HD Heads-Up: The Good Wife, Come Fly With Me

The Good Wife's Julianna Marguiles

Although some publications, such as the NZ Herald website, continue to report The Good Wife as screening tonight, TV3 won’t premiere season two of the HD drama until next week.

It originally scheduled the premiere for 9.30 tonight, after The Gruen Transfer failed to fire, but then bumped it for a double-episode of House.

US critics suggest the wait will be worthwhile: “It’s getting difficult to keep coming up with superlatives for this sophomore-season drama, especially with a thrilling and tantalising episode like tonight’s” (Entertainment Weekly); “raises its emotional game almost instantly” (TV Guide); “verdict: guilty — of being a guilty pleasure” (New York Post).

Watch also for a new HD series soon to land on TV3 called Come Fly With Me, from the Little Britain crew.

It will screen 10pm Fridays, after Super City completes its run.

British critics scorned the realty TV parody for its crude caricatures but the show was a hit and a second series is in the works.

The deal was announced in a BBC Worldwide press release about NZ sales that was circulated to international trade publications but not locally, because the networks feared it would be insensitive to publicise amid extensive news coverage of the Christchurch earthquake.

Most of the latest BBC Worldwide deals were done with Prime, which is frustrating as it means the likes of Human Planet, Polar Bear – Spy on the Ice, Upstairs Downstairs and DCI Banks won’t screen here in HD — indeed, you might as well order Human Planet on Blu-ray from the UK, as Prime doesn’t plan to broadcast the Planet Earth successor for several months.

Mind you, there’s no guarantee TVNZ will screen any of its purchases in HD, either.

Asked if TV One would air in HD the “glitzy crime series”, Mad Dogs, a publicist said: “No decision has been made on our broadcast format of this series as yet.”