Seven 1080i shows will run back-to-back over five hours and from next week there will be eight.

Most form the network’s hugely popular comedy block, including new seasons of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.

They will be joined by newcomer 2 Broke Girls, which starts this week, and from next week, for the first time in HD, Happy Endings.

Bookending this block from 6.30pm will be the Friends-Shortland Street hour, and from 9.30pm, the dramas The Walking Dead and Nikita (which resumes from episode eight of season one).

But because season two has a movie-length premiere, this week’s Walking Dead will start half-an-hour earlier at 9pm.

Initially there was concern season two wouldn’t be as good as season one, because of the dumping of showrunner Frank Darabont.

But the New York Post reported: “You’ll be happy to know that at least as far as the first two episodes go, the show is better than ever — which would have seemed impossible.”

Agreed The Hollywood Reporter: “The Walking Dead hasn’t lost the most important ingredient in its strangely successful recipe: it’s thrilling.”

“The show seems somehow sleeker and better paced,” The Washington Post reckoned. “Characters may now be people first and archetypes second. This has the subtle but immediate effect of making The Walking Dead less predictable and more frightening.”

But People thought “a wiry, tired jitteriness has crept in” and while the Boston Globe called the zombie masses “a grim spectacle … the living people in The Walking Dead, those uninfected with the mysterious virus, they are far less compelling”.

Many fans were disappointed in the mid-season finale but by delaying season two until now, TV2 should be able to air it uninterrupted (it resumes next week in the US).

Meanwhile, Two and a Half Men has scarcely faltered since Ashton Kutcher replaced Charlie Sheen.

It was the third highest-rating show of the first half of the US fall season, suggesting the Chicago Sun-Times was correct in its appraisal: “After eight long seasons, the show might end up being better off with some new blood — of the non-tiger variety …

“[It] got off to a surprisingly good start, considering it took place in a funeral home. Penis and fart jokes are one thing — and the first episode made it clear the show intends to keep cranking those out. But death is a tougher sell, even before a studio audience full of fans.”

New stablemate 2 Broke Girls is the highest-rating new comedy of the US fall season, and should be an ideal match for Two and a Half Men.

“The well-written pilot has a couple of brazenly vulgar sight gags, but nothing that will shock Two and a Half Men fans,” Newsday said.

“This show goes for Broke with its snappy dialogue, occasionally crossing the taste barrier with its grotesque ethnic caricatures (the girls’ Asian boss in particular),” US TV Guide said. “But the girls have great chemistry.”

But the New York Times complained of “too many one-liners about semen stains and orgasms that aren’t clever, just pronounced very loudly to carry over the titters of a studio audience”.

And the New York Post said only stars Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs made Girls bearable. “With different casting, this show would be as flat as the pancakes they serve up in the Brooklyn diner where they work.”

Die Hard 4.0 (TV3, 8.45, 5.1, R) Bruce Willis returns as John McClane, this time to thwart cyber-terrorists led by Justified’s Timothy Olyphant. One character’s description of the unstoppable hero is just as true of the movie: “There’s tough – and there’s stupid.” Cliff Curtis co-stars. (2007) ✭✭✭

Friends (TV2, 6.30, R) Ross visits Marcel, his monkey, in San Diego; Joey is stalked by a fan of his daytime drama. Chris Isaak and Brooke Shields guest star. ✭✭✭

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00) Evan puts romance before friendship; Callum seizes a new challenge; Sarah fears Daniel has put his recovery at stake. ✭✭✭

Two and a Half Men (TV2, 7.30) Season premiere: Ashton Kutcher joins the cast as an Internet billionaire with a broken heart. ✭✭

2 Broke Girls (TV2, 8.00) Series premiere: Two waitresses in the same Brooklyn diner strike up an unlikely friendship. ✭✭✭

Winners & Losers (TV One, 8.30) The girls deal with the ramifications of the car accident. ✭✭

The Big Bang Theory (TV2, 8.30) Season premiere: Penny worries that she’s screwed things up permanently with her friends after her night with Raj, while Sheldon takes command of the paintball team. ✭✭✭✭

The Walking Dead (TV3, 9.00) Season premiere: On the highway out of Atlanta, Rick and his group are stopped by a threat unlike anything they have seen before and the group searches for someone who has gone missing. ✭✭✭✭

