HD Heads-Up: September 12 – 18

Emmy-nominee American Crime makes its criminally belated free-to-air HD debut the same week TV1 launches two other top dramas and TV3 premieres The X Factor UK.

American Crime will screen 11.00 Tuesdays from September 15, six months after its TVNZ Ondemand SD run and just ahead of it possibly winning up to 10 Emmy Awards, including best miniseries.

Moreover, it’s not a cable TV drama from the likes of HBO or Showtime but a network TV commission from 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley.

About the courtroom aftermath of a home invasion that goes awry, it “deals heavily with racial themes, religion, class and sexuality”.

Acclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle: “With grit, guts and some of the best performances you’ll see on TV this year, American Crime aims for truth and pulls no punches getting there.”

The Los Angeles Times agreed: “With its frank examination of race, gender and class, American Crime is a gratifying breakthrough for television and a truly golden child of the age.”

But clearly TV1’s programmers are readers of The Huffington Post, which thought it “predictable and lacking in depth”, and IndieWire: “Rather than let human connections on screen create naturally empathetic feelings in the audience, each scene is driven home with a blunt force too heavy for the story’s strengths.”

Also new on TV1 will be the Sunday night combo of Winter and Ordinary Lies.

The former has been dubbed a “Broadchurch lite” spun off the Rebecca Gibney telemovie, The Killing Field (the cast includes Antonia Prebble); the latter, from the writer of The Driver and Clocking Off, is set in a car showroom and concerns a white lie that turns disconcertingly dark.

While The Telegraph thought the first episode of the six-part Ordinary Lies “implausible“, the Mirror reported (spoiler alert) “it’s safe to say it thrilled viewers [who] flocked to Twitter in their droves to praise the interwoven BBC drama”.

Other newcomers for the week starting September 12 include a behind-the-scenes preview of season three of The Blacklist (TV3, 10.30 Sunday) and the return of Benefits Street (TV1, 8.30 Wednesday), Highway Patrol (TV2, 8.00 Thursday), and, for the first time in HD, Allan Carr: Chatty Man (TV1, 9.30 Thursday).

TV3 will screen The X Factor UK Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7.30 — re-runs of The Simpsons will shift to 7pm Saturday — and X Factor’s September 16 launch will precede the network movie premiere of World’s End.

The week’s other coming attractions in HD include: The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (TV2, 7.00 Saturday), The Other Man (TV2, 11.45 Saturday), End of Watch (TV2, 1.35am Sunday), Death Clique (TV2, 3.25am Sunday), Water for Elephants (TV3, 8.00 Sunday), Click (TV2, 8.30 Sunday), Hostel Part III (TV2, 10.40 Sunday), Inglourious Basterds (TV3, 11.00 Sunday) and She’s Out of My League (TV3, 8.35 Thursday).