HD Heads-Up: October 16 – 22

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will bring back a reinvented The Voice Australia to anchor Thursday and Friday nights from October 21. Season 10 of the singing competition went to air two months ago on the Seven Network — the winner was announced in mid-September — with a new look and four “superstar coaches”: Keith Urban, Rita Ora, Guy Sebastian, and Jessica Mauboy. The show will air 8.00 Thursdays and 7.30 Fridays …

➢➢ News.com.au reports this season was “a ratings smash for Seven, who poached the show from Nine last year in an unexpected move that saw that network insist The Voice ‘had become by far the poorest financial performer’ on their slate. Not so at Seven, where it launched to massive ratings off the back of the Olympics and consistently drew more viewers than Nine’s usual sure-fire ratings winner The Block” …

➢➢ TVNZ 1 will unleash its own variation on UK hit The Dog House, Barkley Manor (8.00 Mondays from October 18), complete with voiceover by dog-mad Martin Clunes. It’s set in an Auckland doggy daycare centre that English ex-pat Krista Strong set up to provide premium dog training, puppy pre-school and grooming in a country park retreat. Reads the blurb: “From helping rescue dogs work through teenage anxiety, to composing songs for schnoodles, and wheeling Rottweilers around in prams, we’ll follow their every leap and bound” …

➢➢ Royals Declassified (TVNZ 1, 9.35 Saturday) is a three-part Channel 4 series about the Queen’s intimate relationships with her Prime Ministers, her marriage to Prince Philip, and how a Soviet spy was able to work for years in Buckingham Palace. Said The Guardian: “Counterintuitive though it might be, there seems to be a constitutional requirement that documentaries – usually long and turgid – are produced whenever the smallest scrap of paper about the royal family becomes open to public scrutiny. This one is no better or worse than most” …

➢➢ Good With Wood (TVNZ 1, 8.30 Friday) is another Channel 4 series, in which presenter Mel Giedroyc (The Great British Bake Off) challenges nine woodworkers to craft beautiful and ambitious builds to exacting briefs amid the backdrop of a “stunning woodland setting”. What sounds like the perfect stablemate for The Repair Shop was billed as “carpentry’s answer to The Great British Bake Off” when it screened under the title of Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker…

➢➢ One of NZ’s most promising comedic talents of the 1990s, David Downs (Away Laughing), opens up about experiencing A Mild Touch of Cancer (Prime, 8.30 Tuesday). After being diagnosed as terminal, he underwent innovative treatment in the US and is now completely well …

➢➢ Duke will ‘premiere’ two series in the week starting October 16: the variable but compelling sci-fi sensation Mr Robot (10.55 Sunday), which originally streamed on Lightbox and will stream in its entirety on TVNZ OnDemand from October 22; and the four-part documentary series, The Life and Trials of Oscar Pistorius (11.10 Wednesday) …

➢➢ Whitney Houston & Bobbi Kristina: Didn’t We Almost (Prime, 8.35 Thursday) is a Lifetime documentary about the parallel lives of singer Whitney Houston and her daughter …

➢➢ The Graham Norton Show (Three, 9.00 Thursday) will return for a new season with guests Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Rami Malek and Ed Sheeran. It will be double-billed with S15 re-runs of Live at the Apollo …

➢➢ Also returning will be Australian Nija Warrior (Three, 7.00 Sunday) while ending their runs will be Traffic Cops and Have You Been Paying Attention? …

• Moana (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• The Croods (Maori TV, 7.00 Saturday)
• Truth or Dare (Three, 8.30 Saturday)
• My Brilliant Career (Maori TV, 8.40 Saturday)
• Vacation (TVNZ 2, 8.50)
• The Grudge (Duke, 9.25 Saturday)
• Misunderstandings of Miscarriage (Three, 10.30 Saturday)
• Meet the Parents (TVNZ 2, 12.10 Sunday)
• Doctor Strange (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
• Rashomon (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• Flatliners (TVNZ 2, 10.50 Sunday)
• The Cell (Prime, 9.35 Monday)
• The Hunt for Red October (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• Uptown Girls (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday)
• 3 Days to Kill (Three, 9.00 Friday)
• X-Men: First Class (Duke, 9.30 Friday)
• T2 Trainspotting (TVNZ 2, 3.10am Saturday).