TVNZ OnDemand Posts More UK TV

The Last Post is returning to TVNZ OnDemand as part of a new block of British dramas and documentaries that will include several premieres.

It was on the service briefly in 2018 and never won a linear run before leaving, despite being a personal favourite of TVNZ’s director of content Cate Slater.

“One series I’m particularly excited about is the big, beautifully filmed drama about a British army unit fighting a Yemeni insurgency in the Middle East in the ‘60s,” she said at TVNZ’s 2018 new season launch.

It will stream again from December 19, along with a slew of other UK mini-series and limited series, including Tipping the Velvet, Mad Dogs, Fleming: The Man Who Would Be King and box sets of Primeval and Ashes to Ashes.

There also will be three NZ premieres: Critical, a 13-part drama set in a state-of-the-art trauma centre; Nick Hornby’s Love, Nina; and Jack the Ripper: The Case Reopened.

As The Times said of the 2019 BBC documentary on the legendary serial killer: “No one has cracked the Jack the Ripper case in 130 years, so why not let Emilia Fox have a stab?

“She’s not a real pathologist (sorry to break that), but as Nikki Alexander in Silent Witness she solves mysteries and investigates stuff that is not her business, so they may as well let her at cold cases too.”

Critical screened on Britain’s Sky One in 2015 and was written by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty, Bodyguard).

It survived only one season, which is a pity if the Independent’s review was a guide: “Halfway through the compelling first series, Critical is proving itself a worthy successor to both Jed Mercurio’s previous medical drama, Bodies, and ER, but with all the animosity between staff, it’s a wonder the patients ever make it out alive.”

Love, Nina is Hornby’s 2016 adaptation of Nina Stibbe’s book about the experiences of a live-in nanny for a literary editor in early ’80s London.

“Hornby and director SJ Clarkson have captured the spirit and hilariousness of the book,” said The Guardian.

“It’s a joy, like having a spy in an extraordinary north London world of writers and film directors and academics.”

Joining TVNZ OnDemand from Thursday will be 1995 evergreen Pride and Prejudice, a 2015 adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover starring Holiday Grainger and Richard Madden, Tony (The Secret Agent) Marchant’s 2002 adaptation of Crime and Punishment and all five seasons of Jonathan Creek.

New from January 1 will be box sets of Happy Valley and Judge John Deed, and the excellent Rillington Place, a three-part dramatisation of Notting Hill serial killer John Christie’s exploits that first screened here on Sky’s BBC UKTV.