HDTV Heads-Up: July 9-15

Criminal MInds' Forest Whitaker

TV One’s season premiere of the Criminal Minds spin-off, Suspect Behaviour, will go head-to-head with TV3’s free-to-air HD premiere of Fast and Furious on July 11.

Suspect Behaviour stars Forest Whitaker as the head of the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit, who first appeared in the season-five Criminal Minds episode, The Fight.

The series only ran for 13 weeks in the US, where viewers found it as familiar as the critics: “Largely it’s the usual Minds: a sadistic, terrorised-prey procedural” (Entertainment Weekly); “a by-the-numbers extension of another [CBS] network franchise” (Variety); “an uninspired spin-off of the undistinguished (except in its degree of gruesomeness) long-running hit” (TV Guide).

The Chicago Sun-Times thought it “solid” but warned: “You should know that Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour is not only the kind of show that lingers on a corpse with its eyes cut out — you can expect a close-up of the detached eyes, too.”

Suspect Behaviour’s HD debut coincides with the season finales of Desperate Housewives (part one) and Brothers & Sisters on the same night while bowing out on July 14 will be Bones.

Notable guest stars that week include:

• Cybill Shepherd in S#*! My Dad Says;
• Nicole Richie (The Simple Life), WWE Smackdown’s Stacey Kiebler and WWF Raw’s Steve Austin in Chuck;
• Cameron Diaz on The Graham Norton Show.

The week’s only other free-to-air HD movie is TV3’s late-night repeat of Night Watch on July 9.