HD Heads-Up: February 4-10

➢➢The networks continue to roll out new-season newcomers, with TVNZ 1, TVNZ 2, Three and Prime all adding new or returning series to their schedules in early February. TVNZ 1 has The Chase Bloopers (8.10 Sunday), S8 of The Great British Sewing Bee (7.30 Thursday) and Hard Quiz (8.45 Thursday) while TVNZ 2 will screen live coverage of the 65th Annual Grammy Awards 2023 (1.00 Monday) ahead of the series premiere of Police Strike Force (9.25 Tuesday), and new seasons of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (8.35 Wednesday), Naked Attraction (9.35 Wednesday), and rebooted panel comedy Patriot Brains with Sue Perkins (7.30 Friday) …

➢➢ Police Strike Force went to air this time last year on Australia’s Channel 7 and will be the new stablemate for CSI: Vegas. Variety reports the six-part series was made in “close partnership” with the New South Wales police and recounts real-life police investigations, stings, and taskforce operations using cottage captured by the police media unit, and surveillance, search and interview footage taken by the investigating units …

➢➢ Three will anchor 7.30 Monday-Wednesday with the return of Married at First Sight Australia. The season premiere will air 7.00 on Waitangi Day as the 90-minute lead-in to the resumption of The Rookie from episode 14 of S4. On Tuesdays it will be paired with SAS US (9.00), in which an elite group of ex-Special Forces soldiers put a group of civilians through extraordinary physical and psychological tests. And on Wednesday at 9.00, Faking It: R Kelly examines the clues that led to the serial sex offender’s arrest after two decades of abuse …

➢➢ R Kelly is the first is a series of Faking It specials in which body language, linguistics and psychology experts “forensically examine” the lies and deceptions behind shocking human behaviour. The rest of the Discovery+ series will cover Donald Trump, Ted Bundy, Michael Jackson and the murder of Grace Millane. Said Decider of the R Kelly profile: “Some of the gestural or oral minutiae highlighted by the Faking It: R. Kelly experts are interesting as fodder for speculation. But those segments feel disconnected from the portion of this episode that acts as a boilerplate Kelly documentary” …

➢➢ Three also will premiere Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama (9.00 Sunday). It dramatises the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial, in which footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy tried to sue Instagram follower Coleen Rooney for allegedly leaking stories about her to the press. “A fascinating courtroom drama, but not as enthralling as expected,” was Radio Times’ verdict while the Daily Telegraph reporter who covered the trial said: “As someone who sat through almost every day of the case, I can say with some authority that the drama has got the window-dressing right (the set is a pretty accurate representation of the real-life courtroom) but the tone wrong … The script sticks rigidly to the real-life transcripts and ignores everything else” …

➢➢ New to TVNZ 1 on Sunday will be the six-part The Investigation (11.35), another true-life dramatisation, about the Copenhagen police investigation into the disappearance of journalist Kim Wall on board an inventor’s home-made submarine. The Guardian said this “virtuoso telling of the ‘submarine case’ eschewed gruesome shocks for patient, humane drama” …

➢➢ Prime will radically overhaul Sunday nights with the premieres of Not Even (8.30), which follows a group of twenty-something Māori and Pasifika Wellingtonians warring with their cultural identities and  each other, and S2 of the media satire about “story sovereignty and ‘ride or die’ friendships”, SIS (9.00). They will launch on a triple-bill with the movie-length compilation of the award-winning short-form series Rurangi (9.30), in which a transgender activist returns to his remote hometown hoping to reconnect with his friends and family for the first time since his transition …

➢➢ Returning for new seasons will be Traffic Cops (S11, Prime, 7.30 Wednesday), on a double-bill with the S1 premiere of Extreme Nightmare Tenants, while ending their runs will be The Amazing Race Australia, Outback Truckers, Our Big Blue Backyard and Your Body Uncovered …

➢➢ Tell Me A Story (TVNZ 2, 11.40 Friday) is a Kevin Williamson (Scream)-produced “once upon a time” anthology set in New York that ran from 2018-2020 on Paramount+ (then CBS All-Access). The Hollywood Reporter said it “boasts an attractive cast and an interesting idea in transposing fairy tales to a modern context, but it doesn’t do enough with its fun premise” while Variety argued: “For all its faults, the series is enthusiastically pulpy, moving with a propulsive energy that, to be frank, most streaming dramas lack” …

➢➢ Claire Foy, M Night Shyamalan, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rob Beckett and Sam Smith will guest on the February 2 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.30) …

➢➢ The biopic of Māori leader Dame Whina Cooper, Whina, will have its first free-to-air screening on Waiting Day (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Monday). Other HD coming attractions for the week starting February 4 will include:

• Scooby-Doo 2 (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• Ballerina (Whakaata Māori, 7.00 Saturday)
• The Lost World – Jurassic Park (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Town (Eden, 8.30 Saturday)
• Boys on the Side ((Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Saturday)
• Eagle vs. Shark (Three, 9.00 Saturday)
• Split (Duke, 9.20 Saturday)
• Zoolander 2 (TVNZ 2, 10.50 Saturday)
• Cafe Society (TVNZ 2, 12.45am Sunday)
• Live by Night (TVNZ 2, 2.25am Sunday)
• The Ant Bully (TVNZ 2, 4.20 Sunday)
• Big Daddy (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Sunday)
• On Chesil Beach (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Sunday)
• Selena (Eden, 8.30 Sunday)
• Baby Driver (TVNZ 2, 8.45 Sunday)
• Cape Fear (TVNZ 2, 11.00 Sunday)
• Faster (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• Mercury Rising (Duke, 8.25 Tuesday)
• Labyrinth of Lies (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Wednesday)
• Tower Heist (TVNZ 2, 7.30 Thursday)
• The 40 Year Old Virgin (TVNZ 2, 9.40 Thursday)
• 300: Rise of an Empire (Three, 8.30 Friday)
• Road Trip (Duke, 9.20 Friday).