New to View: April 4 – 10
April 2, 2021 
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A weekly guide to what’s new of note on air and online
Sunday
➢ Line of Duty TVNZ 1, 9.05
The BBC hit about an anti-corruption police unit gets a new beat for S6. If you haven’t seen the first five, catch up quick on Acorn TV or Netflix. “The opening action sets the throbbing pace and it doesn’t let up as the initial episodes unfurl. Where other crime dramas may take their time — calmly, carefully laying out the plot, planting the seeds of character arcs — Line of Duty bursts into life with immediate violence and vim and vigour.” — Empire.
Monday
➢ Balthazar Acorn TV
S3 of the French whodunit that shocked fans with its finale. Reads the blurb: “After a taunting video message from his wife’s killer surfaced at the end of Series 2, Balthazar skipped town without a word to his friends. Anchoring his sailboat near an isolated community Balthazar is once again dragged into investigating gruesome killings and soon the hunt for his wife’s killer begins to show signs of promise.”
Wednesday
➢ Patriot Brains TVNZ 2, 8.30
Just what we need: yet another comedy panel show, one that pits Kiwi and Aussie comedians against one another under the rule of QI vet and “neutral host” Bill Bailey. Precedes a new season of Would I Lie to You?.
➢ Burden of Truth TVNZ OnDemand
Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk plays a lawyer who returns to her hometown to investigate a mysterious illness that targets high school girls. “This is Sharp Objects-lite, but it’s definitely better than most of what we’ve seen on The CW that doesn’t involve superheroes or Supernatural.” — Decider.
Thursday
➢ Grand Designs UK TVNZ 1, 7.30
S21, which went to air in January on Channel 4, premieres here on a new channel. It opens with an ex-army captain spending £1.8 million pounds to secure an abandoned Neo-Gothic cemetery keepers’ lodge and adjoining ex-council toilet block in South West London so he can restore the former and replace the latter with a luxury ground floor extension, moat and giant basement with a swimming pool.
➢ 7 Days Three, 8.30
The return of the panel comedy anchors a new line-up on Three, following the US version of Holey Moley and preceding the S2 premiere of New Zealand Today (The Graham Norton Show moves to 9.30). TVNZ 2 rejigs its Thursday slate with new seasons of Motorway Patrol (8.00), Renters (8.30) and Hoarders (9.30). A Current Affair will now air 9.00 Thursdays after tanking at 7.00 Sunday.
➢ Tiger Prime, 8.30
While Prime’s schedule frustrates with its smorgasbord of pre-emptive sports programming, its advantage over other free-to-air channels is the HBO content it showcases, such as this two-part, four-hour Tiger Woods documentary that precedes Sky Sport’s saturation coverage of The Masters. “Uses interviews with old friends and family insiders to offer a tragic psychological portrait.” — Rolling Stone.
➢ Kung Fu TVNZ OnDemand
“The classic martial arts television series Kung Fu gets updated for a new generation … with an appealing young cast reimagining the premise from a wandering period piece western to a present-day family drama with mystical undertones … The cast elevates the material they’re given. And with a show like Kung Fu, one would hope that the fight sequences are stellar; fortunately, they live up to expectations, even if they’re a bit too overly reliant on slow-motion.” — CBR.
Friday
➢ Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr TVNZ 1, 8.30
MasterChef variation on aspiring interior designers competing in a commercial design challenge to redesign Oxfordshire show homes. Comedian Alan Carr gets titular honours but is joined by arguably the show’s true star, former editor-in-chief of ELLE Decoration magazine Michelle Ogundehin. “Carr brings magnificent sarcastic zing and verve, but Ogundehin is the stone-cold boss..” — The Guardian.
➢ Them Amazon Prime Video
“The logline for the latest Amazon Original series reads similar to HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Both centre around a family attempting to navigate unwelcoming white spaces in the ‘50s, and both lean heavily into genre storytelling. Of Them’s first two episodes, it becomes clear that the inaugural season eschews horror-fantasy in favour of intense psychological horror that aims to induce visceral dread without any reprieve. Whether it can sustain that throughout all ten episodes remains to be seen, but so far, Them gets off to a solid start that thrives on relentless terror.” — Bloody Disgusting.
➢ We Children From Bahnhof Zoo Amazon Prime Video
“The high-end series is inspired by the 1978 non-fiction book of the same name about teenage drug users in Berlin. We Children from Bahnhof Zoo was previously adapted by Uli Edel as the shocking 1981 film Christiane F. … Annette Hess, head writer and creative producer on the We Children from Bahnhof Zoo series, took a different tack. Returning to the original book, she expanded the world of these teenage addicts, to tell a broader, and deeper, coming-of-age story.” — The Hollywood Reporter.
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