New Sci-fi Zone for TVNZ OnDemand

Sci-fi fans who miss Sky’s The Zone channel will be over the moon about TVNZ OnDemand’s newest branded channel.

District will showcase sci-fi and fantasy content that TVNZ’s acquired from its NBCUniversal deal.

It will combine contemporary series like Manifest (which Netflix may pick up for a fourth season) and Roswell, New Mexico with library fare like:

• S1-4 of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, as well as Galactica: The Miniseries and the 2009 movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
• 2007 reimagining of another ’70s hit, Bionic Woman, the Six Million Dollar Man spin-off about an athlete who is given bionic strength (Michelle Ryan plays Jamie Sommers)
• 2008 miniseries adaptation of Michael Crichton’s The Adromeda Strain, starring Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order), Christa Miller (The Drew Carey Show) and Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder)
• S1-3 of Defiance, the 2013 series about alien life on Earth in the near future, starring Kiwi Grant Bowler
• S1-2 Dominion, the 2014 Syfy series about an unlikely saviour of humanity
• the three-part 2015 Arthur C Clarke adaptation Childhood’s End.

All of these series have aired here, several on The Zone, but among the newcomers will be along with Blood Drive, a violent 2017 homage to the grindhouse genre so beloved of Quentin Tarantino.

About an ex-cop who’s forced to compete in a death race, it’s set in an alternate reality dystopia of 1999 and, according to a Blu-ray.com review of its US release on disc, is a soulless retread of much better examples of the genre.

“Imperfect as it may be, though, it’s good, brainless fun if one considers sex at high speeds, bodies shoved into muscle car engines that are essentially piston-driven wood chippers, and lead characters who aren’t very well defined beyond their stock parts all to be fun.”