New to TVNZ+: March 14-20

TVNZ+ is drip-feeding season two of serial killer thriller The Hunting Party from March 16.

It opens with a double-episode, with subsequent eps to roll out weekly —  which means it will run about six weeks behind its US broadcast.

This seems a peculiar strategy when TVNZ streams so many other series the same time as their domestic release — even if, as Decider says of S2, “The Hunting Party is a generic action series that seems to operate on twists that either aren’t that surprising or are pretty much useless.”

US viewers agree, with the show continuing to struggle in the ratings. Reports TV Series Finale:

Last year, The Hunting Party was one of NBC’s lowest-rated scripted series to be renewed for another season. The network cancelled six scripted shows and likely decided to give this one a second chance, in hopes that the numbers would improve. If the ratings don’t get better, it seems likely The Hunting Party won’t get another chance.

The latest batch of foreign language premieres include (from March 18):

• No Place Like Home, an Italian comedy/drama about an apparently perfect family that implodes
• French drama Hunted, about a lonely woman who becomes the protector of an 11-year-old with a hit man on his trail
• Morten, a Dutch drama about a politician whose prime ministerial prospects are jeopardise by a dark secret
• Swingers S1-4, a 2017 Dutch thriller about a grieving couple who move into a suburb where their permissive neighbours “drink, smoke weed, cavort like rabbits and have a very casual attitude towards net curtains” (The Guardian).

TVNZ+ also is dusting off every season of Kevin Can Wait (March 20) and the movies Terminator: Salvation, Black Hawk Down and Hook (March 17).

Other premieres include the linear debuts of The Claudia Winkleman Show, Will AI Take My Job?, Call the Midwife, The Voice USA, Highway Patrol and Snow Patrol NZ.

Live sport includes the last days of the Milano Paralympics and T20 cricket (the Black Caps and White Ferns take on South Africa).