Current affairs TV returned from its summer holiday last Monday, when One’s Seven Sharp and TV3’s Campbell Live came back to our TVs. We watched both shows and analysed their comebacks across 10 key areas. Here’s Alex Casey’s take on Campbell Live. What’s New? There are two unavoidable additions to the slick green kingdom of JC for … Read more
Current affairs TV returned from its summer holiday last Monday, when One’s Seven Sharp and TV3’s Campbell Live came back to our TVs. We watched both shows and analysed their comebacks across 10 key areas. Here’s Duncan Greive’s take on Seven Sharp. What’s New? Toni is more pregnant, so there’s a new human growing before our eyes. … Read more
Checking in With… 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, we previewed Better Call Saul, arriving exclusively to Lightbox at 8pm on Monday 9th February. // Episodes Consumed: 1 What’s it about? Set in the same … Read more
Alex Casey assembles a car boot full of internet ammunition to defend Skyler White against the haters to the bitter end. // “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover. I’m a child, I’m a mother. I’m a sinner, I’m a saint. I do not feel ashamed” – Meredith Brooks and Skyler White, probably. There are a lot of … Read more
Breaking Bad is one of the most acclaimed television shows of the century – of course you love it. But Joseph Nunweek strongly recommends you avoid interacting with your fellow fans. // Our hero is bald, save for a goatee that would seem ridiculous were the stakes not so high. He dresses like he’s a would-be kingpin – … Read more
Part of what made Breaking Bad work was a thread of plausibility amongst the violence. We spoke with a fan and former drug squad cop to test the show’s realism. // For 13 years, starting in 1993, Dale Kirk roved the Waikato, catching crooks. He started as a beat cop, then joined serious crime unit the CIB in 1999, just … Read more
In this special Bad edition of Throwback Thursday, Joseph Harper looks back at Bob ‘Saul’ Odenkirk’s alternative comedy career. // Before he joined the cast of Breaking Bad as unscrupulous attorney Saul Goodman, Bob Odenkirk carved himself out a broad and varied career in the alternative undercurrents of American comedy. Stints with Second City, Saturday Night Live, … Read more
Alex Casey heads down to The Spinoff lab to mix up a beaker of piping hot Breaking Bad stats. Some of them are made up, most of them are realer than a meth head squashed by an ATM. // There are loads of good infographics out there about Breaking Bad. Want to see a colourising chart of … Read more
For years Joseph Harper has been nurturing an obstinate theory: HBO’s mostly unwatched comedy Eastbound and Down is essentially the same show as Breaking Bad, only a whole lot better. 2013 was a big year on the telly. It saw in the end of one of my favourite shows to ever drag its way onto a television screen. … Read more
Breaking Bad is acclaimed for delivering heart-stopping drama, spectacular violence and television’s most infamous anti-hero. Alex Casey, however, wishes to applaud a less critically-indulged area of the Breaking Bad universe: the wondrous food of Middle America. I have a deep interest in food. I want to know what everyone is eating all the time. I … Read more
The New Zealand Initiative’s Head of Research Eric Crampton breaks down the depressing drug market economics which drive Walter White to murder and mayhem. // The most successful anti-methamphetamine campaign ever run in the United States came in 1995, resulting in a short-run tripling of the price of meth and a drop in purity from 90% … Read more
Alex Casey sifts through the mighty body count of Breaking Bad to rank her top ten most memorable deaths on the show. // The statistics of Breaking Bad are always impressive – it received 110 notable awards, had 10.3 million Americans tune in for the finale and over 33,000 articles written about it in the … Read more
Before Breaking Bad, the world’s sharpest look at the scourge of methamphetamine was written by Deja Voodoo. Ten years on, songwriter Matt Heath recalls the fallout from their hit single ‘P’. ‘I smoke P and I’m alright’. It’s the first line of the fourth single from Deja Voodoo’s debut album Brown Sabbath. We wrote the … Read more
Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day 22, Thursday 22 January 6.30pm Watched: … Read more
An introduction to our forthcoming methfest ‘Bad Week’: a weeklong party dedicated to Breaking Bad, ahead of the launch of its spinoff Better Call Saul. On February 9th, New Zealand time, Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul makes its debut. The show will screen exclusively on Lightbox in New Zealand, and we’ve decided to devote a whole week to … Read more
