Our friendly TV sponsors at Lightbox have a whole bunch of shows nominated for the Emmy Awards this year, so we got our resident award shows obsessive Sam Brooks to pick which ones might take home the gold. I love me an awards show. A bunch of people in pretty dresses saying long speeches and … Read more
Consider this: while you’re at work, slaving away, putting in hours for The Man, your car is sitting at home doing a whole lot of nothing. Like some apathetic teenager it sulks in the garage, taking up space and contributing basically nothing to the household finances. No more! With Yourdrive, a peer-to-peer car rental service, … Read more
Social enterprise – entrepreneurship that combines business nous with ethical aims – is on the rise. But is it anything more than a placebo effect that makes consumers momentarily feel good? Victoria Crockford finds if you want to remain relevant in 2017, you need to show your social credentials. “Be Here Now” encourages the worthy … Read more
From June 2019, every rental in the country will need to be insulated. Emily Writes talks to Kelson Primary School principal, landlord and mum Judy Pemberton about the changes, and why she chose to do the right thing early on. Judy Pemberton talks in a way I haven’t heard a landlord talk before. She talks … Read more
Jazz Kane attends an intimate invite-only Black Seeds show to celebrate the release of their new album Fabric and interviews band leader Barnaby Weir about how things have changed over the band’s long career. Arriving at Caroline Bar in Wellington for the release show for The Black Seeds’ new album Fabric, a couple of drinks … Read more
With the sixth and final season arriving exclusively to Lightbox today, we bask in the top celebrity cameos to ever feature on The Mindy Project. For a woman who wears her shambolic heart on her bound-to-be-extremely-colourful sleeve, there’s really not a lot of intel out there about what we can expect from the sixth season … Read more
Superfan Tara Ward counts down the top ten moments from the triumphant return of Outlander season three. Contains spoilers, obviously. Outlander is back! #Droughtlander is over, the never-ending tartan thirst is gone and we can once again drown in a hot ginger monsoon of time-travelling drama and adventure. I want ginger kisses! I want mashed potatoes! … Read more
Michelle Sharp was a corporate go-getter, working for Vodafone before co-founding a successful tech company. But the Kilmarnock Enterprises CEO says she found her path to happiness when she stepped off the business treadmill. Steve Jobs said “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do”. … Read more
So much of the New Zealand economy appears to be doing well. Tourism numbers are astonishing, Kiwis are coming home in their droves alongside new migrants, many of whom are young. But Rebecca Stevenson finds the Kiwi property market is always looming behind the sunshine. Do all roads in New Zealand lead to housing? Probably. … Read more
As iwi organisations grow, Chapman Tripp’s Nick Wells argues they should be establishing themselves as social enterprises to unlock their wealth for the greater good. The Māori economy is a significant part of New Zealand’s past, present and future. While I’m not Māori, my children are, so every time I work with iwi, and their … Read more
The Spinoff’s resident nail enthusiast Sam Brooks dives into nail salon reality show Boss Nails and finds someone to model his messy life after. I love two things: Getting my nails done. There’s something relaxing about handing your hands over to someone for an hour or so and getting them to look pretty and shiny. Especially if … Read more
In the lead up to the election, comedians Melanie Bracewell and Angella Dravid take a journey through the voting process in Make Me Tick, The Spinoff’s four part video series with the Electoral Commission. Today, Angella visits the voting booth. Last night, I forced myself to walk to the post box to submit my enrolment … Read more
Alex Casey watches Collection Intervention and comes away with some key learnings for fellow hoarders collectable enthusiasts. When I die, my body will be buried with hundreds of plastic E.T. figurines. Not because I love them and want them to stay with me forever, just because I’m certain I won’t be able to fucking get … Read more
With the third season of Scottish time-travel romance Outlander swooping back to Lightbox next Monday, The Spinoff assembled a handy recap video to get you up to speed. One week to go until Outlander does the highland fling back onto Lightbox. Watch the two previous seasons exclusively below:
On the first day of Spring, we present to you all the content sprouting forth in September for you to enjoy on Lightbox. Happy Valley (S2 available now) The second season of the British chiller returns with Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood back on her murder beat. With a string of homicides hitting West Yorkshire, and … Read more
