TVNZ's racy 2010 line-up

Cougar Town. Photo / Supplied

TVNZ is gunning for an even bigger slice of the ratings pie next year by throwing sex at the grannies and bringing Courtney Cox back to a sitcom as a cougar.

Cougar Town - "It's a jungle out there" - looks like it's going to be a brutally realistic comedy about older single ladies on the prowl. Can't believe it hasn't been made before to be honest. The show will air mid-2010.

In the first half of the year there's the highly anticipated Fast Forward, a star-studded drama from the makers of Dark Knight. Its plot sounds like a bad dream: the entire population of the world blacks out at exactly the same time and all get a glimpse of their futures, some of them more terrifying than others.

Returning high-rating shows include Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters, Ugly Betty, Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory and South Pacific Pictures' successful series, Go Girls.

The big new local drama on TV2 is This Is Not My Life, which has sparked interest from America before it has even screened. It's a drama-mystery, set in the future in the eco-friendly town of Waimoana, where a man called Alec Ross (Charles Mesure, who plays Detective Sergeant Zane Gerard in Outrageous Fortune) wakes to find he has a wonderful life - but he can't remember any of it. He accepts his amnesia, and everything around him seems perfect until he finds a chilling message from himself.

Other new local shows on TV2 are a New Zealand version of The Apprentice and Matthew and Mark's Rocky Road to Hollywood.

Picks from TV One's new line-up include The Pacific, an epic Tom Hanks-Steven Spielberg-produced drama about three American Marines during a WWII battle with the Japanese, and Hung, about a well-endowed man who makes lots of money sleeping with older women. Returning favourites on TV One include Band of Brothers, Cold Case, Criminal Minds and Packed to the Rafters.

The new locally produced shows that have been announced for TV One are MasterChef NZ, Radar's Patch and Spies and Lies.