The new season of an award-winning Aussie political thriller launches in March, and the Aussie version of a hit British improv comedy show arrives stateside.

Secret City: Under the Eagle: Season 2
Secret City: Under the Eagle: Season 2: (L-R) Danielle Cormack , Anna Torv, and Jacki Weaver — Photo © Tony Mott 2018 | Foxtel | Matchbox Pictures, courtesy of Netflix

For updates about shows from Australia and New Zealand added to US channels and streaming services throughout the month, see the Down Under TV Viewing Guide.

NATIONAL PREMIERES

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia (Australia)

This Aussie version of the hit British improvisational comedy game show features host Tommy Little dishing up scenes and audience suggestions to four comedic contestants (out of seven) each week. They include Rhys Darby, Cal Wilson, Steen Raskopoulos, Tom Walker, Tegan Higginbotham, Bridie Connell, and Susie Youssef. All the games are made up, the performances are completely unscripted, and the points don’t count.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia — Image courtesy of Best Of British TV

The ten-episode Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia premieres in the US on Friday, March 1, on the Best of British TV channel on Amazon.

Secret City: Under the Eagle (Season 2) (Australia)

Spoiler-ish details follow… The second season of this award-winning political thriller finds Harriet Dunkley (Anna Torv, Fringe, Mindhunter) out of prison and unwittingly entangled in a military and political cover-up that has Minister of Justice Catriona Bailey’s (Jacki Weaver, Bird Box, Widows) fingerprints all over it. Harriet’s search for the truth leads her back into Canberra’s corridors of power, this time working for Karen Koutoufides (Danielle Cormack, Wentworth, Rake), a maverick Independent MP. What Harriet unearths is a military program so secret that not even the Prime Minister knows about it.

Secret City: Under the Eagle
Secret City: Under the Eagle — Photo © Tony Mott 2018 | Foxtel | Matchbox Pictures, courtesy of Netflix

The six-part season costars Michael Denkha (The Code), Christopher Kirby (Wolf Creek), Renee Lim (Deep Water), Andrew McFarlane (Glitch), Louisa Mignone (Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries), Robert Rabiah (Safe Harbour), and Joel Tobeck (The Doctor Blake Mysteries).

Secret City: Under the Eagle, a Netflix Original series, premieres in the US on Wednesday, March 6, exclusively on Netflix.

LOCAL PREMIERES

The following two series make their local broadcast debuts on or after March 1 on the public TV stations listed below. Check your local listings or contact the station that serves your area for air dates and times. If your station isn’t listed, contact its Viewer Services department or American Public Television to request the show(s).

800 Words: Season 3, Part 2 (New Zealand-Australia)

The concluding episodes of the third and final season of 800 Words find widower George Turner (Erik Thomson, Packed to the Rafters, The Code) in a bit of a bind between helping an ex-girlfriend and pursuing a new romance. Meanwhile, his son and daughter, as well as many other residents in Weld, are having relationship issues of their own.

Find out how the award-winning 800 Words story ends on these stations:

STATE CITY STATION
ARIZONA Tucson
ARKANSAS Arkadelphia, El Dorado, Fayetteville, Ft. Smith, Jonesboro, Little Rock, Mountain View
CALIFORNIA Los Angeles
CONNECTICUT Fairfield, Hartford, New Haven, Norwich
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington, DC
ILLINOIS Chicago
INDIANA Indianapolis
KENTUCKY Ashland, Bowling Green, Concinnati/Covington, Elizabethtown, Hazard, Lexington, Louisville, Madisonville, Morehead, Murray, Owensboro, Owenton, Paducah, Pikeville, Somerset
MASSACHUSETTS Boston
MISSOURI Kansas City
NEBRASKA Alliance, Bassett, Hastings, Lexington, Lincoln, Norfolk, North Platte, Omaha
NEW HAMPSHIRE Durham, Keene, Littleton
NEW YORK Binghamton, Elmira
NEW YORK Rochester
NEW YORK Syracuse
NORTH CAROLINA Asheville, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Concord, Edenton, Greensboro, Greenville, Jacksonville, Linville, Lumberton, Raleigh-Durham, Roanoke Rapids, Wilmington, Winston-Salem
OHIO Akron, Alliance, Youngstown
OHIO Cincinnati
SOUTH DAKOTA Aberdeen, Eagle Butte, Lowry, Martin, Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Vermillion
WASHINGTON Spokane
WISCONSIN Green Bay-Appleton, La Crosse-Eau Claire, Madison, Menomonie, Park Falls, Wausau-Rhinelander
WISCONSIN Milwaukee

Pacific with Sam Neill (Australia)

The first of my favorite Down Under TV premieres of 2019 in the US, Pacific with Sam Neill is an excellent documentary series, one I have been raving about ever since I watched and wrote about it two weeks ago.

Presented by the award-winning and internationally-renowned actor Sam Neill (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jurassic Park, Reilly: Ace of Spies), the six-part series follows Sam as he embarks on his own epic exploration of the Pacific 250 years after James Cook launched the first of his three voyages across the largest ocean in the world.

Sam recreates Cook’s 18th-century voyages with (mostly) modern-day means and journeys to Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia, as well as the Antarctic, Alaska and Hawaii. He engages with descendants of the people of the Pacific that Cook met, and discovers their views about Cook, Europe’s greatest navigator, and the impact he has had — for better or for worse — on them and their ancestors, their cultures, and their lands.

By turns thought-provoking, funny bone-tickling, and maddening, Pacific with Sam Neill (which has a companion book) is as enlightening for viewers as the journey was for the actor. It’s riveting stuff, this, and well worth a watch. Check it out on these public TV stations:

STATE CITY STATION
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington, DC
IDAHO Boise, Coeur d’Alene, Moscow, Pocatello, Twin Falls
MISSOURI Kansas City
OKLAHOMA Tulsa
RHODE ISLAND Providence
TEXAS Austin
UTAH Richland, Salt Lake City, St. George
VERMONT Burlington, Rutland, St. Johnsbury, Windsor

NON-PREMIERE TITLES TO BE ADDED TO STREAMING SERVICES

Emerald Falls (Australia)

Georgie Parker (Home and Away, All Saints) stars in this made-for-TV mystery-crime drama movie as Joni Ferguson, a recent divorcée who, with her 15-year-old son Zac (Thom Green, Dance Academy), relocates to the Blue Mountains, where she has bought a run-down house and converts it into a bed and breakfast. Several months later, the local doctor is murdered, the police question Joni as a suspect, and Zac tries to prove his mother’s innocence.

Costarring Vince Colosimo (The Warriors), Geoff Morrell (The Code), Catherine McClements (Sisters), Ella Scott Lynch (Crownies), Oliver Ackland (The Originals), Andrew McFarlane (Secret City), Leon Ford (The Letdown), Heather Mitchell (A Place to Call Home), and Rhys Muldoon (Dead Lucky), Emerald Falls begins streaming Friday, March 8, on BritBox.

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Did you miss any of the new shows from previous months? Check the Down Under TV Viewing Guide and Viewing Guide Archives to find out.

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For details about the March premieres of shows from the UK, Canada, and Ireland, visit The British TV Place. For those about the debuts of original-language, English-subtitled programs from Europe, visit The Euro TV Place.

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Aussie & Kiwi TV: US Premieres in March 2019