Charlotte Red ventures to the altar of American satire that is The Daily Show, and finds herself in an unexpected confrontation with the great man himself. I’m sitting in the audience of The Daily Show thinking of all the things I should and shouldn’t do. In the hour-long queue to get into the small studio, the … Read more
Alex Casey recaps her own My Kitchen Rules NZ recapping experience, summarising the tips and tricks she has learnt from Kitchen HQ.// “This is the night, I’m turning up the heat. This is the night, I’m standing on my feet.” – MKRNZ theme song One week ago, Neena and Belinda (The Modern Day Hippies) won … Read more
Alex Casey went along to the official Outlander fan gathering, and discovered a visionary group of female fans who are as unconventional as the show they love. // I didn’t know a lot about Outlander. I had watched half of the pilot, had read some bits and pieces online, and raced through the infamous sexy episode … Read more
Saturday Night Live obsessive Eli Matthewson selects the show’s finest Halloween sketches. // It’s Halloween, and what better way to celebrate the day we get to yell “Go away, this isn’t America!” at children waiting outside our front doors than by sitting inside on the ol’ youtube. I’ve always considered Spooks and LOLs to be close … Read more
Horror had a fairly minor place on television until the last decade, when it rose from the grave. Andrew Todd looks at what has driven its revival.// Horror on television, like in the movies, has always seen peaks and troughs in popularity. Back in the day, most TV horror came in the form of anthology … Read more
On the night before Halloween, Duncan Greive went to the launch of MediaWorks’ new season. To some it would have been a vision of pure terror. But not to him. // “A living nightmare,” said Damo. His interviewer, radio DJ Mike Puru, nervously pressed him to expand. “It’s like a bad dream, but when you wake up … Read more
Richard Dean Anderson was made famous by MacGyver and has been haunted by him ever since. Rosabel Tan headed to Armageddon to watch him talking with ghosts. // He’s a man who can fix a blown fuse with a gum wrapper, and who once built a defibrillator out of some candlesticks, a microphone and a … Read more
MediaWorks is racing into the future right now, crowd-sourcing ideas for its forthcoming soap and going multi-media with its new Paul Henry breakfast show. We couldn’t resist combining the two innovations and volunteering our own ideas to fill Henry’s soon-to-be vacant 10.30pm weeknights slot. As always, these bad, bad ideas remain © the authors, and are available for big … Read more
Jesse Mulligan knows well the peril involved in finding a mutually satisfying show upon which your marriage can depend. // Left wing blogger and twitter grump Giovanni Tiso declared recently that he was abandoning True Detective. “What a show”, he tweeted. “Great photography. Wonderful acting and script. Jesus. So boring. We gave up after 3 … Read more
We talked to “The Social Media Buddies” aka Sam and Dan from My Kitchen Rules New Zealand about getting trolled by school teachers, the big lamb screw-up and having major Mum beef with Sean Connolly.// Sam and Dan were the youngest MKRNZ team by far, two early twenty-somethings from Auckland who were coined “The Social Media Buddies” (because they … Read more
While the stars of critically acclaimed cable dramas snag the glory, Aaron Yap believes 24‘s weary, brutal Jack Bauer can stand proudly alongside Walter White, Tony Soprano and the rest as an elite golden age anti-hero. Being a 24 fan can be a lonely experience. The number of people who I know really watch this show (i.e. those I … Read more
Two key Spinoff writers share a dirty little secret: they’ve never seen The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad or any of the other defining ‘important’ TV shows of our time. Catch Up Club is here to save them, and possibly you too. // Alex: Hello Joseph, you have not seen a lot of fancy TV … Read more
There are few sub-species of humanity more ridiculous than the successful TV magician. Here Alex Casey chronicles the most successful practitioners of what is somehow not a dying art. // I have always had a bit of a soft spot for television magic shows. Maybe it’s the hairstyles, maybe it’s the showmanship, maybe it’s wasting forty … Read more
There’s a growing cult building around Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, and Rose Matafeo has fallen under the actor’s spell. Here she attempts to decode his appeal.// Late last year, I was flown down to Wellington to interview the cast of The World’s End at its New Zealand premiere. It was the fanciest media thing I’d been invited to in … Read more
Over the weekend I found myself at an the official fan gathering for New Zealand fans of the sprawling-time-travel-historical-romance series Outlander. Aside from the overwhelming sense of passion and community within this fan group of 30 or so women, itself part of a forthcoming feature, there were some incredible discussions. Over plates of eggs benedict and french toast, … Read more
