HD Heads-Up: May 11-17

➢➢ Almost as big a shock as TVNZ 1 axing its late-night news bulletin is its lightweight weeknight replacement: Deal or No Deal Australia. The Channel 10 game show reboot, which streams on TVNZ+, already airs twice-daily (including in the slot vacated by 1News Midday), and to offer a third same-day broadcast as the successor to 1News Tonight says it all about the escalating decline of network TV and its failure to innovate and respect what remains of its audience …

➢➢ Three’s emergency drama hit 9-1-1 has a new like-minded lead-in: First Responders (7.00 Wednesday), a reality hour about NZ emergency services that opens with a teenage forestry worker who suffers a life-threatening injury and a mother who’s endangered by severe asthma …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 is burning off on a Saturday night, on the eve of Mother’s Day, Motherhood Anthology, a two-and-a-half-hour showcase of storytelling inspired by the Māori, Pasifika, Pan-Asian & LGBTQIA+ communities. Here’s what to expect:

• Rule of Mum (7.30): a loveable man-child decides to take charge of his own life but first must overcome the biggest obstacle standing in his way — his Māmā
• AMAH (8.00): a career-driven mother enlists an Artificially Maternal Android Helper to raise her son in accordance with traditional Malaysian-Chinese values
• Give Me Babies (8.30): a young MMA fighter competes in an illicit underground match for cash to flee NZ and dodge her mother’s relentless baby demands
• Ahi & The Stars (9.00): a Māori boy from the coast seeks answers to his mother’s disappearance after their move to Auckland ends in a mysterious tragedy
• Mother Hood (9.35): the newly crowned Mother of a Vogue House must rely on the wisdom of her birth mother to get her wayward adopted children ready for their runway debut …

➢➢ My Life as a Rolling Stone (TVNZ 1, 9.25 Saturday) is a 2022 series in which band members reflect on their lives and performances. “This is a documentary more interesting for what it leaves out,” said The Guardian. “It fails to ask difficult questions about [the] band’s problematic past.” But other critics were more generous, including The Times’: “A thoughtful, rounded picture of an ensemble that is still rocking beginning with their days in the vanguard of 1960s counterculture” …

➢➢ Three late-night documentaries that could be worth watching:

• Jailed Over a Group Chat (TVNZ 1, 11.30 Monday): why a head boy who was set to study law at university is now serving an eight-year prison sentence after posting messages in a group chat
• The Cost of Being a You Tuber (TVNZ 1, midnight Monday): is being a YouTuber a viable long-term career?
• Married With Secrets (Three, 10.55 Thursday): did depression drive an aspiring Irish kindergarten teacher to suicide – or a twisted BDSM master? …

➢➢ Live/delayed free-to-air sports coverage includes:

• Pacific Four Series: NZ v USA (Sky Open, 2.00 Saturday)
• ANZ Premiership Netball: Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic vs Southern Steel (TVNZ 2, 4.00 Saturday)
• Super Rugby Pacific: Highlanders v Crusaders (Sky Open, 7.00 Saturday)
• NBL: Airs v Sharks (Sky Open, 3.00 Sunday)
• NRL Premiership: Sydney Roosters v NZ Warriors (Sky Open, 7.00 Sunday)
• NRL Premiership: Canberra Raiders v Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldog (Sky Open, 7.30 Friday)
• Super Rugby Pacific: Hurricanes v Moana Pasifika (Sky Open, 10.30 Friday) …

➢➢ New to Whakaata Māori is Mō Te Ātea (7.30 Wednesday), which uses animation to bring to life ancestral song-poetry …

➢➢ Returning for new episodes are Masterchef Australia (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Sunday, 7.30 Monday-Wednesday), Highway Cops (TVNZ 1, 8.00 Monday), So Help Me Todd (TVNZ 2, 9.00 Monday, from E13 of S1) and Grand Designs Australia (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Thursday) …

➢➢ Ending their runs are Sunday, Fair Go, First on Scene, George Clarke’s Adventures in Americana, Motorway Patrol, Renters and Somebody Somewhere, which Sky Open is wrapping up with a two-hour block of episodes …

➢➢ HD coming attractions include:

• Bernie the Dolphin 2 (Whakaata Māori, 7.00 Saturday)
• Magic Mike XXL (Three, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Town (Eden, 8.30 Saturday)
• Savage (Whakaata Māori, 8.40 Saturday)
• Atomic Blonde (TVNZ 2, 10.00 Saturday)
• Dawn Raid (TVNZ 2, 12.20am Sunday)
• Yves Saint Laurent (TVNZ 2, 2am Sunday)
• Surf’s Up (TVNZ 2, 3.50 Sunday)
• Focus (Three, 7.55 Sunday)
• Ticket to Paradise (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
• Ideal Home (Eden, 8.30 Sunday)
• Delicious (Whakaata Māori, 8.40 Sunday)
• The Curse of La Llorona (TVNZ 2, 11.30 Sunday)
• Conspiracy (Sky Open, 8.30 Monday)
• Wash My Soul in the River (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Monday)
• Kickboxer (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• God of the Piano (Whakaata Māori, 8.30 Wednesday)
• Bad Neighbors 2 (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Thursday)
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (TVNZ 2, 8.50 Friday).