HD Heads-Up: September 4 – 10

August 26, 2021 0 Comments

➢➢ Duke will commemorate 9/11 with three documentaries that it will strip in primetime from September 7. 9/11: Phone Calls from the Towers (8.30 Tuesday) is compiled from the thousands of recorded messages and private calls that were made from the doomed Twin Towers; The Last Secrets of 9/11 (8.30 Wednesday) follows a team from New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner as they identify the victims of the September 11 attacks from the fragments of human remains found in the debris of the World Trade Centre; 9/11 Control the Skies (8.30 Thursday) is billed as a “tense look” at the air traffic controllers who, following the morning’s four devastating crashes, had to bring 167 planes to ground without incident …

➢➢ Duke also will refresh its post-Paralympics schedule with late-night repeats of its afternoon ABC World News Tonight broadcasts, an 8.30 Friday double-ep of Family Guy, the 11.30 Monday premiere of Mr Pickles (which also will be available to stream on TVNZ OnDemand’s animated [adult swim] channel), the S2 premiere of Raw Recruits (10.30 Wednesday) and, if you missed it on TVNZ 1, its premiere of S29 of Top Gear (9.30 Thursday) …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will spring clean its schedule, too, with a new overnight Sunday line-up of true-crime shows, the return of Inside Taronga Zoo (7.30 Sundays from September 5), the stripping of Celebrity Treasure Island 7.30 Monday-Wednesday, new Kiwi characters showcase Jono & Ben: Good Sports (8.00 Thursdays from September 9), and the series premieres of Girls5eva (9.10 Mondays from September 6) and I Can See Your Voice (7.30 Fridays from September 10) …

➢➢ Girls5eva, which can be streamed OnDemand, is a musical comedy about a one-hit wonder girl band from the 1990s who reunite 28 years later. The acclaimed Tina Fey-produced show earned a 97% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which summed it up thus: “Smart, funny, and just nostalgic enough, Girls5eva‘s intelligent insights are brought to brilliant life by its talented quartet, whose individual gifts come together to make sweet comedic harmony” …

➢➢ I Can See Your Voice is the latest in novel variety formats: Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines and vocalist Adrienne Bailon-Houghton join host Ken Jeong and a rotating panel of “celebrity detectives” to help contestants distinguish between good and bad singers without hearing them sing a note …

➢➢ Going to air the same time as their OnDemand premieres will be the true-crime triple-bill of In Defence Of (12.50am Monday), Assassins (1.35am Monday) and Relentless With Kate Snow (2.25am Monday). Defence explores the complex lawyer-client relationships of legendary trials, Assassins is a 2017 Donal MacIntyre series about Irish contract killers, and Relentless concerns grieving families seeking the killers of their loved ones …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 also is bringing back a Rowan Atkinson icon in an HD-remastered collection to mark the 30th anniversary of Mr. Bean. It will screen 7.00 Sundays following a repeat of Happy Birthday Mr. Bean the night before on TVNZ 1 — which will follow Call the Midwife: Special Delivery (8.35), in which cast and crew celebrate 10 years of highlights …

➢➢ Finding Escobar’s Millions (Three, 9.10 Thursdays from September 9) is a new Discovery series about two former DEA agents who, having spent their careers hunting down Colombian narcos, return to Colombia to search for Pablo Escobar’s buried treasure …

➢➢ Also new will be Great Barrier Reef With Russell Crowe (Three, 4.55 Saturdays from September 4) and World’s Most Unexplained (Prime, 10.35 Saturdays from September 4), which probes some of the most-extraordinary happenings that science can’t explain, starting with priest Padre Pio’s stigmata – a phenomenon that sends shockwaves through the Catholic Church …

➢➢ Returning for its seventh season will be The Red Stag Timber Hunters Club (Prime, 8.30 Monday) while ending their runs will be The Block NZ, Artefact, The Undateables, Taskmaster and Kings Cross ER …

➢➢ There will be two network movie premieres in the week starting September 4: How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Three, 7.00 Saturday) and Charlie’s Angels (Three, 8.00 Sunday). Other HD coming attractions will include: