Elle Hunt 
In her third Elleswhere column about life as an expat New Zealander in London, Elle Hunt begs folks back home to spare a thought for a Whittaker’s fanatic stuck with no supply. I am stomping across the office when I hear someone call “EEL.” I carry on stomping across the office. Then I realise it’s … Read more
In her second Elleswhere column about life as an expat New Zealander in London, Elle Hunt writes about seeing the city through the eyes of people who are just passing through. I am at an indoor market in Brixton. I have never been to this market before, though it is held every week, about a … Read more
London-based Elle Hunt, along with just about every New Zealander living and working overseas, is routinely asked if and when she might return home. It helps to have a spiel ready, she advises, in her first Elleswhere column I am seven minutes in to my daily half-hour browse of Instagram Stories when I come across one … Read more
A displaced Wellingtonian yearns for the coffee culture she once derided. “It’s coffee, but not as you know it.” It made a greater impression on me than any advertising slogan on the side of a bus should. The fact, the bitter reality, was that a new kind of cold Nescafe in a can was besides … Read more
In the middle of last decade, one man dominated our local music television. Then he disappeared. Elle Hunt tracks down Joel Defries, and talks to him about life as a Kiwi TV star, and what he’s been doing since. Joel Defries was once a household name. Well: in some households, between 4pm and 7pm weekdays, … Read more
A lot of British migrants are making the move to New Zealand – so why shouldn’t there be a TV show documenting the process? Elle Hunt watches BBC reality show Wanted Down Under. A family of four wheels a trolley through an airport’s arrival hall. Far away from home, they look tired but hopeful. Today … Read more
From Lorde’s whisper-pop to Jack Antonoff’s anti-irony, Elle Hunt dissects how pop music is changing now, after nearly 20 years in a Max Martin sugar rush. Melodrama didn’t win album of the year at the Grammys last month. But it had always been a long shot. The Grammys tend to recognise legacy or commercial success, … Read more
Is Melodrama the best album of the year? We’ll know definitively later today (*irony warning*), but in the meantime, Elle Hunt predicts the winners of the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. These Grammys, the sixtieth ever, are the third for which two friends and I have got our picks in. The Grammys’ administration starts four to … Read more
Elle Hunt thought she was alone at sea in her love for Blue Planet back in 2001. In 2017, it would seem the whole world has taken the plunge. I would like to begin with an apology to the couple I interrupted at The Love Walk Cafe in Camberwell last week. I’m so sorry; you … Read more
If you have Paramore confined to a folder in your memory marked ‘mid-2000s – DO NOT OPEN’, Elle Hunt is here to deliver some startling news – they’re still going, they’re still writing perfect soundtracks to personal crises, and they’re coming to New Zealand. There was a period early this year that I listened to … Read more
Tonight, Ella Yelich O’Connor, along with her co-writers Jack Antonoff and Joel Little, won the 2017 APRA Silver Scroll Award for Lorde’s song ‘Green Light’. Elle Hunt explains why the song is so powerful. The 2017 Silver Scroll, the award for excellence in New Zealand songwriting, has gone to Ella Yelich O’Connor, along with her … Read more
For about two months in 2014, Elle Hunt watched nothing but Gossip Girl. On the 10th anniversary of the show’s premiere, she reflects on the legacy of the Upper East Side snark-fest – and why sometimes it’s OK to give up on a mediocre TV show. Warning: contains a big spoiler – the biggest – directly … Read more
Elle Hunt reviews Lorde’s new album, Melodrama. Every sophomore album of a breakout young star is hotly anticipated as a test of their artistry and staying power, and Lorde did precisely nothing to ease the pressure on herself. Melodrama comes very nearly four full years after her debut album, Pure Heroine, and, in that time, … Read more
Ten years ago today, The OC finished forever. Elle Hunt is very late to the party, but still partying nonetheless. The best part about watching television that is years old and everyone has already seen is that no one can complain about spoilers. As with the Montreal Convention governing air travel disasters, there’s a two-year limitation … Read more
Australia wakes to discover it can’t make its mind up. Elle Hunt recaps the action from Sydney It’s the campaign that never ends, it just goes on and on, my friends… After an eight-week campaign and a neck-and-neck contest in which not very much happened, the Australian election was expected to be a close-run thing, … Read more
The long, long, long campaign has come to an end. Miss anything? Fear not: in a dispatch from Sydney, Elle Hunt breaks down everything you need to know. While New Zealanders have been shivving each other for avocados and living in abandoned cruise ships, Australia has been weathering its longest campaign since 1969. Prime minister … Read more
With the first full-time female referee appointed to the NFL last week, Elle Hunt examines the low-key feminist crusaders who blazed the fictional way in Friday Night Lights. // Friday Night Lights is ostensibly about a high school football team in Texas – but is actually about being a good friend and partner and parent, especially … Read more
United by history and language, but very much divided by humour, Elle Hunt says America and Britain reveal their national character through the dispositions of their sitcoms. // It’s the last vestige of a once-great empire: the belief, persistent in the face of the fish-slipping sketch and Mrs. Brown’s Boys, The Benny Hill Show, or … Read more
Elle Hunt discusses the undeniable significance of binge-watching television in today’s dating culture, while pondering her own romantic entanglements with both humans and TV shows. // I have seen the first half of the first season of Lost*. I doubt I’ll ever watch the rest. Not because of any considered opposition to poorly thought-out or increasingly pointless … Read more
Elle Hunt takes a walk through the top ten rubber-legged lipstick-smeared music moments to grace our TV screens this year. // Acknowledging that there are few things more boring or redundant than remarks about how fast this year has gone, how fast has this year gone?! To think that this time 12 months ago, we’d just … Read more