ScreenScribe

After a three-year absence, John Cleese tonight returns to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (Prime, 11.00) — and hopefully the host will ask him the absurdist questions he craves. Cleese, who’s touring the US with a retrospective that includes a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, recently told New York magazine he […]

NZ On Air is bankrolling four more two-hour episodes of The Brokenwood Mysteries for $3.63 million, despite the last season never averaging more than 2.6% of Prime’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds. However, the picturesque whodunit was competitive by Prime’s standards given the fierce opposition: TVNZ 1’s Victoria, TVNZ 2’s Lethal Weapon and TV3’s Grand Designs. The premiere averaged […]

The Murder Detectives (Prime, 8.35 Fridays) “The Murder Detectives puts fictional crime procedurals in the shade, as this British serialised detective storytelling, starting from the 111 call, tracks the last moments of 19-year-old stab victim Nicholas Robinson … Like any good thriller, this real-life storyline comes with set-backs and twists. You feel the sheer exhaustion of the […]

In a welcomed but much overdue departure from convention, Prime will re-run The White Queen in HD (8.30 Wednesdays from tonight). Since converting to HD on the Sky platform, Sky has persisted with SD re-runs of series it licensed before the changeover. Given how long in gestation the HD switch was for the channel, you’d […]

Midsomer Murders (Prime, 8.30 Sundays) “Like death and taxes, Midsomer Murders remains one of life’s less palatable certainties. Amid a veritable morgue’s worth of sub-par detective shows on ITV, since the demise of Poirot this is now the oldest and stinkiest of the lot. Mostly, it’s the smell of out-of-date cheese, with only the occasional whiff of self-awareness that […]

As of this week, there will be more HD ratings coverage on ScreenScribe.tv. It will be limited to overnights, which the networks don’t like to highlight because a programme’s popularity is now measured by consolidated data that includes time-shifted and on-demand viewing. But unlike their counterparts in the US, UK and Australia, the networks won’t […]

The latest episode of Top Gear in the UK has just recorded the series its lowest overnight ratings in more than 15 years, drawing fewer viewers than any broadcast from the Jeremy Clarkson era. “The show has now lost more than half of its audience since its series premiere, which attracted 4.3 million viewers,” The Independent reports. “Viewership […]

LIMITLESS | Prime, 8.30 Wednesday You know it’s not going to be a good day when men in black overcoats start chasing you … the best thing to do is run down to the subway station and try your best to lose yourself amongst the teeming throng of film crews shooting chase sequences. And so begins […]

UNFORGOTTEN|Prime, 8.30 Sunday Crime series are all about tying up loose ends, which means you need a lot of loose ends to start with. In that regard, and many others, Unforgotten doesn’t disappoint. A skeleton is discovered under a basement floor and DCI Cassie Stuart and DS Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan are assigned the case. DCI Stuart is played […]

Prime has revealed through its Facebook and Sky TV sites that it will go HD from February 13 — but only on the Sky platform. Why it can’t offer Freeview|HD viewers Prime in HD isn’t clear. Here’s what the broadcaster has shared on Facebook but not directly told media (I only learned about it courtesy of long-time […]