Duncan Greive 
‘How Bizarre’ was a life-changing success from which Pauly Fuemana could never escape. Duncan Greive speaks to Simon Grigg, author of an excellent new book about the song. Simon Grigg is wandering around Europe, following his wife Brigid to Poland and Paris, where she has work to do. He has nothing of the sort on at … Read more
Today we turn one, and debut a new iteration of The Spinoff, a little TV website which has lately been nursing big dreams. We relaunch today with five new categories and eight new staff to help run them. It’s been a wild few months: first figuring out what exactly to do, then how we’d fund … Read more
Back Benches frequently and entirely correctly refers to itself as “the world’s only pub politics show”. It’s both true and somewhat redundant: what other country on our splendid planet would be fool crazy enough to allow it to exist? The show features sitting MPs, who set up in a pub adjacent to Parliament for an … Read more
It’s summer holiday season in America, so Harvey Specter and Mike Ross are down in Florida working on their tans. They deserve a break – Specter’s hair will need a full de-grease, and Ross’ bicycle is due a service. The show is now five seasons old, and has progressed steadily from a gawky junior associate … Read more
“So you want to tell the history of student radio in New Zealand,” asks Mikey Havoc of his one-time sidekick Jeremy Wells. “Do you think you’ll be able to do it in a commercial television hour?” Havoc is, as always, deeply cynical. And perhaps right to be – student radio might be seen as a … Read more
Story’s launch last week was the most important new show of the year for TV3. Duncan Greive watched every episode, and reports on how its first week fared. MONDAY The Story starts with some noodly post-rock guitar ambience, which is pretty cool and weird. Gives the whole show a welcome sense of impending doom. Who’s … Read more
Our pick of the best new shows to hit Lightbox this August – plus a full list of everything arriving on the service this month. The Killing, Season Four – Live now I will freely and in good conscience admit to having seen every single second of the US version of The Killing and precisely none … Read more
11 months ago today, The Spinoff went live. The very same day, I flew out on a long-planned, month-long, un-delay-able trip overseas. So Alex Casey, who I barely knew at the time, kept the site alive during that first month. And has been its driving force since. I’ve been busy writing a book, commissioning, editing, … Read more
Yesterday the All Blacks finally played a test in the Pacific Islands, thanks largely to the efforts of one passionate man with a bug in his head. John Campbell campaigned endlessly on the irony of so many of our most glorious ABs having island ancestry, yet the side never having played a test there. And … Read more
Rawdon Christie had a bizarre response to a viral video on Breakfast last Friday. Luckily Duncan Greive was there to shoddily capture the whole thing on his cameraphone. A man stands alone on a crowded thoroughfare. Alone, as we all are in this world. Alone, but for the dozens of people passing every minute. And … Read more
Lost amongst TV3’s big budget reality imports and current affairs cancellations has been one unexpected hit: YouTube-on-TV clip show Fail Army. Duncan Greive tries to figure out how this designed-to-fail show works. Of all the millions of new shows TV3 has launched this year, few had lower expectations than Fail Army. A clip show screening … Read more
Last Monday David Farrier and Sam Hayes’ Newsworthy debuted. At the end of of their first week they invited The Spinoff’s Alex Casey and Duncan Greive along to review their first week on air, on air.
