HD Heads-Up: June 1

➢ Prime continues to make Top Gear fans wait for the latest series of the BBC2 warhorse but will premiere season two of James May’s Cars of the People on June 15 at 7.30. “He may look increasingly cherubic in his old age — how much can it cost to insure him on these adventures? — but May remains a devil ever behind the wheel,” The Times said of the second four-part series while the Express quipped he “explained the phoenix-like rebirth [of Germany and Japan] … with a lot of competitive driving and chuntering on about dashboards, like the sort of person you’d do U-turn to avoid in the pub” …

➢ The gap between Three’s and CBS’s broadcasts of Hawaii Five-O will start to close when season six premieres here on June 21. Despite low ratings for the closing episodes of season five, Three has announced the series will continue its 9.30 Wednesday run without a break between seasons. Unless the crime reboot is pulled in the interim, that means Kiwi fans will be only one-and-a-half seasons behind the US when CBS premieres season eight in September …

➢ Said The Telegraph of Prime’s Inside Windsor Castle (8.30 Sundays from June 11): “Good commentators and dodgy reconstructions are the order of the day for this eye-catching and eccentric new series examining the history or the royal residence. It begins with the fire of 1992 — the centrepiece of Her Majesty’s infamous annus horribilis” …

➢ TVNZ 1 will use the June 11-15 primetime strip of What Next?, in which Nigel Latta and John Campbell explore what our lives may look like in 20 years’ time, to launch two new factual series: the self-explanatory Women Who Kill (9.30 Sunday) and The Profit (9.30 Tuesday), in which self-made millionaire Marcus Lemonis helps struggling businesses across the US …

➢ The Guardian praised Women Who Kill for being “careful not to jump to conclusions” but The Telegraph blasted it for “bombastic narration that verged on the sensationalistic”, “cameras [that] lingered a little too long on bloody clothing and weapons” and probing “not deep enough” behind the lurid headlines …

➢ The Profit has been running on cable channel CNBC since 2013 but TVNZ 1 is picking it up from last year’s season four. In its review of the series premiere, the New York Times said: “What Gordon Ramsay is to floundering restaurants …Lemonis aspires to be for any number of small businesses … He writes checks and takes temporary control, makes significant changes, then hopes his new partners can make him money. His practices are politely predatory, feasting on small businesses that don’t have the resources to advance or to save themselves from eventual collapse” …

➢ Prime will premiere the 2012 concert movie, Neil Young – Journeys, in its Prime Rocks slot on June 13. “Journeys, shot on the last two nights of Young’s 2011 solo world tour, is essential Neil Young,” Rolling Stone said of the third collaboration between the musician and director Jonathan Demme, who died in April …

➢ Three is digging deep into the video vault for Lion: Spy in the Den, the first of the BBC “bouldercam” productions that dates to 2000. Despite it being made almost a decade before HD broadcasting took off in this country, Three says the documentary, which will air 4.55 on June 10, will screen in HD …

➢ Three’s network movie premieres for the weekend of June 10-11 include Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland (9.00 Saturday), which narrates the final years of his life through the perspective of two of his personal bodyguards, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (7.00 Sunday), which should easily dwarf the movie competition on TVNZ 2, an SD re-run of the 2005 thriller The Island …

➢ Other coming attractions in HD for that week will include: A Bug’s Life (TVNZ 2, 5.05 Saturday), Evolution (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday), Despicable Me (Three, 7.00 Saturday), Ocean’s Eleven (TVNZ 2, 8.55 Saturday), Crimes of the Past (Three, 10.55 Saturday), The Tourist (TVNZ 2, 11.15 Saturday), Side Effects (TVNZ 2, 11.15 Sunday), Hulk (Prime, 8.35 Monday) and U.S. Marshals (Three, 8.30 Thursday) …

➢ Guesting on the June 16 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00) are The Mummy’s Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis, Baywatch’s Zac Efron, and singer-songwriter Beth Ditto …

➢ Appearing this week and next on Prime’s The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon are:

• Dr. Phil, Leslie Jones and musical guest Rick Ross featuring Young Thug and Wale (10.30 tonight)
• Kobe Bryant, Kathryn Hahn and musical guest Big Boi (11.30 tomorrow)
• Salma Hayek, Mike Birbiglia and musical guests Clean Bandit and Zara Larrson (11.15 Monday)
• John Lithgow, Riley Keough, Giles Martin and musical guest Thundercat featuring Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins (11.35 Tuesday)
• Tom Cruise, Kate Mara and musical guest Bleachers — Mike McCready sits in with The Roots (11.30 Wednesday)
• Norm Macdonald, Chelsea Clinton, Robert Irwin and musical guest Rae Sremmurd (11.30 Thursday).