It’s Time to Light the Lights: TVNZ Unveils New Season Highlights Early

Today TVNZ will reveal its new season coups two months earlier than normal, as it fast-tracks increasingly more shows from the US fall line-up

Most of these will screen first in SD on TVNZ’s Ondemand service but a significant number, including the latest seasons of hits like The Big Bang Theory and The Flash, will air on TV2 within days of the US.

Although TV3 also is expediting more US fare, and plans to screen more exclusive content on 3NOW as well, MediaWorks won’t unveil its new season for another month or so.

TVNZ’s mainstays continue to be Warner Bros and Disney, with the latter being the US networks’ biggest supplier of new shows (13) and returning (13).

They include: The Muppets, in a new reality TV format that TV2 hopes will be a bigger hit than this year’s retro throwback, Thunderbirds Are Go; ER drama Code Black; Criminal Minds spin-off Beyond Borders (an international variation on the original); Grandfathered, a coming-of-age comedy with a generation twist; Blood & Oil, a drama about an oil boom town run by a ruthless tycoon; Quantico, a thriller about an FBI recruit who plots the biggest attack on New York City since 9/11; biblical epic Kings and Prophets; and Uncle Buck, a movie spin-off about a bachelor who becomes a nanny.

Lined up for mid-season in the US are: The Family, a thriller about a politician’s son who seemingly returns home years after being presumed dead; The Catch, a mystery about a fraud investigator on the trail of the fiancee who defrauded her; The Real O’Neals, a drama about a seemingly perfect Catholic family; and Wicked City, about a 1982 murder case centered on the rock ’n’ roll, cocaine-infused revelry of the Sunset Strip.

Returning will be The Amazing Race, American Crime, black-ish, Castle, Criminal Minds, Galavant, Grey’s Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, Marvel’s Agent Carter and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Once Upon a Time, Scandal and the Australian drama re-make that’s yet to screen here, Secrets and Lies.

WB will deliver TVNZ seven new series, five fewer than in 2014-15.

Although Gotham flopped last year on TV2, the network will have high hopes for Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow, which won’t air until next year because of their US mid-season debuts.

Also slated for mid-season are movie spin-off Rush Hour, a buddy-cop drama; the fallen angel thriller Lucifer; and Containment, about the quarantining of Atlanta after a deadly epidemic breaks out.

Starting next week in the US is the Blacklist-ish Blindspot, about the Times Square discovery of a naked amnesia whose intricately tattooed body holds the secret to a vast international plot.

Said The Hollywood Reporter: “With very few network offerings creating any advanced buzz, much less having a premise that might, possibly, who knows, be interesting, NBC’s Blindspot appears to have an advantage.”

Returning from the WB stable will be The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, The 100, 2 Broke Girls, Arrow, The Mysteries of Laura, The Middle, Mike & Molly, Mom, The Bachelor, Gotham, iZombie, The Originals, Person of Interest, Supernatural, Undateable and The Vampire Diaries.