Your guide to the week’s best on Sky and free-to-air TV

Dark City: The Cleaner (8.30pm, Mondays from March 4, SoHo)

Cohen Holloway, Chelsie Florence and Robbie Magasiva star in this six-part thrillercomedy based on Kiwi writer Paul Cleeve’s Christchurch-set best-selling 2006 novel The Cleaner.

When we first meet Joe Middleton (Holloway), he looks like one of the many fine citizens of the Garden City. However, we soon find out that, while Joe is a police station cleaner by day, at night he has another line of work – a serial killer who’s been dubbed The Christchurch Carver.

When a woman is murdered, police suspect The Carver, but Joe knows it wasn’t him. As he sets out to find the copycat killer, he realises he is also being hunted, by an adversary potentially cleverer and even more dangerous than he is.

Hostages (9.30pm, Tuesdays from February 27, Sky Open)

Free-to-air premiere for this four-part, 2022 docu-series which focuses in on the event that began on November 4, 1979.

Intending to stage a 48-hour sit in to protest American imperialism, Iranian student activists stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 60 hostages. It spiralled into an international crisis that would last 444 days.

Featuring never-before-seen archival footage and revelatory new interviews with those on both sides, this explores what led to the students’ drastic action and the political fallout that still reverberates today.

“Thorough, balanced and provocative,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s Dan Fienberg.

Frank of Ireland (9pm, Wednesdays from February 28, Sky Open)

Co-created by – and starring – brothers Brian and Domhnall (sons of Brendan) Gleeson, this six-part, 2021 comedy revolves around a 32-year-old unemployed manchild still living at home with his mother.

A self-proclaimed musician with a tenuous hold on reality, it’s left to his loyal best friend Doofus to clear up the debris he’s leaving in his wake. “You haven’t truly encountered colourful swearing, coarse sexual innuendo and gross slapstick humour until you’ve met these two,” wrote The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle.

Cricket: Blacks Caps vs Australia (10.30am, Daily from Thursday, February 29, Duke)

The inaugural winners and the current holders of the ICC World Test Championship clash at Wellington’s Basin Reserve in the first of two five-day contests on our soil.

Thanks to NZ’s recent whitewash of South Africa for the first time, we’re currently leading the table, with Australia third, just behind the beaten finalists in both competitions so far – India. However, the last time New Zealand triumphed in a test match in this side of the Tasman was 34 years ago – albeit at the same venue.

Me and Breast Implants (8.30pm, Thursday, February 29, TVNZ 2)

In this revealing 2022 UK documentary, S Club 7 star Hannah Spearritt investigates Breast Implant Illness, raising important questions about the efficacy and safety of breast augmentation surgery. It’s a procedure she had done herself in 2013.

The Game Changers (9.30pm, Friday, March 1, Sky Open)

Free-to-air debut for Paora Ratahi’s new documentary which investigates how the rise of female coaches could alter rugby union in Aotearoa for the better – both on and off the field.

Featuring Super Rugby Aupiki 2023 Hurricanes Poua head coach Victoria Grant, Blues Women assistant coach Linda Itunu and NZR’s game development manager for women’s rugby Vania Wolfgramm, the hourlong special aims to highlight the challenges female coaches have to overcome.

The Fear Index (8.30pm, Sundays from March 3, Sky Open)

Josh Hartnett headlines this four-part thriller based on Robert Harris’ 2011 novel of the same name.

It’s the story of a scientist-turned-Wall Street tycoon who becomes the target of a plot aimed at destroying financial markets.

“It’s solid, satisfying stuff,” wrote The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan.

“And it is given a remarkable lift by Hartnett, who invests Hoffman with a palpable, credible and increasingly corrosive fearfulness from the off.”