HD Heads-Up: October 11
October 11, 2018 
9 Comments
➢➢ Holy cow! The Spectator reckons TVNZ 1’s new reality TV series, Bad Habits, Holy Orders (8.35 Tuesdays from October 23), could be “the best documentary series of the past decade”. The premise? Five party girls abandon booze, boys and smartphones and move into a Catholic convent for four weeks of life-changing spiritual guidance. Said The Spectator: “While all this was entertaining enough, and sometimes quite affecting, the most revealing aspects of the programme were, I’d suggest, inadvertent: specifically about our contradictory attitudes to hedonism, and even more specifically, to any pretty young women who embrace it” …
➢➢ Others were less impressed, with The Times speculating the 2017 series would haven’t been hard to pitch to Channel 5. “‘Think Sister Act,’ the executive would say, ‘crossed with St Trinian’s.’ Then, more sheepishly, wiping the froth off his chin: ‘It’s basically some party girls in G-strings in a convent.’ And lo it came to pass” …
➢➢ The same week TVNZ 1 will lift the lid on Britain’s Best Home Cook (7.30 Wednes-days), in which The Great British Bake Off’s Mary Berry puts wannabe chefs through their paces. The Telegraph dubbed it “an overegged attempt to recreate Bake Off’s glory days” after the BBC lost the series to Channel 4 …
➢➢ Also new that week will be Meghan and Harry: The Next Chapter (TVNZ 1, 7.00 Sunday), which charts the first 100 days of the royal couple’s marriage, and the latest seasons of 800 Words (8.55 Wednesday) and Ambulance (Prime, 9.30 Thursday) while ending their runs will be Shop Well for Less, Restaurant SOS, Bride and Prejudice UK, and All Round to Mrs Brown’s …
➢➢ Prime will premiere Jesus Christ Superstar Live! as a Labour weekend Prime Rocks special (8.30 Sunday). Praised the New York Times: “A conceptual and artistic triumph, NBC’s live telecast of Jesus Christ Superstar on Easter Sunday may have 
finally justified the recent live musical fad on network TV. Some technical flubs and one mixed-bag lead performance aside, the production was genuinely thrilling, taking chances with the staging of a classic but controversial Broadway show, much more daring than previous live musical broadcasts like The Sound of Music or Peter Pan” …
➢➢ Prime will precede Superstar with World’s Tiniest Masterpieces, in which micro-sculptor Willard Wigan creates art that fits in the eye of a needle. Said the Daily Mail: “It’s a pity the show didn’t devote more energy to capturing crystal-clear images, and less to jokey trick effects that had Willard running across a watchmaker’s workbench. The documentary was at its best when we simply watched him work. It’s rare for a TV biography of an artist to be so moving” …
➢➢ Late scheduling changes: TVNZ 2 will move low-rating Imposters to 10.55 Tuesdays from October 16, after a 10.20 re-run of 2 Broke Girls and 10.10 helping of Great Kiwi Bake Off: Extra Slice (which originally was going to be OnDemand only); Duke has pulled American Pickers mid-season and from October 17 will replace with World’s Greatest Bridges …
➢➢ Whoopi Goldberg, Jamie Dornan, Rosamund Pike, Harry Connick Jr and South Korean boy band BTS will appear on October 26’s The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00) while scheduled this week and next for TVNZ 1’s The Ellen DeGeneres Show (9am/2pm weekdays) are: Mark Wahlberg and Fleetwood Mac, including new Kiwi member Neil Finn (today); Jennifer Garner and Kacey Musgraves (tomorrow); Jenna Fischer and Simon Cowell (Monday); Melissa McCarthy and Mary Halsey (Tuesday); Dakota Johnson and Ken Jeong (Wednesday); and Ryan Gosling and Lenny Kravitz (Thursday) …
➢➢ Tuesday’s 20/20 (TVNZ 1, 9.30) will feature the first on-camera interview with Elizabeth Thomas, who was taken at age 15 by her Tennessee high school teacher, panicking friends and family and sparking a 38-day nationwide manhunt …
➢➢ The only HD free-to-air movie premiere for the week starting October 20 will be Maori TV’s Anomalisa (8.30 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions that week will include:
- Hotel Transylvania (TVNZ 2. 7.00 Saturday)
- Unbroken (Three, 9.15 Saturday)
- Kill Bill: Volume 1 (TVNZ 2, 11.30 Saturday)
- The Man With the Iron Fists (Three, 11.55 Saturday)
- Homefront (TVNZ 2, 1.30am Sunday)
- The Little Mermaid (TVNZ 2, 6.40am Sunday)
- White House Down (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
- Fifty Shades of Grey (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
- Oculus (TVNZ 2, 11.45 Sunday)
- Walking With Dinosaurs (Three, 3.10 Monday)
- The Scorpion King (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
- Fair Game (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
- Act of Valor (Three, 8.30 Thursday)
- Bulletproof Monk (Duke, 8.30 Friday)
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday)
- National Treasure: The Book of Secrets (TVNZ 2, 8.35 Friday).
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October 11, 2018 at 11:21 am
With the start of the NBA season from next week, I’m not seeing it on Duke’s scheduling. Has it gone the way of the NFL and Bundesliga? Has Duke given up on FTA sports in not looking to renew contracts? Will the AFL be renewed next season? Will Formula E still be on Duke in 2019? Will we start having to pay for all our sport again?
Whoops! Thanks for the reminder, Mike. I was going to update this as part of a bigger post on Duke but time got the better of me. Will post an update shortly (but the news isn’t good).
And where’s Bob’s Burgers these days? TV3 used to play it within seven days of US screening, but it’s notably absent this year. Has it been nabbed by someone else now, or are TV3 planning some sort of comedy block for next year?
Good news (and bad), Malx: Bob’s Burgers will be back on Three’s menu, but not until next year.
I’ll cope, at least it’s on the telly. Not a fan of all this streaming stuff. Thanks!
Hi Phil, Can’t seem to find 800 Words this week, has it been bumped?
Hi Rosco. That’s because it doesn’t premiere until next week (October 24). The Heads-Up columns largely cover network HD content that will be on air for the week starting nine days later. That’s the earliest I can run some of the programming details because of network embargoes.
Hi Phil, Thanks for coming back to me. I think it’s just me mis-interpreting your titles, when I saw HD Heads Up dated October 11, I assumed it was a heads up for this week. There seemed to be only one mention of the actual week this article was based around – “Bad Habits, Holy Orders (8.35 Tuesdays from October 23)” and as this was something I wasn’t at all interested in, I skimmed over the date/week reference. There are lots of other dates and times mentioned in this article, but only one teeny mention of the week the article was based – must read more closely (even if it’s about more cookery/baking/makeover shows!)
Thanks for your thoughts, Rosco. I used to subtitle HD Heads-Up the week to which it referred. Then I tweaked the format of the column to also include content outside of those seven days. The idea was to run it 2-3 times a week but such is my limited resourcing of this site that it largely remains a weekly column. Given your confusion, I may return to the original format.