HDTV Heads-Up: Modern and Animated Families

Among the Christmas curtain-raisers the networks will unwrap in HD are a swag of DreamWorks movie spin-offs, the first Ice Age and the partly-animated biography of the farmyard critters sweetheart, Beatrix Potter.

TV3’s Ice Age and TV One’s Miss Potter will screen at 7pm and 8.30pm respectively on December 19, the same night TV2 launches a week-long 7pm ‘toon marathon.

It will open with a repeat of Scared Shrekless and continue with Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five, Merry Madgascar, Shrek the Halls and Kung Fu Panda Holiday Special.

TV3 also will use that week to try to boost sampling of HD sitcom Modern Family by stripping re-runs of season one in the 7pm weekday Campbell Live slot.

The network is committed to making the top-rating Emmy-winner as popular here as it is in the US, where earlier reports that star Ed O’Neill had “dissed” Glee’s Jane Lynch for winning an Emmy instead of his co-star, Sofia Vergara, have proved wrong.

Later in the week, TV3 will air in HD the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy, Jingle All the Way (7.30pm Thursday), and on Friday night will screen a Christmas-themed edition of The Graham Norton Show that features Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, and Little Britain’s Matt Lucas and David Williams.