson’s classic album premiered only weeks ago at the Sundance Film Festival. The Independent acknowledged it was “mainly a documentary of talking heads, but when they have faces like these it’s spellbinding” …

❏ The Big Bang Theory’s 200th episode went to air in the US this week and should screen here on March 23. The milestone guest started TV Batman Adam West and brought together recurring characters played by Christine Baranski, Sara Gilbert, Wil Wheaton and even Stephen Hawking as himself. In a Hollywood Reporter feature about TBBT’s nine-year progression, star Johnny Galecki quips: “It’s evolved to be a family comedy. It’s very much friendship now and relationships. Thank god, because there’s much less science jargon to learn now than there was in seasons one and two!” …