Harry’s Law (TV One, 9.30) Harry calls all hands on deck as the trial of the year officially begins; Adam preps Eric’s daughter for her pivotal testimony as Harry worries about Cassie’s impending cross-examination. ✭✭

Nikita (TV2, 10.30) Series return: If a US Senator agrees to help pass a bill that will continue to fund the Division, the agency will cover up the Senator’s secret affair — so Nikita attempts to expose the sex scandal. ✭✭

CSI (TV3, 12.00, 5.1, R, F) In the season 10-finale, the CSI’s lives are on the line as they close in on the elusive Dr Jekyll, and more than one member of the team may not live to see his capture. (Season 12 premieres 8.30 Monday.) ✭✭

Sky Movies Greats Premiere: Walking Tall (Sky 22, 8.30, 5.1) It’s impossible to imagine anyone involved with this doltish, thuggish slugfest walking tall afterwards. As an American critic quipped, it “exemplifies the dumbing down of stupidity.” Not so much a re-make as an “adaptation” of the 1973 action-thriller of the same name, it stars The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) as a returning Gulf war vet who uses a big stick to clean up his corrupted hometown. (2004) ✭

Au Revoir Charlie: Two and a Half Men (TV2, 7.30, R) Two-hour compilation of the last four episodes of season eight to feature Charlie Sheen, on the eve of his character's funeral in tomorrow night's season-nine premiere. ✭✭

Friends (TV2, 6.30, R) Ross’ ex and her lesbian lover tie the knot; Phoebe is possessed by the spirit of an 82-year-old massage client who dies in the middle of a session; Rachel’s mother visits. ✭✭✭✭

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00) Vinnie smells a fake; Daniel’s dreams are denied; Phoenix is pipped at the post. ✭✭✭

The Secret Lives of Dancers (TV3, 7.30) Season premiere: a new celebrity boss signals massive changes for the national dance company and recruits Black Swan star Sergio Terrado. ✭✭✭✭

Missing Pieces (TV3, 8.00) Season premiere: a daughter who has waited 13 years to find out whether her father is the man she thinks he is meets him in Dubai. ✭✭✭

NCIS (TV3, 8.30, 5.1) Season premiere: Tony’s secret assignment for the SECNAV leads to an NCIS agent’s death. ✭✭

NCIS: Los Angeles (TV3, 9.30, 5.1) Series return: the agents travel to Mexico to find a box containing deadly material. ✭✭

Fringe (TV2, 2.45, R) After a cargo ship runs aground, the shoreline becomes littered with bodies hosting a giant squid-like creature. ✭✭✭✭

Avatar (TV3, 7.30, 5.1) If only the movie’s scenario — a futuristic Dances With Wolves – was as groundbreaking as the movie’s technology. Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver and Zoe Saldana star. (2009) ✭✭✭✭

Friends (TV2, 6.30, R) Monica encourages Fun Bobby  to stop drinking; Rachel begins dating a guy named Russ with an uncanny resemblance to Ross. ✭✭✭✭

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00) Evan gives up on Ula; Wendy ups the ante; Gabrielle’s misjudgement puts a life in danger. ✭✭✭

Piha Rescue (TV One, 7.30) The Piha Big Wave Classic is underway; a surfboat ends up on the rocks; a surfer receives a serious head injury; a lifeguard breaks his foot. ✭✭

Rapid Response (TV One, 8.00) A teenager’s artery is cut in mysterious circumstances; a fishing trip ends in disaster; Intensive Care paramedic Ian Rex struggles to prevent a man falling into a deep coma. ✭✭

Criminal Minds (TV One, 8.30)  Survivors of a high school massacre return to remember the event ten years later, but the BAU team is called in when a new killer with a similar style targets the survivors. ✭✭

Person of Interest (TV One, 9.30) When the number comes up on a promising young doctor, Reese and Finch must unravel the threat while she’s on-call and during after hours. ✭✭

Nurse Jackie (TV3, 11.35, 5.1, R) Jackie breaks several rules and regulations to help a 10-year-old girl caring for her lupus-stricken mother; Mrs. Akalitus accidentally tasers herself; O’Hara treats Zoey to a meal at a four-star restaurant. ✭✭✭✭

