ScreenScribe

SoHo Highlight: The Shadow Line (Sky 10, 9.30, 5.1) Encore screening of Wednesday’s premiere: an amnesiac Detective Inspector investigating the murder of the head of one of the UK’s largest crime organisations wonders who he can trust. You might feel the same about the UK reviewers. The Guardian thought it an “excellent”  thriller  – “the cast is [...]

TV2’s new-look HD comedy block got off to a big bang on Wednesday but TV3’s HD re-run of Die Hard 4.0 proved lively competition for the season-two premiere of The Walking Dead. The Bruce Willis franchise opened modestly, facing the last quarter-hour of The Big Bang Theory, but climbed from 6.1% of 25-54 year-olds to [...]

New Zealand’s definitive free-to-air guide to what’s airing nightly in 1080i: Saturday The Secret Lives of Dancers (TV3, 4.30, R) TradeZone Gone Fishin’ (TV3, 5.00, R) Rheem Outdoors With Geoff (TV3, 5.30) Keeping Up With the Joneses (TV One, 7.00) Desperate Housewives (TV2, 10.20, R) Winners & Losers (TV One, 10.30, R) Movie: Two Lovers (TV One, 11.30) [...]

TV3 will screen in HD the Christchurch earthquake documentary, When a City Falls, on the eve of its DVD release. It will air from 7.30pm Wednesday (February 22) and, unusually for a local commission, will be broadcast in 5.1 audio. The DVD of When a City Falls goes on sale the next day, with the [...]

SoHo Cinema: Recount (Sky 10, 8.30, 5.1) Emmy-winning dramatisation of the controversial Florida recounts that cost Al Gore the White House in 2000. Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Laura Dern contribute to what The Hollywood Reporter summed up as “a level of tension and suspense you wouldn’t expect in a story about a widely reported recent event”. [...]

Series premiere: Once Upon a Time (TV2, 8.30) Is a woman with a troubled past who was abandoned as a baby the missing daughter of Snow White? Big Love’s Ginnifer Goodwin stars in a small-town drama where the magic and mystery of fairy tales just may be real. The Washington Post dubbed it “a smartly-crafted reward for fans of [...]

TV2’s Two and a Half Men special hammered TV3’s all-star HD line-up on Tuesday. Au Revoir Charlie, a four-episode tribute to star Charlie Sheen on the eve of tonight’s season-nine premiere, crushed the return of The Secret Lives of Dancers, Missing Pieces and NCIS. It wasn’t until the two-hour compilation was over that TV3 regained [...]

Monday’s network HD premiere of Avatar helped TV3 to win the night but didn’t demolish the competition. It averaged 10.1% of TV3’s target audience, 25-54 year-olds, versus 9.3% for TV One’s Criminal Minds and 7.3% for TV2’s SD movie, Sweet Home Alabama. With TV2’s core viewership, 18-39 year-olds, the race was much tighter: Avatar averaged [...]

Sky Movies Premiere: Let Me In (Sky 20, 8.30, 5.1) What sort of vampire film would schlock-horror merchant Hammer make 35 years after its last? Merely one of the finest since Nosferatu first bared his fangs. Let Me In is that rare Hollywood beast, a re-make that improves on the original: 2008 Swedish art house sensation Let the Right One In. [...]

As of Wednesday, TV2 will screen more consecutive HD series in a single night than any other free-to-air network. 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 [...]