HDTV Heads-Up: March 24-30

Two new Sunday night HD dramas are slated to debut in the last week of March while returning for the first time in HD is one of TV’s better cop shows.

One of the newcomers is Enlightened, an HBO series that 18 months ago TVNZ was touting as one of its big new-season attractions for 2011!

But from March 25 it’s been consigned to late-night Sundays on TV One, despite top reviews in the US.

The comedy/drama stars Laura Dern as a  self-destructive health and beauty executive who has a very public meltdown.

The Los Angeles Times dubbed it “the most interesting and ambitious series of the fall season” and The Washington Post “a beautiful downer of a show that becomes more revealing and absorbing as it moves along”.

However, Newsday described it as “a rare HBO misfire” while Variety quipped “the show’s ethereal qualities are interesting in places but never particularly enlightening”.

The other newcomer is Touch, from Heroes creator Tim Kring. It will screen 8.30pm Sundays, with the low-rating House moving back an hour to 9.30pm (The Big C ends its run this weekend).

Touch stars Kiefer Sutherland as a widower whose troubled son, an 11-year-old mute, has a psychic gift that could save the world.

Critics thought it manipulative and heavyhanded but also suspenseful, intriguing, compelling and “a galvansing … mix of spirituality and science, familial and global struggles”.

Touch went to air only seven weeks ago in the US whereas season five of The Closer will screen here nearly three years after its US broadcast.

But the good news is it will screen in HD for the first time — which is surprising given TVNZ’s policy is to limit HD content outside of primetime and The Closer has been off-peak since season three.

The fifth will air 11pm-ish Tuesdays, and open with the investigation of a quadruple family murder with an FBI conspiracy twist.

The week starting March 24 also will include one network HD movie premiere, Old Dogs (TV2, 8.30pm Sunday), and two HD movie repeats: Independence Day (TV3, 8.30pm Saturday) and The Mermaid Chair (TV3, 11.15pm Saturday).