HD Heads-Up: November 9 – 15

➢➢ Serengeti (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Tuesdays from November 12) is a six-part wildlife series about the “animal families” inhabiting Serengeti’s magnificent Pride Lands. The series proclaimed itself to be groundbreaking but compromised its stunning photography with banal anthropomorphism. Said The Guardian: “The undeniably spectacular footage has been manipulated into storylines by drama writers and given an extra flourish by music commissioned not so much to tug on viewers’ heartstrings as to yank them into submission.” Echoed The Telegraph: “This nature series looks amazing but its constructed stories are bizarrely childish” …

➢➢ TVNZ 1 also is picking up the acclaimed Australian drama that TVNZ OnDemand’s been streaming, Sunshine (9.55 Saturdays from November 9). It concerns an aspiring Sudanese-Australian basketball player entangled in a police investigation of a teenage girl’s assault …

➢➢ Grand Designs: The Street (Three, 9.05 Mondays from November 11) follows 10 households on an epic five-year mission to construct their own homes and create a brand-new street in Britain’s biggest self-build project. The Evening Standard thought it “solidly built, rigidly structured” …

➢➢ Prime will reinvigorate Sunday nights from November 10 with the premiere of Griff’s Great Kiwi Road Trip and the return of The Brokenwood Mysteries. The former is a four-part off-the-beaten track tour of NZ from south to north that he made after the six-part Griff Off the Rails: Down Under …

➢➢ Also new to Prime will be Spending Secrets of the Royals (7.30 Tuesday), a supposedly “eye-opening documentary” about what’s on the Royals’ taxpayer-funded shopping list, and Bros … After the Screaming Stops (8.30 Wednesday), which is billed as a “raw and emotional” look into the aftermath of fame and the eventual reconnection of the twins torn were one of the biggest ’80s bands in the world …

➢➢ Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle will go head-to-head on November 10 when TVNZ 2 will premiere the sequel opposite Three’s re-run of the original. The same night Maori TV will premiere The Death of Stalin …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will screen the mother of Big Momma’s House marathons on November 9, when the three movies will air back-to-back from 7.00. Other HD coming attractions will include:

• The Princess Bride (Three, 7.00 Saturday)
• Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (Maori TV, 7.00 Saturday)
• A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 (TVNZ 2, 9.35 Saturday)
• Oldboy (Three, 11.00 Saturday)
  
• Remember the Titans (TVNZ 2, 1.05am Sunday)
• Annabelle 2: Creation (TVNZ 2, 12.20am Monday)
• Hangman (Prime, 9.35 Monday)
• Tommy Boy (Duke, 8.30 Friday)
• The Way Way Back (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday) …

➢➢ Three will screen the 2019 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards (8.30 November 14) on the back of the 7.30 premiere of Moving Out With Kanoa, in which The Project’s Kanoa Lloyd follows Kiwis who leave their communities to pursue a change in lifestyle and new opportunities …

➢➢ Returning for new runs that week will be The Casketeers (TVNZ 1, 7.00 Saturday), The Russell Howard Hour (Duke, 9.30 Thursday) and Doc Martin (TVNZ 1, 8.40 Friday) while ending their runs will be The Clinton Affair, Motorbike Cops, Zombody Save Me!, Ghosts and Madam Secretary …

➢➢ Spiky Gold Hunters (Duke, 8.30 Wednesdays from November 13) follows six sea urchin hunters risking all to source “the gastronomic equivalent of diamonds” for fine diners around the globe …

➢➢ A November 13 double-episode of The Block Australia will pre-empt The Rookie …

➢➢ Dame Julie Andrews, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Anniston and Sir Ian McKellen will appear on the November 15 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00).