Sam Brooks 
Anika Moa Unleashed had a triumphant first season, and showcased the singer-personality as one of our best interviewers, but what does the second season do with her? If you wrote Anika Moa as a character in a work of fiction, you’d be told she was too perfect and you had to go back to the drawing … Read more
It’s taken three games to get there – but Valkyria Chronicles 4 finally recaptures the addictive and bizarrely positive magic of the first game. Sam Brooks reviews. When Valkyria Chronicles debuted on the Playstation 3 nearly ten years ago, it was a different time. Marion Cotillard was reigning Best Actress, George Bush was President, and the PS3 was … Read more
Three’s Comedy Pilot Week starts this Sunday night on Three – but what is this newfangled thing? Sam Brooks gives you the low down. Five new shows over four nights? Isn’t there already enough TV to consume? Yes, reader, there is. But this one is worth your time, even in this age of peak TV, … Read more
Last night, Sony announced the PlayStation Classic – a console that looks like a PlayStation One and plays those games too. Is that all it is, though? So what is the PlayStation Classic, exactly? It’s a console that looks a lot like a PlayStation 1, PSX or PSOne (Jesus, that console had too many monikers ) … Read more
61% of people working on the minimum wage in New Zealand are women. RNZ’s new documentary series Minimum gives a voice – and more importantly, a face – to these women. Sam Brooks reviews. In 2017, there were roughly 76,400 people on minimum wage in New Zealand (which was $15.75 an hour at the time), and … Read more
This generation’s Tomb Raider trilogy comes to a close – and it’s with a limp, not a wild leap into the future. Sam Brooks reviews. The Tomb Raider series is the Maria Sharapova of gaming. The games are always good, never great, and the reputation, or at least the fame, they hold far outstrips the actual quality of … Read more
If you expected one pop singer to have five sold-out shows at Spark Arena in 2018, would you expect them to be P!nk? Sam Brooks says why you absolutely should, you fool. Note: This isn’t about P!nk’s superhuman arms. If you want to know how to get swole like P!nk, I am of zero use … Read more
Spider-Man is an unqualified triumph of a game – but the best thing about it is also the most surprising. Sam Brooks reviews. This is a spoiler-free review. It’s hard to participate in video game journalism without being very aware of the hype machine. That is, the machine which creates a deluge of pre-publicity for games … Read more
It’s one of the the longest-running television shows of all time – but what do people remember about it? The cast of the post-apocalyptic madcap theatre show based on The Simpsons weighs in. Look, I know what you’re thinking. Theatre is boring, and nobody should go to it, unless there are cats or British kings rapping. As … Read more
Plus6Four Productions’ non-linear who-dun-it web-series Alibi is something entirely new for New Zealand television – and it largely nails the landing. Sam Brooks reviews. The location: a small rural town. The scenario: a girl’s body found in a bathtub. The suspects? Six suspicious people in the town: the local pastor, the slightly foreign teacher, one of … Read more
Last night Rose Matafeo won the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, one of the most prestigious awards for comedians anywhere. Here’s why that matters. First up: What’s the Edinburgh Fringe Festival? The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the biggest fringe festival in the world. With well over three thousand shows, there’s nothing that’s … Read more
Impossibly, Lady GaGa’s debut album The Fame came out ten years ago this week. Sam Brooks looks back at the album that launched an icon. I remember where I was when I heard ‘Just Dance’ – and you might remember that ‘Just Dance’ was a hit in New Zealand about a year before it broke through across … Read more
They’re the lost seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, but now they’re back for New Zealand’s viewing pleasure. Sam Brooks rounds up the early-episode moments that continue to live on in infamy. Season One, Episode One: Porkchop Porkchop! There are many reasons that Drag Race is remarkable, and one of them is that the first queen who … Read more
Family Guy has been on our airwaves for a slightly interrupted nineteen years, and it’s been critically reviled for almost as long. Sam Brooks has seen all of it and thinks it’s time he stood up for the perennial punching bag. There have been three hundred and nine episodes of Family Guy and I have seen every … Read more
Aretha Franklin has died. Sam Brooks remembers the Queen. She wasn’t just the Queen of Soul. Hell, if you applied the label, Queen of R&B to her, you wouldn’t be wrong there either. Queen of Gospel? Sure. Queen of Pop? Of a certain era, absolutely. But what Artha was outside of these things is a … Read more
