HD Heads-Up: May 3

May 3, 2018 11 Comments

➢ The networks are rolling out the red carpet for the latest royal wedding with a slew of HD specials. TVNZ 1 will screen Extreme Cake Makers: Royal Wedding Special (May 18, 7.30), which will run for an hour instead of the usual half-hour, while 24 hours earlier Prime will “uncover the most surprising, shocking and bizarre facts about royal weddings” in Harry & Meghan: Royal Rebels. And on May 16 at 8.30, TVNZ 1 will premiere Prince Harry’s Story: Four Royal Weddings, which chronicles how three other royal weddings before his own have shaped Harry’s life with interviews from contributors who are speaking for the first time …

➢ TVNZ 1 will premiere Class of Mum and Dad at 8.30 on May 15. The Channel 4 experiment sends parents being back to school for one half-term while their 11-year-olds are in the classroom next door. “In a touchy-feely hour all too eager to pull on your heartstrings, it became clear that the kids are all right,” The Times said. “They casually told the programme that ‘we are all chilled out, we don’t really stress’, but the mums and dads were prone to bursting into tears at the prospect of a maths sum or a sports day” …

➢ Also new that week will be World’s Wildest Weather (Prime, 7.30 Wednesdays) while ending their runs will be Bancroft, The Great British Bake Off and The Seventies …

➢ TVNZ 1 is having to pull the Mrs Brown’s Boys Specials it was going to premiere from May 10. The broadcaster said they will screen at a later date because they couldn’t be delivered in time. In the meantime, TVNZ 1 will re-run older Mrs Brown’s Boys specials in the 8.30 Thursday slot …

➢ And Duke’s May 10 premiere of Taskmaster’s sixth season has been delayed a week. It will be replaced by an episode of South Park …

➢ Expect TVNZ OnDemand to stream the delayed Heathers from July 10. This is when it will premiere on Paramount Network TV in the US after its March launch was postponed in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting …

➢ Appearing this week and next on Prime’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will be: Jim Gaffigan, Attorney Michael Avenatti and David Chang (11.30 Thursday); Charlize Theron and Ron Howard (10.30 Friday); and Chris O’Donnell and a musical performance by Jack White (12.05am Tuesday) …

➢ Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, David Beckham and Joan Armatrading will guest on the May 18 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00) …

➢ The only network movie premiere in the week starting May 12 will be Deadpool (Three, 8.35 Sunday). Other coming attractions in HD will include:

  • The Fox and the Hound (TVNZ 2, 5.30 Saturday)
  • Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
  • The Guilt Trip (TVNZ 2, 8.40 Saturday)
  • Admission (Three, 10.30 Saturday)
  • Sahara (TVNZ 2, 10.40 Saturday)
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
  • Scream 2 (TVNZ 2, 12.00 Sunday)
  • The Equalizer (Duke, 9.00 Monday)
  • Rambo (Prime, 9.35 Monday)
  • Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Three, 7.30 Wednesday)
  • The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Three, 8.30 Thursday)
  • Resident Evil: Retribution (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Friday).
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11 Responses to “HD Heads-Up: May 3”


  1. Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier '/' in /home/customer/www/screenscribe.net/public_html/wp-content/themes/headlines/includes/theme-comments.php on line 66
     May 5, 2018 at 8:42 am

    Late last night (Fri 4th) I realised Three were starting Hawaii Five-0 Season 6. I set my Freeview recorder, so all is good, the frustrating thing is that i completely missed the last three eps from Season 5, so these are being sourced from alternative means, prior to this, I thought “Ahh, Ill check the Threenow app”… Unfortunately nothing – no sign of Hawaii Five-0, so much for a catch-up service.

  2. Philip May 5, 2018 at 10:21 am

    Yes, that’s a failing of catch-up services generally. Typically, streaming rights are limited to the last four eps of a current season, and box sets of previous seasons are rare. This is starting to change but will depend on how aggressively a network pursues stacking rights. TVNZ for instance, is far more ambitious with its streaming than MediaWorks, in everything from the range of content to quality of streams (TVNZ’s are 720p, MediaWorks’ 576i).

  3. May 5, 2018 at 7:02 pm

    You might as well download the entire season if you’re going to download it. Do not ever support delayed programming on TV.

  4. May 7, 2018 at 8:05 am

    I TRIED to do the right thing and wait – watch the shows I want via free to air networks …However, when the TV networks screw up schedules and make it impossible to keep up and follow the due to timing changes and dropping the show midway through the season (as they did for H5-0, then restating randomly) you kind of HAVE to do this if you want to follow the underlying storyline. Phil does an awesome job here with advanced warning of shows, but sometimes things drop through the cracks. Any news on binge watching Season 7 of Scandal on Freeview?

  5. Philip May 7, 2018 at 8:44 am

    Thanks for your kind words, Rosco. Since I started this site, the wealth of HD content has grown exponentially with the rise in streaming services. So, yes, more than a few things fall through the cracks. H50 I didn’t bother highlighting because it’s a repeat (given Three is two seasons behind the US, such programming is inexplicable). Scandal’s another example of a series whose fans have been poorly treated by its broadcaster. Fair enough it’s no longer in primetime but now that it’s ended in the US, why not burn off the last season ASAP overnight? Having repeated S6 overnight, I’m surprised TVNZ 2 didn’t follow it up with S7. I never got a response last time I inquired about its whereabout so will check again but presumably it will surface towards the end of the year, which has been the pattern for previous seasons.

  6. May 7, 2018 at 5:01 pm

    And HD channels are yet to be increased on Sky TV. Get back to Sky and make them broadcast in HD. I sadly won’t watch them until they start doing Sky5 and Discovery channels in HD.

  7. Philip May 9, 2018 at 5:59 pm

    Great news, Rosco — S7 of Scandal will premiere on May 21 and screen post-11.30pm Mondays and Tuesdays on TVNZ 2.

  8. May 10, 2018 at 8:02 am

    Fantastic, great news Phil – I’ll set my recorder for those inevitable late-night double eps! As an aside, do you know if any NZ broadcaster has picked up the recent 8 episode BBC (and Welsh broadcaster S4C) Keeping Faith? Seems to be smashing BBC iPlayer at the moment, so would be good to see it here (though it should be a Sunday night “thing”).

  9. Philip May 10, 2018 at 8:35 am

    Scandal will be single episodes only and I’ll check re Keeping Faith.

  10. Philip May 10, 2018 at 11:55 am

    You’ll have to keep the faith re Keeping the Faith, Rosco — it doesn’t appear to have been picked up here at this stage.

  11. May 10, 2018 at 2:53 pm

    And another one to download then …

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