HD Heads-Up: TV > April 11 – 17

➢➢ TVNZ 2 and Three will use their Easter weekend programming to help launch new-look schedules. Three’s overhaul will be spearheaded by David Lomas Investigates (7.30 Tuesdays from April 14), in which the top-rating Lost and Found star travels the world to try to solve complex New Zealand mysteries. It opens with his search for the parents of a newborn baby abandoned in a Palmerston North phone box 57 years ago …

➢➢ Three also will resume season 12 of Bondi Rescue: the 7.00 Easter Monday premiere will precede its weekly 7.30 Wednesday slot (on a double-bill with re-runs of S10). Wednesdays also will be beefed up with the returns of 9-1-1 (from episode seven of S3) and Hawaii Five-O (from episode eight of S8) …

➢➢ Three also will double-bill an Easter Monday repeat of the original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory at 7.30 with the 9.40 premiere of Inside Cadbury: Chocolate Secrets Unwrapped, a behind-the-scenes look at the Cadbury factory in Bournville, where a team of chocolate scientists tackle the company’s biggest challenge: dramatically reducing sugar from the iconic Dairy Milk recipe. “This show should have been a soothing sweet treat,” quipped The Guardian. “Instead, it was an hour of tedium that led to a long dark night of the soul” …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will air the Rebel Wilson-fronted designer dog contest, Pooch Perfect, twice-weekly from April 15. It will screen in 90-minute instalments on Wednesdays (7.30) and Thursdays (8.00). The series has been a ratings dog in Australia, where the second and third episodes suffered a steep audience decline. Read the Daily Mail’s headline: “Channel Seven may be forced to put down Pooch Perfect as it bombs harder than My Kitchen Rules” …

➢➢ “This feels like a dead-end for reality TV, a last exhausted gasp,” the Sydney Morning Herald said. “Pooch Perfect isn’t quite a dog of a show, but it’s nothing to bark at” …

➢➢ TVNZ 2 will lead off the week with the return of The Amazing Race Australia (7.30 Mondays and Tuesdays, 7.00 Sundays) and the premiere of Prison Girls: Life Inside (8.45 Monday). The latter is billed as “an intimate and in-depth look at what it’s like to be a woman incarcerated in an American jail”,  the Western Massachusetts Regional Woman’s Correctional Centre …

➢➢ India’s Wild Eden (TVNZ 1, 7.50 Sunday) is a “visually stunning” David Attenborough documentary about the natural wonders of India’s largest state, Karnataka: although it makes up just 5% of the country’s landmass, it is home to 25% of all its animal species …

➢➢ Warship: Life at Sea (Duke, 9.50 Wednesday) follows the crew of the HMS Duncan on a seven-month deployment to the Mediterranean and Black Sea, where they fiercely encounter the Russian air force. Said The Telegraph of the 2018 production: “Let’s hope this is exaggerated – else we’re on the brink of all-out war with Russia” …

➢➢ Returning for new seasons will be Grey’s Anatomy (TVNZ 2, 9.45 Monday), George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces Specials (TVNZ 1, 7.30 Thursday), The Graham Norton Show (Three, 8.25 Thursday), NCIS: New Orleans (Prime, 8.30 Friday) and Playing For Keeps (TVNZ 1, 10.30 Friday) while ending their runs will be Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, Billy Connolly’s Great American Trail and New Amsterdam.