Things have been a little quiet on the Paul Henry front of late. Since his final episode of the late night Paul Henry Show last year, there has been a serious shortage of Paul. No smug grin. No hysterical laughing at rodents. No description of impoverished countries as shitholes. There was a weak online attempt at finding … Read more
Bringing you the highlights of this week’s TV Guide, New Zealand’s top selling magazine and this website’s papery spiritual grandmother. // Growing Up Winston: A Talk With Bree Peters This week’s issue features a cracking interview with Bree Peters, daughter of Winston Peters and Dr. Pania Stevens on Shortland Street. Bree talks about her career … Read more
Please enjoy this excellent episode of Shorty Street Scandal, wherein James Mustapic recaps the past week of Ferndale hijinks. This week? The drinks flowed freely through the streets from The IV all the way to the unemployed trolley boy. First important thing of note: James has ditched his usual sweater for a more relaxed and weather-appropriate look for … Read more
After watching the introductions on The Bachelor Australia, Alex Casey dispenses some crucial advice to New Zealand’s upcoming Bachelorettes about how to make a good first impression. // The Bachelor Australia started here last week in a flurry of sequins and tealight candles (truly the ideal combo for a painfully blinding iridescence). The format? Same … Read more
Summing up the past week in television news for you, because we care. // Woohoo for Puru? On Monday it was announced that our stalwart The Edge radio host and Shopping Channel presenter Mike Puru would be the host of The Bachelor NZ for 2015. It was a safe choice and a smart choice, but what … Read more
This Throwback Thursday, Aaron Yap applauds the metaphysical triumphs of a particularly buzzy episode of The Twilight Zone. // The conflation of metaphysical concepts and science has always been a difficult, tricky thing for me to swallow in TV and movies. Not that it’s impossible to achieve; for example, Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica was persuasive … Read more
Alex Casey has never watched a second of Breaking Bad, nor read anything about it. Going in completely blind, she has committed to watching the whole series over summer in the lead up to spin off series Better Call Saul‘s arrival to Lightbox in February. Contains spoilers, obviously. Day Fifteen, Monday 12 January 9pm Watched: … Read more
After the passing of Coronation Street‘s beloved Deirdre yesterday, Alex Casey looks back at how TV shows have historically coped with unexpected cast deaths. // We must admit that, here at The Spinoff HQ, our mourning for Deirdre was overshadowed only by our complete panic at the realisation that nobody we knew was remotely interested in Deirdre … Read more
Bringing you the highlights of this week’s TV Guide, New Zealand’s top selling magazine and this website’s papery spiritual grandmother. // Behind the Scenes at Breakfast: An insightful look behind the polished veneer of Breakfast by Shaun Bamber. Goes in-depth to bring you what you really want to know about the Breakfast couch (yes, it’s … Read more
Competitive reality shows have tightly controlled formulas for a reason, and Mike Puru fits the format. But Duncan Greive had been hoping we’d have someone stranger watching The Bachelor unfold. This morning Mike Puru was announced as our inaugural host of The Bachelor, an appointment that was greeted with an overwhelming shrug by New Zealand. Because it … Read more
This Music Monday, Alex Casey finds beauty in the horror of American Horror Story: Freak Show’s bizarre musical numbers. // If there is one thing that Glee, Nip/Tuck and Popular have taught us, it’s that producer/writer/director Ryan Murphy loves a good pop soundtrack. If he can integrate that soundtrack into the diegetic world of his TV … Read more
Please enjoy this year’s premiere episode of Shorty Street Scandal, wherein James Mustapic recaps the past week of Ferndale hijinks. This week? Hanky panky, a creaky baby and Leanne’s heartbreaking pyjama woes: We were off to a roaring start to the year with a spiffing series of summer makeovers, marking a new era for Dallas and his … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored post where we mine the extensive Lightbox catalogue for shows you might like to watch. This week we line up the new shows arriving in January, ranging from the finest Scandinavian thrillers to the return of pillaging pirates. Mozart in the Jungle (Season 2) Coming away with two Golden Globe … Read more
Alex Casey trawls the New Zealand Herald comments section to get a conclusive answer on our nation’s opinion of Daniel Corbett.// I wrote an impassioned ode to the new TV One weatherman that miraculously made it into the top read stories of the NZ Herald. As a result, punters from North to South started weighing … Read more