Hank (TV2, 12.15, R) ✭✭

Hellcats (TV2, 5.30) Savannah is blown away when Charlotte reveals the identity of her baby’s father; Hellcats learn they and Memphis Christian have something in common. (Screens 4pm from next week.) ✭✭✭

The War at Home (TV2, 6.30, R) Dave isn’t happy when Vicky invites Taye’s family over for a barbecue, and Taye’s father mistakes one of Dave’s comments as racist. ✭✭✭✭

North (TV One, 7.00, R) Marcus Lush finds New Zealand’s only feral donkeys surprisingly close to Auckland and ends up talking to his dad. ✭✭✭✭

Movie: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (TV2, 7.00, R) The fourth instalment not only puts hairs on the boy wizard’s chest but also raises them on the back of your neck. (2005) ✭✭✭✭

Movie: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (TV3, 7.00, 5.1) This threequel may be on thin ice story-wise — the gang unearths a lost world after Sid’s snatched by a dinosaur — but the animation and humour remain lively and inventive, especially the ingeniously Looney Tunes-ish Scrat sequences. ✭✭✭✭

Movie: Epic Movie (TV3, 9.00, 5.1, R) Low-budget, lowbrow blockbuster movies spoof from six of the Scary Movie scribes that yet again proves no one ever went broke underestimating the public’s taste. And just when you thought the late David Carradine’s legacy couldn’t get any worse … ✭

Sky Movies Premiere: Black Swan (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1) Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Double meets Swan Lake in this overwrought but riveting psychological drama about a ballerina on the brink of a breakdown. Has landing the dual role of the White Swan and the Black Swan in Swan Lake made the already neurotic, insecure Nina (Natalie Portman) delusional? Or are her worst fears about her director (Vincent Cassel), rival (Mila Kunis) and stage mother (Barbara Hershey) justified? Portman’s Oscar-winning turn and Black Swan’s startling visual effects are a must to see but can’t disguise storytelling that’s as unhinged as the heroine. Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) directs. (2010) ✭✭✭

TradeZone Gone Fishin’ (R)/Rheem Outdoors With Geoff (TV3, 5.00/5.30) ✭✭✭

Movie: The Accidental Husband (TV2, 8.30) Griffin Dunne (Practical Magic) directed this hopelessly contrived romantic-comedy about an agony aunt talk show host (Uma Thurman) who discovers, on the eve of her wedding, she’s already inadvertently tied the knot with someone else as the victim of a vengeful prank. Rightly observed The Observer: “The feeble plot of this dull film depends on a flimsy plotting device that a single phone call or letter from a lawyer would have solved overnight.” Colin Firth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Grey’s Anatomy) co-star. (2008) ✭✭

Winners & Losers (TV One, 11.15, R)  Bec and Doug’s serious car accident leaves Sophie struggling with her feelings; Jenny tries to come terms with Rhys being gay. ✭✭

Sky Movies Greats Premiere: Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (Sky 22, 5.05, 5.1) Happily, the title of this half-baked sequel about feuding dads hasn’t proved to be the harbinger of a franchise starring Steve Martin as the father who never knows best. Adam Shankman (Hairspray, Bedtime Stories) directs; American Pie’s Eugene Levy, Bonnie Hunt and Carmen Electra co-star. (2005) ✭✭

Saturday

Homeland last month won Golden Globes for best drama series and best actress in a drama (Claire Danes), and is being previewed online for a week from 9am Thursday, at TV3.co.nz/Homeland, ahead of its February 13 launch.

Last Man Standing is Tim Allen’s first sitcom since Home Improvement, and like the rest of TV3′s new Monday night line-up, will air in HD.

The latest season of CSI recruits Ted Danson as the new forensics boss and will screen opposite its traditional HD nemesis, Desperate Housewives, on TV2.

Against Homeland TV2 will pit another new HD drama, Revenge, about a woman who wreaks retribution on a privileged community.

Modern Family isn’t the only HD comedy switching slots for the new season: TV2 is relocating The Middle to 7.30pm Tuesdays, to help launch a new HD sitcom, Suburgatory, about a New York City teenager for whom life in the suburbs is purgatory.

Screening for the first time in HD this year is Happy Endings, which will air 9pm Wednesdays after all-new The Big Bang Theory (earlier seasons of which will screen in HD for the first time from 7pm Sundays).

