ScreenScribe

Season Premiere: Southland (TV One, 11.05, 5.1) Lydia and her new partner hunt a cleaning lady’s killer; John and Ben rescue an officer during a bank robbery shootout. “You could almost call it a television miracle, not just that the superb cop procedural Southland is about to launch its third season on Tuesday, but, more important, […]

Sky Movies Premiere: The Thing (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1) Despite its title, this is not a re-make of the last decent horror movie John Carpenter directed but a prequel that effectively ends where the 1982 original began. It’s nowhere near as thrilling but the startling visual effects help to compensate for the familiarity of the […]

Sky Movies Premiere: Drive (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1) Drive’s sleek surface sheen is sensational but extreme violence and reckless plotting tarnish what could have been a vintage thriller. Ryan Gosling plays a self-contained, ultra-cool getaway driver who, out of love for a vulnerable woman (Carey Mulligan) and loyalty to a luckless friend (Bryan Cranston), risks his […]

Sky Movies Premiere: The Change-Up (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1)  This raunchy comedy from the writer of The Hangover and the director of Wedding Crashers stars Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman as best mates — one’s a workaholic with kids, the other a womaniser who’s never grown up — who switch bodies and learn to be careful what […]

Sky Movies Greats Premiere: Poseidon (Sky 22, 8.30, 5.1) The killer wave can’t come quick enough in this lame duck of a disaster movie that’s a technical tour-de-force but a damp squib dramatically. It completes director Wolfgang Petersen’s so-called “water trilogy” yet sails perilously close to being his Waterloo in the wake of Das Boot and The […]

Series Premiere: First Crossings (TV One, 8.30) In this next-generation Matthew and Marc meets Intrepid Journeys, Kiwi adventurers Kevin Bigger and Jamie Fitzgerald recreate the journeys of early pioneer explorers. As the NZ Herald observed in recommending this as one of the week’s top-five picks: “Over the past 10 years, Kevin and Jamie have taken on some tough […]

Wednesday’s series premiere of The Block NZ helped TV3 to win the night with its target audience, 25-54 year-olds. It was a rare leg up the ratings ladder for the network on a night when TV2’s HD sitcom block invariably is unassailable. The Block averaged 10.3%-13.2% of the key demographics for the 7.30 hour, against […]

Series Premiere: Kings Cross ER (TV3, 8.00)  Set in St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, this documentary series opens with a young man rushed to the Emergency Room after being stabbed in the heart at a nightclub in Potts Point. “This is what a hospital reality show should look like – interesting cases, clearly presented without sensationalism or emotional manipulation,” […]

New Zealand’s definitive free-to-air guide to what’s airing nightly in 1080i: Saturday Series premiere: The Bionic Vet (TV One, 5.25) TradeZone Gone Fishin’ (TV3, 5.30) Hyundai Country Calendar (TV One, 7.00) ITM Fishing Show (TV3, 7.00) Judy Bailey’s Australia (TV One, 8.30) Ice Road Truckers (TV3, 7.30, 5.1) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TV3, 8.30, 5.1) Movie: No Country for Old Men […]

Cliff Curtis’ second consecutive TV drama flop, Missing, will debut in HD in the first week of July, along with the NZ version of The Block, Aussie reality newcomer Kings Cross ER and the latest UK whodunit series, Vera. Missing stars Ashley Judd as a former spy who uses her CIA skills to search for […]