HD Heads-Up: January 8 – 14
December 30, 2021 
11 Comments
➢➢ TVNZ 1 will be the first of the networks to welcome in the new year with a new-look primetime state. The fast-tracking of the latest season of Call The Midwife (8.30 Saturday) will be double-billed with the miniseries The Sister (9.45 Saturday) while peppering the rest of the second week of January will be a new Sir David Attenborough series, The Mating Game (7.30 Sunday), S2 of Innocent (8.45 Tuesday), the premiere of Saved and Remade (8.00 Friday) and S11 of Selling Houses Australia (8.55 Friday) …
➢➢ S11 of Call the Midwife is set in 1967 and according to Digital Spy, there will be a “game-changing twist“. Teases star Stephen McGann (Dr Turner): “We’re not going to tell you any detail, except to say that it’s big, it’s brilliant, and it is a real challenge. I think for people who watch the show – I think it’s a departure. It’s different. It’s ambitious. That’s when it’s time not to tell you anything. But it’s one of those things that everybody, in their way, is affected by. Everyone comes into their own” …
➢➢ The Guardian hailed The Sister as “a nail-biting whodunnit that is truly haunting” while Variety thought is “imperfect but pleasantly unnerving“. Written by Luther’s Neil Cross, the 2020 production stars Russell Tovey (Years and Years), Bertie Carvel (Dalgleish) and Amrita Acharia (The Good Karma Hospital) …
➢➢ The Mating Game is billed as revealing “spectacular scenes of courting and companionship in the natural world”. Said The Telegraph: “The Mating Game is indeed an ‘Attenborough’ and as such it comes with import and great moment. Even though the subject of this series is basically global nooky, with Attenborough on words and the BBC’s Natural History Unit on visuals it was transcendent” …
➢➢ Here’s everything you need to know about S2 of the Katherine Kelly whodunit Innocent. The four-part mystery was acclaimed in the UK, where Metro said it drew in viewers with “high-intensity drama from start to finish with a fair few shocks along the way” …
➢➢ The Daily Mail dubbed “upcycling” newcomer Saved and Remade “a half-hour variation on The Repair Shop … Much-loved heirlooms are brought to presenter Sabrina Grant, not to be restored but reinvented … Make-do-and-mend formats like this have been the hit of lockdown. I’d love to know whether they are inspiring a DIY revolution, or if we’re all too busy watching the shows to tackle any repairs of our own” …
➢➢ Heaven’s Gate: The Cult Of Cults (Prime, 9.30 Thursday) is a four-part HBO Max documentary that Salon called “a thoughtful assessment of the mechanisms of how otherwise smart, savvy people are attracted to fringe beliefs” — namely the Heaven’s Gate cult that in 1997 led to the largest mass suicide in the US …
➢➢ Also new that week will be true-crime newcomer Killer Clergy (TVNZ 2, 12.45am Monday), S21 of Pawn Stars (Prime, 7.30 Friday) and Toyota Gazoo Motorsport Show (Three, 10.50 Friday) while ending their runs will be Surveillance Dashcam, Hashtag Murder and Back to Life …
➢➢ Appearing on the January 13 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.30) will be Keanu Reeves, Olivia Colman, Cynthia Erivo, Jack Whitehall and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, who will perform “Fall In Love Again” …
➢➢ HD coming attractions for the second week of the new year will include:
- Jurassic Park (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
- My Spy (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
- The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (Maori TV, 7.00 Saturday)
- Gandhi (Maori TV. 8.40 Saturday)
- Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past (Three, 9.00 Saturday)
- The Nice Guys (TVNZ 2, 9.15)
- Evil Intent (Three, 10.55 Saturday)
- Columbiana (TVNZ 2, 11.30 Saturday)
- Fight Club (TVNZ 2, 1.25am Sunday)
- LEGO DC Batman: Family Matters (TVNZ 2, 8.20am Sunday)
- Contact (TVNZ 2, 11.55am Sunday)
- Batman (TVNZ 2, 2.20 Sunday)
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Sunday)
- On Chesil Beach (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
- Bad Neighbours (Three, 8.35 Sunday)
- Us (TVNZ 2, 10.40 Sunday)
- Cape Fear (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
- Seed: The Untold Story (Maori TV, 8.30 Monday)
- The Lake House (Three, 9.00 Monday)
- Zodiac (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
- Chappie (Three, 8.40 Tuesday)
- Geostorm (TVNZ 2, 9.35 Tuesday)
- The Bank Job (TVNZ 2, 9.30 Thursday)
- Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Three, 7.30 Friday)
- Live Free or Die Hard (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Friday)
- Ali G Indahouse (Duke, 10.00 Friday)
- Patti Cake$ (TVNZ 2, 2.45am Saturday).