Today, the NZ Herald published a gem of an interview with Shortland Street actor Ben Mitchell, wherein he restated his bizarre, unpleasant views about contemporary gender roles. I say restated because this is not the first time he has strongly voiced his proudly misogynist opinions. Shortland St occupies a unique place in this country’s self-image, due to both its age … Read more
Having already mercilessly extinguished one interesting and important broadcast outlet, Paul “Death Star” Henry has moved on to his next whimsical planetary demolition with the announcement of his new cross-platform extravaganza. I guess it makes sense to move Paul Henry back to breakfast slot, given his core viewership probably tends toward an early bedtime. There … Read more
Shortland St. Two words which make TVNZ’s ad sales warriors 50% stronger while TV3’s equivalents suppress waves of nausea at the very mention. For 22 long years it has had a monopoly on the New Zealand soap scene, but news broke Wednesday that from 2015 it will finally have competition. TV3 have announced plans for a five-nights-a-weeker … Read more
We talked to “Beauty and the Beast” aka Tracey and Neil from My Kitchen Rules New Zealand about cyberbullies called Doreen, experiencing the perfect chip and just giving everything a bloody shot. // I met Tracey and Neil on a sunny Ponsonby afternoon. Neil arrived bang on time, a vision in bright blue from his Kathmandu polar fleece to the … Read more
For young parents everywhere, Yo Gabba Gabba might be the best children’s television out. Henry Oliver takes us through some of the show’s best guest appearances so far. // The key to a good kid’s show is simultaneously appealing to both young and old. Of course, I say this because, as an adult, I want … Read more
X-Files obsessive David Farrier chronicles the show’s strengths through three very different episodes of the sci-fi classic. // “I don’t know anybody in the world working in film, and that’s what we work in here even though it appears on television” – Chris Carter, circa 1996 One of the happiest days of my life happened six years … Read more
As reality TV pioneer Survivor opens a mind-boggling 14th year, superfan Joseph Harper details its increasingly meta evolution in previewing season 29. // “If quick, I survive. If not quick, I am lost. This is “death.” – Sun Tzu, Ancient Chinese military strategist. “You got to hustle if you want to make a dollar. Everybody … Read more
Seinfeld’s best episodes were the ones about nothing: the ones that embraced unremarkable social situations with absurdist nihilism, writes Henry Oliver. // From today’s vantagepoint, it can be hard to remember how different sitcoms were before Seinfeld. The most popular comedies of the era – Cheers, Full House, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Who’s the … Read more
A chance encounter in LA lead David Shamy to the lair of Dr Phil, America’s premier unlicensed clinical psychologist. // You find two types of people on Venice Beach: the watchers and the watched. The watched are pirouetting on roller-skates, barely concealing their intimate parts. Or: they’re oiled up and pumping iron, barely concealing their … Read more
Before Buffy, before Veronica Mars, there was Xena. David Farrier looks back at the original bad babe. // When Lucy Lawless’ Xena first appeared in 1995, it was as a bad dude on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Except she wasn’t a bad dude, she was a bad babe. Which is sort of extraordinary, because there … Read more
Spaced birthed one of today’s most celebrated comedy directors, writes Andrew Todd.// Some shows come along as fully-formed works in the own rights. Others are flawed beasts that don’t quite hit it out of the park, but highlight the potential of their creators’ work to come. Channel 4’s 1999 comedy series Spaced, at first glance … Read more
House of Cards has been the go-to fictional analogue for this election season. Toby Manhire, however, is voting for The Thick Of It. // On a street in Rochdale in the spring of 2010, Gordon Brown forgot to take off his microphone. The British prime minister had been talking to a local pensioner, Gillian Duffy, … Read more
Late Night Big Breakfast has produced some of the funniest and most bizarre New Zealand television this year. The quality should come as no surprise given the talented team behind it. Leigh Hart and Jeremy Wells have already established themselves as television funny men of note with their past efforts. For my money though, the … Read more
We talked to Late Night Big Breakfast’s Leigh Hart about his mum, the starving people in Africa, and how he got the most out of Mike the Mongolian throat singer.// So, let’s start at the very beginning. After Moon TV, did you have the concept for this show immediately? I think I pitched the show to TV3 … Read more