HD TV Heads-Up: October 27-November 1

There’s good cop/bad cop show news for HD fans of the genre.

The superlative Southland ends its late-night season-three run on October 30 but will be replaced by season six of The Closer.

The latter isn’t as electrifying as Southland at its best but is a superior police drama that looks sensational in HD.

It ended its seven-season US run in August and its successor, spin-off Major Crimes, was renewed within weeks of its debut after becoming the highest-rating new cable drama series of the year.

So slow has been TV One’s roll-out of The Closer that season five was released here first on DVD and although subsequent seasons probably will be held back until after their broadcast runs, the seventh’s already for sale on disc across the Tasman.

So far only the first two seasons of Southland are out on DVD – but not Blu-ray – and only in the US and UK.

Season four of Southland, which aired earlier this year in the US, recruited as a new cop on the beat Lucy Liu, who plays another crimefighter in her latest series, Elementary: a female Watson to Jonny Lee Miller’s modern-day Holmes (it will air here on Prime).

And Southland scribe Sara Gran is developing with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro a Hitchockian drama series about a ‘50s housewife who solves brutal small-town crimes.

Called Nutshell Studies, it’s destined for HBO (and SoHo here).

Also of note in HD for the week starting October 27:

❑ Wednesday nights on TV One will be wall-to-wall repeats when a re-run of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers replaces Fair Go on October 31 — the HD Is Modern Medicine Killing You? will be the only first-run show from 7.30-10.30.

❑ The season finales of Let’s Get Inventin’ on Sunday (TV2, 4.00) and Underbelly: Badness on Wednesday (TV3, 8.30)

❑ Re-runs of the movies Flags of Our Fathers on Saturday (TV One, 10.35), and The Hangover (TV2, 8.30) and It’s Complicated (TV3, 8.30) on Sunday

❑ My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardalos guest stars on Monday’s Grey’s Anatomy (TV2, 8.35), and The Office’s Rainn Wilson and The Walking Dead’s Sarah Wayne Callies on Thursday’s Rove LA (TV3, 9.40).