As Suits clocks up its 100th episode, Tara Ward rounds up more shows on Lightbox that have soared past triple digits. Only very special things make it to 100, like the Queen Mother, Kiwi shoe polish and legal drama Suits, which celebrates its 100th episode today on Lightbox. Suits has wrangled its way through seven … Read more
As the most notorious figures in boxing and mixed martial arts collided in The Money Fight this weekend, Don Rowe sat down for a few beers with Israel Adesanya, a multi-sport veteran of almost 100 fights, to talk about fame, defeat and the realities of a sport centred around dishing out brain damage. Supported by Garage … Read more
With the announcement today that Roger Waters is heading back to New Zealand for a tour next January, Pete Douglas takes a look at his intermittent and sometimes misunderstood solo career. It’s hard to imagine now, but when Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, he initially struggled to match the success of his remaining … Read more
Forget the cliches of women in top hats and bustiers singing tired songs about heartbreak. Auckland Live’s International Cabaret Season is full of energy, emotion, feminism and mischief, writes Sam Brooks. There’s a billion definitions of cabaret, from the clinical to the etymological to the base. For me, cabaret takes the best things of live … Read more
Henry Oliver watched ten hours of Neil Finn live-streaming in case you didn’t have time to. These were his highlights. Every Friday evening for the past four weeks, Neil Finn has live-streamed a recording session from his own Roundhead Studios, joined by, in his words, “a loose knit collection of impassioned and slightly random people, … Read more
The radical reimagining of the suffragette movement, That Bloody Woman, is back for Auckland Live’s International Cabaret Season. Alex Casey spoke to Esther Stephens about her role as Kate Sheppard – and how, this year, Sheppard’s fight is more relevant than ever. The night before the nation votes in this year’s general election, the spirit … Read more
In the lead up to the election, comedians Melanie Bracewell and Angella Dravid take a journey through the voting process in Make Me Tick, The Spinoff’s four part video series with the Electoral Commission. Today, Melanie discovers the value of one vote. Whenever I talk about voting with my friends, they often say they can’t be … Read more
Manhattan showtime comes to West Auckland: as the massive 80s musical show Pleasuredome, starring Lucy Lawless, counts down to opening night, executive producer Rob Tapert and producer Charlie McDermott reveal the story of its creation. Rob Tapert: You don’t give up and you try to work only on the things you really love – that’s … Read more
Sam Brooks watches the new Eva Longoria vehicle Decline and Fall and finds a show more British than a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. Decline and Fall is maybe the most British show I’ve ever watched. How British is it? First of all, it’s based on a 1928 satirical novel by Evelyn … Read more
In the lead up to the election, comedians Melanie Bracewell and Angella Dravid take a journey through the voting process in Make Me Tick, The Spinoff’s new four part video series with the Electoral Commission. Today, Angella contemplates the branches of government. I went to St Patrick’s School up until the age of 12. I … Read more
For nearly 25 years Dr Fiona Measham has documented how and why humans do drugs. She spoke to Simon Day about how helping people know what exactly they’re taking is making doing drugs safer in the UK. For all of human history we’ve loved getting intoxicated. Almost every society, tribe and culture has taken drugs … Read more
Henry Oliver talks to bedroom producer and multi-instrumentalist Merk, who is playing at Seamless, an all-ages show, in Auckland this weekend. To win tickets, read till the very end! So what are you up to at the moment? I’m just working on new music. I was just in Europe for a couple of months playing for … Read more
Tara Ward watches Wasted, a buzzy British comedy starring spirit guide Sean Bean as every famous Sean Bean character ever. Imagine discovering your subconscious mind can manifest itself into the form it trusts the most. It’s an alarming thought, mostly because mine would reveal itself as an electrifying mix of Suzy Cato and Astar from … Read more
Aaron Yap plumbs the depths of The Expanse, a sci-fi space opera that’s drawn comparisons to some of television’s greatest. It’s weird to think that the Syfy channel once spawned Battlestar Galactica, one of, if not the finest science fiction series of the modern television era. Today, the very mention of Syfy is cause for … Read more