New to TVNZ OnDemand in January

December 22, 2021 0 Comments

The Tourist (full season from January 3) stars Jamie Dornan (The Fall, Fifty Shades …) in an Outback thriller that sounds like it was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s 1971 telemovie Duel.

He plays a British man pursued by a vast tank truck trying to drive him off the road in an epic cat-and-mouse chase that leads to him being hospitalised and losing his memory.

The six-part mystery-thriller was written by Harry and Jack Williams (Missing, Baptiste) and co-stars Shalom Brune-Franklin (Line of Duty), Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin’), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Trapped), and Alex Dimitriades (The End).

Bloom (full series from January 18) is another Australian mystery, set one year after a devastating flood kills five residents of an idyllic country town where a mysterious new plant appears with the power to restore their youth.

It ran for two seasons, from 2019-20, stars Bryan Brown and Phoebe Tonkin, and was hailed by trade paper Screenhub as “a sophisticated and superbly acted supernatural mystery”.

Hollington Drive (full season from January 13) stars Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty, Motherland) and Rachael Stirling (Wild Bill) as sisters whose lives are turned upside-down when their children are implicated in a 10-year-old’s disappearance.

“Before you know it, we’re being served up the full English of middle-class parent terrors: vanishing children, marital ennui, class frictions, fears about technology,” said the Independent.

Season two of Guilt (full season from January 5) picks up two years after vengeful Max’s release from prison.

Said The Times of its BBC2 premiere in October: “It was brimming with just as much dark, dry, dour, deprecating wit as last time, a tight, coiled spring of a drama in which barely a second is wasted.”

Good Sam (weekly from January 6) is a new medical drama starring Sophia Bush (One Tree Hill) and Jason Isaacs (the Harry Potter series) in a clash of family wills: she plays a top surgeon who winds up supervising her father — and former boss — when he emerges from a coma and wants his old job back.

TVNZ OnDemand also is picking up Prime’s SEAL Team from S5 (January 31) and will resume S1 of the 4400 reboot (weekly from January 18).

The Game (full season from January 21) is another revival, relocating the 2006-2015 series about the lives of pro-football players, from San Diego to Sin City.

Wendy Raquel Robinson and Hosea Chanchez reprise their roles as mother-and-son Tasha Mack and Malik Wright.

According to the blurb, “The series returns with a mix of new players and original cast to offer a modern-day examination of Black culture through the prism of pro football. The team will fight for fame, fortune, respect and love as they each play the game.”

There will be two true-crime newcomers next month: Demons in the City of Angels delves into infamous and obscure LA murder cases (full season from January 29); Deadly Power shows how pillars of the community exploited their authority to commit heinous crimes (full season from January 22).

Other highlights include:

music documentaries The Rolling Stones: Crossfire Hurricane and Queen: Days of Our Lives (January 23)
part two of S4 of bilingual drama Ahikāroa (January 10)
S2 of Superman & Lois (weekly from January 12)
S26 of The Bachelor (weekly from January 4)
S1 of How to Train Your Dragon spin-off Dragons: The Nine Realms (January 4)
S2 of Malory Towers (January 28)
box sets of Outrageous Fortune (January 1), and Heroes and Heroes Reborn (January 6).