ScreenScribe

Deep Water | TVNZ OnDemand, from Wednesday ➢➢ “Deep Water, a four-part detective drama that is essentially Home and Away meets The Killing. Set in present day Bondi Beach, the events that unfold are inspired by the spate of real-life hate murders that are a stain on Sydney. During the 1970s and 1980s scores of […]

Below the Surface | Lightbox, from Tuesday ➢ “Thrilling from the off, this Danish crime drama set in Copenhagen opens with the hijacking of a subway train where 15 members of the public are taken hostage by a group of captors (political affiliation unknown) asking for €4m. A counter-terrorism taskforce led by Philip Norgaard (Johannes […]

Seven Seconds | Netflix, from Friday ➢ “Inspired loosely and probably irrelevantly by the Russian film The Major, Seven Seconds was developed for Netflix by The Killing creator Veena Sud as a continuation of her fascination with watching mismatched crime-solving duos investigating murders in inclement weather … a 10-hour-plus drama that might otherwise have been the somber […]

Midnight Sun (Lightbox, streaming now) ➢ “A glamorous Parisian cop investigates a death in remote northern Scandinavia in this intriguing series … The investigation, and the series, is a Swedish-French collaboration, The Killing meets Spiral, Abba covers Je t’aime, köttbullar au vin. It’s a promising flavour combination, gory and gothic, even if the meat may […]

The Catch (TVNZ 1, 11.15 Wednesdays) “Mireille Enos cleans up nicely as the sleek star of ABC’s new thriller, The Catch. She’s traded in her soggy Pacific Northwest look from The Killing in favor of the killer dazzle of a Los Angeles private detective whose specialty is catching high-stakes con artists. The series began life as […]

Marcella (Netflix, from today) “ITV’s Marcella is a series that’s making me wonder whether much of the success of Nordic noir crime dramas in recent years was simply down to the fact that we’d believe anything, no matter how ludicrous, so long as it was set in Scandinavia rather than Britain … I could imagine all this being more enthralling if […]

SoHo’s scheduling of Justified means it won’t catch up with US screenings of the modern-day western until at least a year from now. Season one of Justified will replace The Wire on Tuesdays at 9.30 from June 25, when it and season two, which already have aired in SD on TV One, should have been boxed-set as a […]

The Miami vice drama, Magic City, heads a TV-on-Blu bonanza that includes a special edition of Game of Thrones’ first season, the latest seasons of Downton Abbey and Supernatural, and HD remasters of classics Star Trek: The Next Generation, Life on Earth and Trials of Life. “Magic City: The Complete First Season rolls onto Blu-ray with a polished and […]

Fringe ends its fourth season tonight (TV2, 10.35) ahead of its postponed Blu-ray release. The set was meant to have gone on sale this month but has been rescheduled for November. Said Entertainment Weekly of the season closure: “Fringe has taken risks, repeatedly over the seasons, with the riff of bringing characters back to life, if […]

The critics were scathing but viewers were happy to rub shoulders with The Ridges on Wednesday. The series premiere averaged an impressive 9.0% – 13.2% of the major demographics, with viewership holding up over the half-hour and the show largely winning its slot. Reviewers weren’t as enamoured, however. The NZ Herald said “they’re no match […]