Sundays also will see TV3 resurrect The Big C at 9.30pm, after the return of House (again in SD) while TV2′s return of Pretty Little Liars at 5.30pm will push back Hellcats to 4pm.

That night TV2 is screening in HD the 2009 thriller, A Perfect Getaway.

Also new in HD that week are seasons four of Go Girls (TV2, 8.30 Tuesday) and Sons of Anarchy (TV3, 9.15 Wednesday).

The Graham Norton Show (TV3, 9.10) Madonna discusses everything from her upcoming album and new movie to her supposed rivalry with Lady Gaga. Unlike previous interviews, where she referred to comparisons of herself to Gaga as “reductive”, Madonna compliments the pop princess and says they even share a similar sense of humour. “When I first saw her I was really impressed by her and she was cool. She did remind me of me back in the day.” ✭✭✭✭

Friends (TV2, 6.30) It’s Christmas and Monica tries tipping with cookies rather than cash, with mixed results; Phoebe tries to track down her real father. ✭✭✭

Shortland Street (TV2, 7.00) Murray lays down the gauntlet, Gabrielle has an emotional breakthrough, and Ula faces her fear of ostracism. ✭✭✭

Come Fly With Me (TV3, 10.10, 5.1, R) Immigration Officer Ian Foot pulls in Taaj for questioning as part of a random security check; how far Fearghal is prepared to go to get nominated for Steward of the Year? ✭✭

The Vampire Diaries (TV2, 10.30) While in Chicago with Klaus, Stefan runs into a vampire from his past, someone still interested in him after decades who will bring danger to Mystic Falls. ✭✭✭ 

Human Target (TV2, 11.30) Ames tries to conceal a secret from Winston; Guerrero and Chance try to conceal a secret from Ilsa. ✭✭✭

Numb3rs (TV3, 12.30, 5.1) Don helps a veteran FBI agent track an elusive con man who worms his way into companies and then steals millions. ✭✭

CSI: Miami (TV3, 1.30, 5.1, R)  When Horatio’s ex-girlfriend is killed in an explosion, the team looks within their own department to find the killer. ✭✭

Sky Movies Greats Premiere: Brokeback Mountain (Sky 22, 8.30, 5.1) Mournful, majestic ode to the call of those faraway hills for two cowboys who gotta’ do what gay men gotta’ do. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal play lonesome drovers whose campfire friendship unexpectedly spills over into a forbidden love that haunts them – and their families – for the rest of their repressed lives. Director Ang Lee acutely contrasts the freedom of Wyoming’s spectacular vistas with the protagonists’ trapped desperation while Ledger and Gyllenhaal turn in performances just as breathtaking. (2005) ✭✭✭✭

It will premiere on Sky’s premium drama channel in April, along with season two of Game of Thrones, season five of Mad Men and the miniseries, The Pillars of the Earth.

The Killing

Pillars will screen here nearly two years after its US debut but Killing, Mad Men and Thrones will be on air here within weeks of their US telecasts.

March, meanwhile, will see this month’s debuts, like tonight’s Boss, next week’s StrikeBack and Luck, which starts on February 13, continue their runs while Mildred Pierce will re-run on Sunday nights.

SoHo also will air the Paradise Lost trilogy, about the wrongful conviction of the West Memphis Three, on Wednesdays from March 28 (peculiarly, the third instalment, Purgatory, will have its premiere on February 24).

Other HBO docos that month will include Hot Coffee (March 30), which screened last year on the NZ Film Festival circuit, and Game Change, an insider’s account of the John McCain-Sarah Palin 2008 presidential campaign that will air on March 23, two weeks after its US debut.

SoHo will dig much deeper into the vault for its SoHo Cinema slot, however, going as far back as 2001 for the Rosa Parks drama, Boycott (March 2); 2004 for Iron Jawed Angels, which dramatises the women’s suffrage movement (March 16); and 2006 for Bernard and Doris (March 9), which dramatises the relationship between tobacco queen Doris Duke and her gay butler (Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes star).

Box Set Weekends include Camelot (March 3-4), seasons two of How to Make It In America (March 10) and seven of Weeds (March 11), The Corner (March 17), Five Days (March 18), and seasons four of Mad Men (March 24-25) and one of Hell on Wheels (March 31-April 1).