In honour of Madonna’s 60th birthday on 17 August, 2018, Sam Brooks rounded up the 60 best Madonna songs to celebrate this with her. Madonna follows forty-nine people on Twitter. I’m one of them. This is not a brag, but a fact. I have no idea why she follows me. I think it might be … Read more
Been living under a proverbial rock for the past ten years and have never heard of RuPaul’s Drag Race? Don’t worry, Sam Brooks has you covered. Okay, so first up: A lot of you will know what Drag Race is. You will be obsessed with it already. You have a top five favourite queen, you have an opinion … Read more
Funny slapstick comedy about a wild dog trying to eat a bird or a treatise on the meaningless of all human pursuits? Sam Brooks watches some Wile E. Coyote cartoons. Straight up: I had never seen a single second of Looney Tunes until this week. I was the kind of child who watched Absolutely Fabulous and … Read more
How do you write about an experience that’s not your own – and do it without offending anybody? Sam Brooks, author of the play Burn Her on now in Auckland, offers a solution. A month or so ago, I saw playwright Victor Rodger give a talk about cultural appropriation. Drawing on Lionel Shriver’s controversial (and … Read more
On Monday night’s episode, Chris Warner raised the possibility of a woman aborting her child because of potential medical issues. Controversy ensued, which says a lot about Shortland Street‘s place in our culture, writes Sam Brooks. Shortland Street has been a key part of New Zealand culture for 26 years. Whether you watch it or not, … Read more
Popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has been a boon for video game developers for a few years now. Sam Brooks investigates the less glamourous side of the platform. Pillars of Eternity, $3,986,929.Torment: Tides of Numenara, $4,188,927. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, $5,545,991. Shenmue 3, $6,333,295. All video games funded through Kickstarter – and yes, all those commas are in exactly … Read more
If you participate in a certain dark corner of the internet, you’ll know that a lot of people are talking about video game breasts – and the fight to keep them unrealistic. Sam Brooks investigates. Last week in an interview with Gamespot, Yohei Shimbura, the director of Dead or Alive 6 said about the latest entry in … Read more
To celebrate the release of Chelsea Jade’s long-awaited debut album, Sam Brooks asks her everything about her (and other people’s) music. It’s the rare unambiguously sunny morning in Auckland when Personal Best drops. I’m sitting outside a big building, waiting for an interview, long flowy coat on, big sunglasses on, and I’m listening to the album from … Read more
Season eight of Suits starts dropping on Lightbox tomorrow – and Katherine Heigl is coming along with it. Sam Brooks details where the former TV princess has been up to since her heyday. Katherine Heigl has had a strange career, you guys. First up, she had Roswell. You know, that show about aliens starring the guy with … Read more
Based on one of the most notorious murder cases in New Zealand history, Mistress, Mercy finds itself hamstrung by the limits of the doco-drama genre. In 1989, Renee Chignell and Neville Walker were convicted of the murder of Peter Plumley-Walker. Police alleged they had thrown him into the Huka Falls after a bondage session with Chignell, … Read more
In the midst of the bad prequels, after a slew of bad video games, and before the contested sequels, there was Knights of the Old Republic. Sam Brooks looks back at the critically acclaimed Star Wars game on its fifteenth anniversary. In 2003, the idea of a good Star Wars game was like the idea of a Star Wars sequel at … Read more
Absolutely Fabulous is one of the best comedies of all time, no question. Sam Brooks explains why. The first television show I remember falling in love with was Absolutely Fabulous. I was four. Now, I can’t remember why exactly I was allowed to watch Absolutely Fabulous, a show where the two lead characters spend more time high than drunk … Read more
Harlots returns to Lightbox tomorrow with a second season full of intrigue, feminism and corset-ripping good times. The show is full of famous faces, but where have you seen them before? Samantha Morton Who is she playing? Margaret Wells! She runs a brothel in 18th century Britain, and her brutal upbringing working in Lydia Quigley’s brothel … Read more
Westside is back for a fourth season tonight on Three. Sam Brooks visited the set and came back with thoughts on how the show mythologises our country’s recent history. If there’s one thing I know for sure about the 80s, it’s that there was a lot of smoke. Correction: If there’s one thing I know about Westside, … Read more