New to TVNZ OnDemand in August

A new BBC comedy that The Guardian hailed as a “darkly comic gem” will premiere next month on TVNZ OnDemand, along with an Anna Friel thriller about three very different women whose lives connect at the school gate.

Back to Life stars Episodes’ Miri Matteson as an ex-con who returns home to a town she no longer recognises, having left it — and her dysfunctional family — as a teenager.

Said The Guardian: “The six episodes of Back to Life (BBC One), starring Daisy Haggard and which she wrote with Laura Solon, are darkly flashing gems and the crowning achievement of their already impressive careers.”

Reported Metro: “Garnering rave reviews all round, it’s darkly comic tone has drawn immediate comparisons to Fleabag by viewers everywhere.”

The full season of Back to Life will stream from August 6, which also is when TVNZ OnDemand will start to stream weekly episodes of Bachelor in Paradise.

Still awaiting a premiere date is Deep Water, a six-part adaptation of Paula Daly’s Windermere novels starring Friel, Being Human’s Sinead Keenan and Howards End’s Rosalind Eleazar.

ITV has yet to confirm a UK launch date but expect it to surface on TVNZ OnDemand within days.

The platform’s also picked up My Mad Fat Diary (S1-3, from August 20), ex-Prime property Secret Diary of a Call Girl (S1-4, from August 20), and The Family Law (S1-3, from August 28).

My Mad Fat Diary stars Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer in a Channel 4 drama about a troubled youngster in 1996 Lincolnshire who reunites with her best friend following a stint in a psychiatric hospital after she attempted suicide.

Said The Guardian: “Sharon Rooney’s marvellous Rae tackles weighty issues – depression, suicide, body image – with charm, wit and laughter.”

Benjamin Law describes The Family Law, his take on growing up Asian in Australia, as “a comedy about divorce” that the Sydney Morning Herald says also “gathers the threads of one part of his sprawling memoir, which covers the author’s coming out as a gay Chinese-Australian teen, the deportation of relatives from Australia and the death of his grandmother in a Hong Kong nursing home”.

New local shows will include:

The Price of Sex, which is billed as “a long hard look at the contribution sex makes to New Zealand both socially and financially, with the overarching premise of finding out who’s getting hurt, who’s getting helped and who’s getting paid” (from August 1)

Boss Babes, which will go behind the social posts of two businesswomen to discover what it takes to be “Instafamous” (weekly from August 6)

Yours Faithfully, in which stand-up comedian and son-of-a-preacher-man James Nokise embarks on an “open-minded, curious experience” of eight religions (weekly from August 11).