HDTV Heads-Up: A Rotten Shame About Justified

Justified's Timothy Olyphant

A Rotten Shame is the name of a new HD documentary about the leaky homes crisis – and sums up TV One’s missed opportunity to showcase in HD the same week a top new drama series.

Justified shines out amid the sea of reality dross and fluffy drama that constitutes most of primetime on TV One.

The Elmore Leonard adaptation, which stars Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant as a modern-day Kentucky lawman and The Shield’s Walton Goggins as his neo-Nazi nemesis, will screen 9.30pm Thursdays, in SD, from July 7.

TVNZ would argue it can’t afford to air every series in HD because of the extra costs involved, from storage media to bandwidth.

But Justified justifies the expense given its heavyweight production values and ripe potential to become a signature drama.

Season one already is out on Blu-ray in the US, where High-Def Digest called it “one of the best looking TV shows I’ve seen on Blu-ray so far”.

Hopefully, if the series is popular here, TV One will run it back-to-back with season two in HD (as it did with seasons two and three of Castle) — because at this stage it looks as if the show will get only a DVD release outside the US (although the US Blu-ray is region-free).

Meanwhile, A Rotten Shame has the owner of a leaky home in Auckland, John Gray, uncovering what TVNZ publicity calls “shocking facts” about the building industry and council consents process.

It will air 9.30pm on July 6.

The same week, TV One will screen the season finale of Criminal Minds (8.30pm Monday), which introduces a character played by Forest Whitaker whose spin-off series, Suspect Behaviour, was axed after only 13 episodes.

TV One will re-run season four of Criminal Minds, from episode one, late-night Thursdays that week and season seven of Cold Case late-night Tuesdays.