The Zone a Haven for HD

The latest SD broadcast series to find an HD haven on Sky’s The Zone is Haven.

The channel will box set the first two seasons, which TV2 originally aired, on the last weekends in March, presumably ahead of premiering S3 in April (it’s up to S5 in the US).

It also will screen S2 of In the Flesh from March 10 (8.30 Tuesdays) and will launch newcomers Dominion and Siberia.

The former is a spin-off from the movie set 25 years from now, in the aftermath of a war between mankind and an army of fallen angels.

Reviews weren’t great: “When Dominion isn’t preoccupied with filling in its portentous back story, it provides some capably filmed action and a higher grade of acting than usual for this kind of show” (New York Times); “even as a guilty pleasure, the series requires a willingness to suspend concerns about logic, and embrace the elaborate plot entirely on its own terms, ignoring the sizable gaps in coherence” (Variety): “one of the dumbest, worst-acted, most poorly written series I’ve seen in ages” (The Hollywood Reporter).

But Dominion nonetheless rated well enough for SyFy to order a second season and will screen here 9.30 Fridays from March 24.

Siberia is a horror mockumentary series about 16 stranded reality contestants who are willing to die to win $500,000 (and that’s not even factoring in an unseen menace).

It was better received than Dominion, with the Los Angeles Times calling the 13-part NBC commission “full of thrills, chills and scare tactics” and “more fright-night than satire.

“And though it does not have the built-in fan base of Under the Dome, it could turn out to be just as much fun.”

But TV Guide thought it “a clunky new thriller in the guise of a reality-adventure competition show — take all of the we’re-not-here-to-make-friends clichés and add violent mysterious death, shot in a Blair Witch Project-meets-Survivor style.

“This weird drama/reality hybrid has the terrible luck to arrive on the scene going head to head with CBS’s Under the Dome, a week after the Stephen King project opened to blockbuster ratings.”

It will screen 9.30 Fridays from March 20.