HD Heads-Up: January 28-February 3

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will strip Treasure Island: Fans v Faves 7.30 Monday-Wednesday from January 30 as the anchor for the bedding in of its 2023 schedule which already includes new Monday night dramas Fire Country and So Help Me Todd. The new season of the castaways hit will be the first to pit a team of celebrity survivors against a “team of super fans”. As the publicity puts it: “The Faves have all played this game before, but the Fans have watched their every move.” Another TVNZ 2 fave, CSI: Vegas, will return the same week with a double-episode (8.30 Tuesday) and next month the network will premiere another season of Unbelievable Moments Caught on Camera (9.30 Thursdays) …

➢➢ Three will strip the four-part documentary series The Diana Investigations on consecutive nights starting January 29. Three was going to screen the Discovery+ series five months ago but pulled it in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Decider thought it “a series that separates facts from conspiracies about the princess’s death … You might come away from the show feeling more conspiratorial than when you first sat down, but you’ll also realise that there were a lot of bad decisions and a lot of people at fault for what happened on August 31, 1997″ …

➢➢ Launching on TVNZ 1 the same week will be the Australian renovation series Country Home Rescue With Shaynna Blaze (8.30 Wednesday) and One Night In … (9.15 Saturday), a Channel 4 series about comedians who spend a night running wild in tourist attractions. The Daily Mail dismissed it as a vehicle for “middle-aged comedians pretending to be giddy teenagers … But they are way beyond the age when they can get away with acting like schoolchildren on an end-of-term trip.” The Guardian was kinder, acknowledging the format might be more fun for the “sugar-crashing and, essentially, adult babies” than the viewers but “by the end … the trio’s hysteria has become both endearing and amusing” …

➢➢ More deserving of attention, despite its scheduling, could be grisly serial killer mystery Ragdoll (TVNZ 1, 12.30am Thursday), about a murderer whose casualties are patchworks of body parts from other victims. “You will know within 10 minutes whether the operatic ultraviolence, black comedy and arch, very nearly overwritten dialogue make you wriggle with joy or combust with irritation,” predicts The Guardian while the Sydney Morning Herald reckons “this dark but witty oddball serial-killer drama is just what you’d hope for from the producers of Killing Eve“. Among the dissenting opinions was The Hollywood Reporter’s, which thought it too derivative: “Its only original aspect is the often chaotic stitching together of the familiar elements. Think Criminal Mends, if you’re a thread devotee” ..

➢➢ True-crime fans may want to investigate Death at the Mansion: Rebecca Zahau (TVNZ 2, 3.20am Sunday), about a young woman who was found hanging naked outside her billionaire boyfriend’s mansion. The sheriff ruled her death a suicide, but independent experts wonder otherwise …

➢➢ Duke will add two newcomers to a schedule overrun with re-runs: So Dumb It’s Criminal (9.25 Monday), in which rapper Snoog Dogg and a variety of comedians and celebrities poke fun at some of the most risible crimes ever caught on camera (“This is low-stakes viewing, primed for half-engaged grazing, or fodder for glances from between bong hits,” Decider quipped); and Full Metal Junkies (9.30 Thursday), a six-part series from the team behind George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, set in “an upcycling car yard with a difference” …

➢➢ Waka To Worlds (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Tuesday) is billed as “following rangatahi from the NZ Waka Ama Elite Junior U19’s Mens and Womens teams as they train for the 2022 IVF World Sprint Championships in London. Both teams have a lot to prove. It will take commitment, it will take guts, but most of all it will take heart and determination” …

➢➢ Michelle Williams, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Fraser, Russell T Davies and Strictly star Oti Mabuse will guest on the February 2 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.30) …

➢➢ Seven Sharp (TVNZ 1, 7.00 weeknights) will return on January 30 while ending their runs will be Til Death, About a Boy, Bali 2002, The Way Down, Country House Hunters: New Zealand, The Equalizer, Saving Lives at Sea, Sewer Squad, Cooking With the Stars and Nick Knowles Heritage Rescue …

➢➢ HD coming attractions for the week starting January 28 will include:

• Scooby-Doo (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
•  Legend ((Whakaata Māori, 7.00 Saturday)
• Jurassic Park (TVNZ 2, 8.05 Saturday)
• Rambo: Last Blood (Eden, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Promotion (Three, 8.35 Saturday)
• Terminator (Whakaata Māori, 8.40 Saturday)
• Shutter (Duke, 9.25 Saturday)
• Zoolander (TVNZ 2, 10.35 Saturday)
• The Campaign (TVNZ 2, 12.15am Sunday)
• The Conjuring (TVNZ 2, 1.55am Sunday)
• The War with Grandpa (TVNZ 2, 4.05 Sunday)
• Transformers: Age of Extinction (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Sunday)
• Joyful Noise (Eden, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Bookshop (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Sunday)
• Minority Report (TVNZ 2, 10.00 Sunday)
• Lady in the Water (TVNZ 2, 12.40am Monday)
• Cold Pursuit (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• Ophir (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Monday)
• A Few Good Men (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• The Hangover Part III (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Wednesday)
• Rashomon (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Wednesday)
• The Man From U.N.C.L.E (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Thursday)
• 300 (Three, 8.30)
• Twins (Duke, 10.00 Friday).