HD Heads-Up: September 12-18

September 3, 2026 0 Comments

➢➢ Duke spruces up for spring with a new weeknight line-up that includes the inspired teaming of The Paper and Colin From Accounts (8.30/9.05 Monday). The first season of the Office-type mockumentary The Paper was on TVNZ 2 but clearly didn’t make ratings headlines, hence its relegation to Duke. But it’s a good match for the third and final season of the hilarious Aussie rom-com. The latter is another TVNZ 2 reject, along with Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. S3 was sidelined to Saturday nights on Duke and S4 blasts off 8.30 Friday to coincide with the original’s 60th anniversary (and includes the long-awaited puppet episode). The channel’s fourth newcomer is self-explanatory reality show Trace, Track, Get My Car Back (8.30 Thursday). Duke also refreshes late-night by stripping post-midnight the 2000s drama about traumatised 9/11 firefighters, Rescue Me …

➢➢ S7 of Taskmaster NZ anchors Monday and Tuesdays on TVNZ 2 at 7.30. It follows the September 6 premiere of the UK version (7.30 Sundays). Monday’s launch leads into a new Mel Giedroyc-fronted series, The Way Out, at 8.30. It’s a British remake of a Belgian format based on escape rooms. “While The Way Out is an enjoyable hour, it still looks like it was more fun to film than to watch,” said Chortle …

➢➢ Three hopes to strengthen its Thursday night comedy foundations with the 8.30 premiere of Good Bones, a Kiwi comedy with sound creative credentials about a timid banker who buys a money pit with a sinister past. All six episodes are being released at the same time on ThreeNow. Also new to Three is season eight of FBI, which opens with a double-episode (9.00/10.00 Monday). Diehard fans already can stream the procedural on Neon …

➢➢ Sundays get a makeover on TVNZ 1 with the season premieres of Moving Houses (7.30) and A Remarkable Place to Die (8.30). The former opens with the delivery of two custom Fox Cabins by Black Hawk helicopter to a remote ridge-top site on Kawau Island; the latter parallels Anais’ unofficial investigation into Maja’s murder with the discovery of a woman who vanished 15 years earlier. In DNZ: Sleep (8.30 Monday), Al Brown explores why thousands of Kiwis struggle to nod off …

➢➢ Sky Opens rebuilds Wednesdays with George Clarke’s Adventures in Americana (7.30) and Oops I Bought a Pub (8.30). Americana screened earlier this year on TVNZ 1 while Pub has Aussie comedian Shane Jacobson renovating an historic pub. Fake (10.00 Friday) is the acclaimed Australian drama streaming on ThreeNow, about a lonely writer (Asher Keddie) falling for a rich grazier (David Wenham) who may not be fair dinkum. Double-eps lead into the S4 premiere of Kairakau (midnight Friday) …

➢➢ Other comings and goings: S4 of The Sullivans starts (TVNZ 2, 5.00 Sunday) while ending their runs are: