HD Heads-Up: October 9 – 15

➢➢ You could be forgiven for thinking TVNZ 1’s programmers had moved channels — to Discovery’s HGTV. Primetime on the network has become swamped with property and lifestyle series, the latest addition being Moving Houses (7.30 Tuesdays from October 12), in which the PM’s fiance and TV fishing guide Clarke Gayford “takes us on the journeys of New Zealand families, couples, and adventurous individuals who have a dream to move the house they most want to buy” …

➢➢ The same week TVNZ 1 will premiere Space Invaders (7.00 Saturday), an Australian series about how to declutter your house. Peter Walsh, who helped Oprah Winfrey to reorganise her home, will co-present the programme with a house flipper-renovator and a treasure hunter …

➢➢ The other free-to-air network that targets 25-54 year-olds is adopting the same strategy. Three will use the October 12 launch of Married at First Sight UK (7.30 weeknights) to overhaul primetime with more lifestyle and reality content, including re-runs of Grand Designs NZ (7.30 Saturdays) and:

• Naked and Afraid of Love (9.00 Tuesdays): 16 strangers “bare it all in the ultimate challenge” of survival, romance and everything in between (“Once you get past the repetitive first episode, Naked and Afraid of Love looks like it’ll be an interesting experiment,” Decider reckons of the Discovery+ series) …
• Love It Or List It Australia (8.30 Wednesdays): antipodean take on TVNZ 1’s UK hit, which recently aired in the same slot …

➢➢ Three will burn off primetime cop show LA’s Finest late-night Sundays from October 10, where the remaining six S2 eps will follow the movie …

➢➢ The Times called The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne (Prime, 8.35 Thursday) “a case study in how much one man can get away with and still be loved like the nation’s amusing eccentric uncle. How many of us would be warmly forgiven for taking barrel-loads of cocaine, being rampantly unfaithful, chomping off the heads of live winged creatures, trying to choke one’s wife to death while in an alcoholic delirium? Only Ozzy Osbourne. The man is unique” …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will screen live the first Cadbury Netball Series game between the Silver Ferns and Aotearoa Men (7.00 Sunday) but the remaining matches in the series will be exclusive to Sky …

➢➢ The UnXplained With William Shatner (Duke, 8.30 Wednesday) continues the Star Trek icon’s inexplicable primetime longevity. In this History channel series, he captains a crew of scientists, historians, witnesses and experiencers who seek to “shed light on how the seemingly impossible actually can happen” …

➢➢ Also new that week will be S3 of The Great Kiwi Bake Off (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Thursday), which will be double-billed with Extreme Cake Makers, while ending their runs will be The Royals Revealed, Lego Masters Australia, The Walking Dead, Jono & Ben: Good Sports and The Great British Sewing Bee …

➢➢ There will be only one network movie premiere in the week starting October 9: The Dead Don’t Die (TVNZ 2, 10.40 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions will include:

• Jem and the Holograms (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday)
• Yellowbird (Maori TV, 7.00 Saturday)
• Victoria and Abdul (Three, 8.25 Saturday)
• Trinity (Duke, 8.30 Saturday)
• Theeb (Maori TV, 8.40 Saturday)
• Horrible Bosses (TVNZ 2, 9.10 Saturday)
• Split (Three, 10.30 Saturday)
• The Avengers (TVNZ 2, 12.25 Sunday)
  
• Starsky & Hutch (TVNZ 2, 8.30 Sunday)
• Bright Young Things (Maori TV, 8.30 Sunday)
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Three, 8.40 Sunday)
• 28 Weeks Later (Duke, 10.30 Sunday)
• Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn (Prime, 9.35 Monday)
• Collateral Damage (Duke, 8.30 Tuesday)
• 21 Bridges (Three, 8.30 Friday)
• Into the Blue (Maori TV, 8.30 Friday)
• Green Lantern (Duke, 9.30 Friday).