HD Heads-Up: September 5 – 11

TV1 will conclude its NZ Sunday Theatre season on September 6 with the true-crime dramatisation, The Monster of Mangatiti.

True crimes have dominated the season, which opened with How to Murder Your Wife and continued with Venus and Mars.

All three were produced by Screentime NZ, which also made Underbelly NZ and produces Police Ten 7.

Monster stars Greta Gregory as a 19-year-old who was sexually enslaved for 20 weeks in a remote bush hut by a middle-aged predator (The Hobbit’s Mark Mitchinson).

Heather Walsh, who was one of four teenagers Bill Cornelius allegedly raped, also narrates the telemovie and is interviewed as part of the narrative.

Gregory was last seen in an episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, a second series of which soon will air on Prime (the first has just been released on Blu-ray in the US but here can be bought only on DVD).

TV1 also will premiere in HD Kid Criminals (9.30 Tuesday), a two-part Channel 4 documentary about a juvenile prison in Indiana that specialises in the treatment of young sex offenders.

Other HD highlights include World’s Worst Holiday Horrors (TV2, 9.30 Tuesday), a new season of George Clarke: Restoration Man (TV1, 7.30 Thursday) and the finals of Word Up, Struggle Street, The Mentalist, Strippers, Surveillance Oz and Aquarius (which is due next month on Blu-ray).

TV2 also has two network movie premieres: The Great Gatsby (8.40 Saturday) and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (8.30 Sunday).

Other coming attractions include Flushed Away (TV2, 7.00 Saturday), Drive Angry (TV2, 11.30 Saturday), Project X (TV2, 1.35am Sunday), Ted (TV3, 8.30 Sunday), Martha Marcy May Marlene (TV3, 10.40 Sunday) and Prometheus (TV3, 8.40 Wednesday).