HD Heads-Up: January 24

TV1 will resurrect Our First Home to screen 7.30 Sunday-Tuesday from February 14. The twist with this season, according to the tagline, is the kids are in charge of the three families who try to profit from renovating a dunga. OFH will face off against TV3’s House Rules initially before the latter rolls out The Bachelor NZ. TV1’s announcement of OFH’s season premiere comes ahead of the channel launching a new-look line-up spearheaded by tonight’s premiere of Blindspot, tomorrow’s return of Criminal Minds and Wednesday’s debut of ER wannabe Code Black — the kind of US dramas from which TV1, in its heyday, used to be a refuge. Watch for Doug Coutts’ take on Code Black in a post where he describes it as “standard fast-paced, quick-cut medical procedural fare” …

The best free-to-air US dramas continue to be buried late-night, from TV3’s The Good Wife (which may end after the latest season) to another of this week’s TV1 premieres, Allegiance (11.00 Monday). The New York Times recommended the spy thriller as a “nervy rip-off” of SoHo’s The Americans, albeit “more homogenised and predictable”, while Variety thought it “fast-paced and enjoyable in a check-your-brain-at-the-door kind of way” …

TVNZ has confirmed its new boys’ own channel will also be on Sky and feature predominantly foreign comedy, drama, sport, movies and documentaries, with chief executive Kevin Kendrick telling the Sunday Star Times the new service will be a “viable option” for males who illegally download or watch overseas broadcasters online (ONLY if it’s in HD, he might have added) …

NBR reports one of the first unblockers to be hit by Netflix’s crackdown on subscribers who access its content globally “already has a fix” but asks: “Is Netflix using uFlix to trial new unblocking technology, that it will now deploy against unblocking services around the planet (assuming it can get it to work against uFlix)?” …

“Devil may care, audience may not,” quipped The Hollywood Reporter of TVNZ OnDemand’s Monday premiere Lucifer, which stars Kiwi Lesley-Ann Brandt: “Fox sent the first, fourth and fifth episodes of Lucifer to critics and it’s only the fifth episode in which the show begins to make any real acknowledgment that the idea of the Devil on Earth ought to have theological ramifications and that if the Devil is going to bother going to a shrink, he ought to have some issues, daddy issues in particular” …

Variety reports the TVOD superhero series, Legends of Tomorrow, opened to “solid numbers” on The CW, with a 1.2 rating/4 share in adults 18-49 and 3.1 million viewers overall in the 8 o’clock hour, delivering the network its highest rating in the time period since the 100th episode of The Vampire Diaries two years ago …

But a new Frankenstein-themed drama seems doomed, with Fox TV shifting Second Chance from Wednesday to Friday nights after two-weeks of near-death ratings …