HDTV Heads-Up: Outrageous Fortune, Nurse Jackie, V, Fringe

The crew behind the first HD season of Outrageous Fortune

The first HD series of Outrageous Fortune also will be its last when it screens from 8.30pm on July 13.

After five years of airing it 9.30pm Tuesdays, TV3 is promoting the Westies crowdpleaser to an earlier slot and will team it with new episodes of another HD sensation, Nurse Jackie.

The rescheduling recognises not only what will be unprecedented public interest in the final series but also TV3’s need to boost its Tuesday ratings after being battered by TV2’s Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice.

Ironically, it appears willing to axe Outrageous Fortune, one of its top-rating staples, to take a punt on another South Pacific Pictures commission, The Almighty Johnsons, because it and NZ On Air can’t afford to fund both.

Meanwhile, season two of Nurse Jackie promises to be as electrifying as the first, with Pop Matters reporting even more emphasis on her “unexpected kindness and cruelties. And this is what makes the show so great. She constantly sidesteps all expectations and usually for the worse.”

But the Boston Herald highlighted “symptoms of a serious malady: serial recidivism. We’ve seen all this before. It’s time for Jackie’s world to come crashing down, the sooner, the bigger the laughs.”

Outrageous Fortune and Nurse Jackie return the day before TV2 resumes new, double-episodes of V. It used the same strategy to spectacularly launch the sci-fi re-make as a miniseries late last year, but the tactic is bad news for Fringe fans, as it will delay their show’s return by another month — which means season two will go to air here on the eve of the region-free Blu-ray being released in the US.