TV pick: Word Up

Jaquie Brown, New Zealand TV presenter. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Because we always need another quiz/panel show, this week Word Up picks up where Best Bits left off for TVNZ, and brings a bunch of linguistic shenanigans to your living room.

Comedian and host Jaquie Brown starts each show by revealing a keyword which serves as the inspiration for the week, and is the central pole around which the guest panellists must dance their literary dance.

The series kicks off with special guests Stacey Morrison and Rhys Darby, as well as series regular Steve Wrigley. Each guest picks their own partner - a celebrity, a member of the public or an academic expert - to help them score points in several rounds of the game. There will be roleplay, rapid fire questions, images to decipher, video to analyse, and props to use inappropriately, before a winning team can be chosen.

When: Thursday, 9.00pm
Where: TV One
What: Dictionary trivia quiz fun.

Also ...

• Continuing the British version's theme of awkward conversations, interesting meal ideas, and scathing narration, Come Dine With Me NZ begins on TV3 next Monday filling the 7pm timeslot vacated by Campbell Live. There will be five contestants each week, with each contestant given one evening to cook a three-course meal in their home for the remaining four, and the winner taking away $2000.

• Another local reality show about houses begins on Sunday (8pm, TV One), except this time they don't have to do any building or renovating, they're just hoping to buy one. Yes House Hunt is a fly on the wall series about a diverse range of couples, families and friends, on the near-impossible quest to buy their first home in New Zealand's overheated property market.

• And TV3 keep adding to their reality line-up with a seven-part documentary series called Reality Trip (9.30pm, Monday), which takes five young Kiwi consumers to three different countries to see where the products they love - computers, bananas, costume jewellery, clothes, and tea - really come from.

- TimeOut