HD Heads-Up: May 18 – 24

➢➢ With the departure of The Big Bang Theory, TVNZ is dismantling its Wednesday night comedy block. From May 22, new episodes of Travel Guides Australia will screen from 7.30. The first will be teamed with the season finale of Young Sheldon and A Big Bang Theory Farewell. Thereafter, tabloid documentaries will air at 8.30 to create a two-hour factual content block. In its heyday, the comedy block was one of TVNZ 2’s biggest drawcards but with TBBT no longer its anchor, the network is spreading comedies like Mom and Will & Grace across its schedule …

➢➢ Keeping with the travel theme: The Trip to Spain will be the only free-to-air HD movie premiere in the week starting May 18 (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions will include:

• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• Scary Movie 5 (TVNZ 2, 8.45 Saturday)
• Joy (Three, 9.35 Saturday)
• Flightplan (TVNZ 2, 10.30 Saturday)
• Heartthrob (Three, 11.50 Saturday)
• Pacific Rim (TVNZ 2, 8.10 Sunday)
• The Wolverine (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Call (TVNZ 2, 11.40 Sunday)
• Rocknrolla (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• The Bounty Hunter (Three, 8.35 Thursday)
• L.A. Story (Duke, 8.30 Friday)
• The Last Saint (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday) …

➢➢ TVNZ 1 will pair a new Mrs. Brown’s Boys Christmas special, Exotic Mammy, with a repeat of an earlier yuletide yukfest, Mrs. Brown’s Boys: Mammy’s Tickled Pink, from 8.30 on May 23. Lamented The Telegraph of Exotic Mammy: “It was rarely slick and only nominally funny, but somewhere amid the groans and guffaws, the spirit of modern Christmas blazed brightly” …

➢➢ A new season of What Next? (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Tuesdays from May 21), will examine the impact of technology, environment, an ageing population and inequality on NZ over the next 20 years …

➢➢ Ellen’s Game of Games will return on on May 24 (TVNZ 2, 8.00) while ending their runs that week will be Mountains: Life Above the Clouds, Game of Thrones, The Crossing, Holding Court with Steven Adams and Ross Kemp: Extreme World …

➢➢ Prime Rocks will afford an all-access look at one of the world’s most iconic bands on May 21: Duran Duran – There’s Something You Should Know (Prime, 8.35) …

➢➢ Charlize Theron, Seth Rogen, Matthew Broderick and Zac Efron will guest on the May 24 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00) …

➢➢  Who Killed Lucy the Poodle? (TVNZ OnDemand, from May 21) is billed as a “genre-bending documentary series” in which Kent Briggs tries to uncover what happened 30 years ago when, as an eight-year-old, he witnessed the escape of three circus lions into a crowded lakefront in Rotorua — and who may have fed them a performing poodle.