Duncan Greive spends the day at TV3 before the debut of Newsworthy, a show staffed and fronted by young people who’ve finally got a turn at the wheel. In a dark room, David Farrier sits silently, watching himself intently. The on-screen David Farrier is draped across a wooden bench in a wooden room, the sweat pouring … Read more
When big name broadcasters have left their networks in the past it has been chasing vast sums of money, or with the kind of smugness which can only come from knowing you’ve just received the most golden of handshakes. The godly authority of their bully pulpits seemed to mean never worrying about job security. So … Read more
Duncan Greive awoke early on Sunday to milk the first episode of The Road to the Young Farmer of the Year so that his fellow city slickers could stay sound asleep. Last Sunday, at the farmer-friendly hour of 6.30am, The Road to the Young Farmer of the Year Final debuted on One. Seeing as The … Read more
Duncan Greive forces out a final Power Rankings, ending this dreadful season of X Factor NZ with a reflection on what turned a once-enjoyable show into an epic, endless waking nightmare. When this season of X Factor NZ first entered this world, blind, tearful and covered in blood, New Zealand was a very different nation. … Read more
“When you try your best/ But you don’t succeed,” sang Stevie Tonks last night, in a song dedicated to his mother, which seemed pretty dark. But all I could think of was how well the song’s sentiment and gloomy tone matched this episode, and the series as a whole. Everyone involved has tried so damn … Read more
‘Reissue’ is an occasional column which will bring back a print feature from the vaults. Today: Duncan Greive looks at the origins of Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery’s cult podcast hit Worst Idea of All Time ahead of a live record for the Comedy Festival. Photography by Reagen Butler. Originally published in April’s 1972 magazine, sponsored by … Read more
Last week I was in Ohakune for the X Factor NZ live show, hungover from a 40th the night before, and therefore in the perfect intellectual state to consume 1.5 hours of TV singing show. Around 5pm I turned on the rental bach’s hitherto unused television – an LG old enough that it was two … Read more
Duncan Greive watches Rose Matafeo grow up really fast at the Basement. Last year, Rose Matafeo ordered pizza. This year she staged her funeral. The gulf between the enormity of those events aptly illustrates the swelling of her ambitions as a comic in the past 12 months. Everything about this year’s show was so much … Read more
Duncan Greive watches the first episode of Lightbox’s murderous new drama The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, starring Christina Ricci. What’s it about? Lizzie Borden was a real life human animal – a perfect internet-era celebrity who just happened to be born a century or so too soon. She grew up relatively wealthy in a small Massachusetts … Read more
A confession: Sometimes when I sit staring uncomprehendingly at the blinking cursor, trying to figure out how something which once brought me so much joy came to be such a chore, I lean back and think of the winter of 2013. It was very cold, my wife very pregnant and our house a building site. … Read more
Appointment Viewing is a regular column which features a Spinoff writer watching one or more episodes of a current show and attempting to decode its appeal. This week: Duncan Greive watches the finale of Two and a Half Men. What’s it about? The most successful sitcom of this millennium was literally crushed under a grand … Read more
Double elimination. Two words, either heavenly or horrific. They sounded so sweet to us at home, carrying with them the promise of a shorter show, relieved of two more can’t-winners from this cursed season. To the performers they were a chill wind blowing through their mansion, a reminder that their dreamy existence – fame, coaching, … Read more
News broke yesterday that Jono and Ben was being considered as a replacement for Campbell Live – which would have been up there with KillsMoon as the most scandalising TV moment of this or any other year. Thankfully a recent press release has informed us, in extremely certain terms, that the speculation was entirely, indisputably ill-founded. Phew. … Read more
“We ditched the drama this week – it’s all about the fun factor!” – Dom Bowden It wasn’t much fun, and I feel bad that slick, professional old Dom has to come out and lie to us every week. X Factor NZ is in a hole now, and I struggle to see a way out. … Read more
Dom wore shorts! That was the biggest revelation and bombshell of the night, one which was both better than last week and also cemented the sense that this new look X Factor is going to be mostly drama-free. It’s not a disaster. There were a handful of great performances, and Dom, Mel and Stan have … Read more
The first episode proper of The Spinoff’s TV Week, a weekly (duh) podcast in which Duncan Greive and Alex Casey from TheSpinoff.co.nz talk about what they’re watching on television and how they feel about it. This installment discusses the exceptional debut of TVNZ’s ‘iZombie’, SoHo’s amazing documentary series ‘The Jinx’ and Better Call Saul’s ‘Five-O’ … Read more
Has any TV show fallen as far or landed as hard as X Factor NZ did over the last seven days? We watched one of the 20 or so most controversial moments in our televisual history last week; this Sunday we sat and watched a bunch of mostly mediocre singers singing mostly mediocre songs, while … Read more