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December 30, 2021 at 2:01 am
I swear Jurassic Park was on Three not too long ago … maybe mid year? Guessing it falls under TVNZ’s deal with NBCUniversal now.
Yes, Clint, that would be right. But even without that pact, the networks often refresh their movie slates with distributor deals that previously were the domain of rivals. And, as surprising as it sounds, it can lead to some of these movies tapping into new FTA audiences.
Not just JP, I’m sure several movies have shown on different channels within weeks of each other?
Yes, Mamma Mia! was recently on Three and it’s now on TVNZ 1. It’s like having musical chairs with movies ?
YAY, just read on Twitter seasons 1-15 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will be added on Disney+ in New Zealand on January 26th. I love that show ?
Isn’t S2 of Euphoria starting this week? Something I’m looking forward to rather than old series being added on streaming services (yawn).
Yes season 2 is on Thursday 13th January 9:30pm. I find it odd that even Sky has some delayed programs, even on SoHo. This is supposed to be fast-tracked like on the same day as broadcast, even though the timezones are different.
Neon has usurped SoHo as Sky’s premium entertainment channel. Euphoria is being fast-tracked here for streaming, to boost Neon’s uptake. SoHo is now mostly used to add value as a bundled channel — it’s ‘free’ if you subscribe to the sports or movie packages — and is no longer Sky’s exclusive premium drama powerhouse. It’s investing more in Neon content, most of which still surfaces on SoHo but often weeks after subscribers have forked out extra to stream it. Some shows, like Wolfe, bow on SoHo first, and others, like Dexter: New Blood, at the same time as Neon, but most of the best are now being used to provide Neon with streaming clout (just as TVNZ does with its premium dramas on OnDemand).
Which makes no sense. To maximise value you want to release on both platforms simultaneously – to boost streaming uptake and to retain value in the traditional business. Whether it be ad-funded or subscription mismatching timing devalues the content on the later service. Where else does any retailer sell to one market segment before another unless it can extract higher value from that segment (and it’s not obvious that the ROIC from streaming is significantly higher than that of broadcast)?
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Sky phase out/rebrand SoHo in the next wee while. The status it had as an add-on paid channel when it first launched was a sort of streaming service before its time (as much as a linear channel could be), but it has lost its way somewhat with the focus/priority on Neon and the rise of other streaming services also providing premium content it’s become somewhat of an afterthought and to be honest, a bit lazy (Game of Thrones was for a time shown “live” but they haven’t bothered to try and get the same deal with the likes of Succession even though Australia was able to do a simulcast deal with HBO on that one). Sky has too many linear channels that have become a wasteland in my opinion, with Sky 5 and Vibe filled with bargain basement titles and procedural reruns seemingly 24/7. Perhaps high time Sky5, Vibe and SoHo were brought together to create a more compelling proposition? Or does the ‘variety’ each channel offers make a better marketing pitch for Sky … intrigued to hear what others think.
I think given the persistence with Duke by TVNZ and the launch of Gusto (F skew) and Rush (M skew) that the fragmentation argument for trying to address all viewers probably answers your question Clint. With Disco having niche skews on a passthru basis plus Sky’s broader gen-ent addressing each audience segment the scope for change is limited. What would be the better option for redeployment of each channel – is there better content to replace the offering? The cumes for each channel are probably higher than many others on the ad-funded television …