Summer of Drama Gets Hotter

TVNZ 1’s “summer of drama” heats up with three premieres in the last week of January.

Two will be double-billed on Sundays from January 28 — Liar and Ride Upon The Storm — and the third, Innocent, will air 8.30 Tuesdays.

Liar is a psychological thriller from the writers of The Missing about a night out that turns upside down the lives of a teacher (Joanne Froggatt) and the surgeon (Iron Gruffudd) she accuses of rape.

In the UK, it aired opposite another series from Jack and Harry Williams, Rellick, which SoHo screened late last year.

“It takes a bleakly familiar story into unfamiliar territory, and though it is less showy than Rellik, it’s just as gripping,” reckons The Guardian, which likened it to the final season of Broadchurch.

The New York Times thought it “a cut below Broadchurch in both its storytelling and its overall level of performance, but there’s one good reason to stick with it: Ms. Froggatt, who is resolutely believable and committed regardless of where the increasingly looney-tunes plot takes Laura.”

Liar will precede the Scandi-noir drama Ride Upon the Storm, which, with its use of English and Danish languages, is a bold primetime experiment for TVNZ 1 — but one that could be well timed given the rise of the genre’s popularity in this market on streaming services like Lightbox and Netflix.

Innocent, which has yet to screen in the UK, is a four-part thriller from veteran screenwriters Chris Lang (Unforgotten) and Matthew Arlidge (Silent Witness).

About a family man who tries to prove his innocence after seven years of imprisonment for allegedly killing his wife, it stars The Tunnel’s Angel Couby, The Zoo’s Lee Ingleby and Cold Feet’s Hermione Norris.

Meanwhile, the premiere of Liar will follow another newcomer, Yellowstone, a 2017 BBC series about the US National Park that isn’t to be confused with the 2009 BBC Earth benchmark.

The full title of this three-part series is Yellowstone: Wildest Winter to Blazing Summer but unlike the earlier production, its emphasis is more on science than natural history.