HD Heads-Up: October 12 – 18

➢➢ Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson, Rafe Spall, Robert Carlyle and Rupert Graves star in the first British television adaptation of The War of the Worlds (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Sunday). TVNZ 1 is billing the three-part space invaders series as a “world premiere” ahead of the the BBC announcing a date for its own telecast. This version is set in Edwardian England, which Slash Film predicts will provide “a much different take on the material than we’ve seen on screen before. Almost all adaptations of H.G. Wells’ story have been set in the modern time in which the project was produced. But we haven’t seen anyone tackle the story in a different era” …

➢➢ Season two of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s Wellington Paranormal (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Wednesday) will open with a trip to the beach, when anglers start disappearing around Wellington Harbour in strange circumstances. It’s being double-billed with the premiere of Zombody Save Me!, in which eight Kiwis battle each other and zombies over five days and nights to try to win $10,000 …

➢➢ TVNZ 2’s programming sense of humour continues with Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok having its network movie premiere the same week (7.00 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions for that week will include:

• Cool Runnings (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Beethoven’s 2nd (Maori TV, 7.00 Saturday)
• Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Prime, 8.30 Saturday)
• The Legend of Hercules (TVNZ 2, 8.50 Saturday)
• Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (TVNZ 1, 9.30 Saturday)
• Trainwreck (Three, 9.30 Saturday)
• John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (Duke, 9.30 Saturday)
• 300: Rise of an Empire (TVNZ 2, 10.45 Saturday)
• The Cheerleader Murders (Three, 12.15am Sunday)
• Dirty Dancing (Three, 8.30 Sunday)
• Aliko & Ambai (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• Godzilla (TVNZ 2, 9.30 Sunday)
• Carrie (TVNZ 2, 12.45am Monday)
• Bastille Day (Prime, 8.30 Monday)
• Miss Congeniality (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Tuesday)
• St. Elmo’s Fire (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (Three, 7.30 Thursday)
• Hudson Hawk (Duke, 8.30 Friday)
• I Know What You Did Last Summer (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday) …

➢➢ Three will follow Dirty Dancing on Monday at 8.35 with I Am Patrick Swayze, a tribute to the actor through untold stories, exclusive interviews, home movies and family photos. “Director Adrian Buitenhuis made the revealing documentary I Am Heath Ledger two years ago, and he brings the same meticulous research to this project,” said The Australian …

➢➢ Five Bedrooms (Prime, 8.30 Tuesday) is a new Australian comedy-drama with a premise that sounds like a property show format: Five disparate singles try to survive under the same roof when they buy a house together. The Sydney Morning Herald thought it “a breath of fresh air in the world of commercial television, a home-grown drama with a good dollop of comedy that addresses some of the hot-button issues of our time without feeling preachy or overly contrived” …

➢➢ The Borneo Case (Maori TV, 8.30 Monday) chronicles the destruction of the Borneo rainforest and the hunt for billions of dollars that were filtered into offshore accounts and property portfolios all around the world …

➢➢ Prodigal Son (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Monday) is primetime’s latest procedural with a gimmick, starring The Walking Dead’s Tom Payne as an NYPD psychologist who gets inside the minds of murderers using not only his own twisted genius but also the expertise of his serial-killer dad (Michael Sheen) …

➢➢ Cruising With Jane McDonald (Prime, 7.30 Sunday) joins the broadcaster on a mega-cruise in The Caribbean with 4,300 other passengers, a boutique cruise on a converted trawler round the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, a ‘Cold Water Cruise’ along the coastline of Alaska, and a super-luxurious, super-classy River Cruise up the Danube from Budapest and in to Southern Germany …

➢➢ Truck Night In America (Prime, 8.30 Friday) is a new reality series about the world’s toughest obstacle course for truck drivers. Website DriveTribe says “it isn’t on the same level as The Grand Tour, but gives you something to do to space out watching repeats of Grand Tour and TG [Top Gear]” …

➢➢ Returning for new seasons will be Dog Squad (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Tuesday), Highway Cops (TVNZ 1, 8.00 Tuesday) and I Am (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Tuesday) while ending their runs will be Making NZ, NCIS: LA, The Resident, How To Get Away With Murder, Traffic Cops, and 7 Days …

➢➢ Renee Zellweger, Lenny Henry, Louis Theroux and Andrew Ridgeley will appear on the October 18 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.00).