Claire Adamson shares her arduous journey to watch a few precious episodes of the part Barbie, part human after-school series This is Serial Stuff, and celebrates the smart technicolour antics of the iconic kiwi kids show. I want you to cast your mind back to a time before you were cool – catching the bus home, eating all … Read more
In week six of The Bachelor NZ, some of the greatest minds in the country assemble to talk about Art’s dreamy leathers, school teacher woes and pure pash champions. Joanna Hunkin’s Alliterative Ode to The Bachelor Times are getting tough for Billy Big Balls. His weasel words may woo the weaker women but Caustic Chrystal … Read more
Rowing endlessly around The Bachelor NZ pond of love, Alex Casey delivers her sixth power rankings in our weekly series. If you missed last week’s power rankings, click here. This week The Bachelor NZ was about as juicy and satisfying as a face-sized burger eaten without a knife and fork because the Burger People didn’t have … Read more
It’s an interesting feature of this amazing future amusement park we currently inhabit that we talk about the “TV binge” where once we referred to the “TV marathon”. Slowly TV is becoming human foie gras as complete seasons of TV shows are now made to be inhaled in one sitting. It’s been great for people … Read more
Jane Yee, Alex Casey and Duncan Greive recap week six on the #TFSPod, returning to the sunny BOP to watch Art and his merry mistresses fly helicopters and planes, row boats and catch fish, and pash like animals. We start to get a bit too deep this week, talking directly to the Bachelorettes, and Art’s … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored feature where we mine the extensive Lightbox catalogue for cool shows you might like to watch. This week – it’s superhero central. Superheroes are everywhere at the moment. The new Avengers movie has flown into cinemas, one of the X Men has come out as gay and here at home … Read more
Alex Casey watched the Sunday special on the escapees of Gloriavale, and explains why you need to don a bonnet and get involved in this bizarre ongoing story. What’s it about? Gloriavale is the name of a small religious community in Haupiri Valley, first established by a man called Hopeful Christian (yep) in 1969. The … Read more
Aaron Yap welcomes part two of Mad Men season seven, dissecting the first two episodes and predicting towards how the show will wrap its final season. As Mad Men heads towards the end of its extraordinarily consistent eight-year run, the first two episodes of its final season, ‘Severance’ and ‘New Business’, usher in a brand new … Read more
The Spinoff knights meet at the television roundtable to talk week 10 on X Factor NZ. Topics include opportunities for cross-promotion, Israel Dagg’s music video debut and a general sense of apathy. Renee Church on The Blatt-Chelorette We can’t deny it anymore. Mel Blatt is a straight babe, and all males in association with the show (who would be/are in … Read more
Tara Ward recaps episode 11 of Outlander, in which she introduces the show to her husband, Claire discovers the intricacies of the Scottish legal system, Geillis causes a scene and Jamie seeks The Future. If you missed last week’s recap, click here. We begin with a visit to that ever-popular Highland tourist attraction: the Thieves … Read more
After another baffling elimination, After The Factor turns to more important discussion: Do fish eat other fish? Will Stan and Dom ever play sqaush? Is Nic allowed to be mad if he doesn’t even vote? What was Chris Mac doing on a boat with Joe Cotton? Will Natasha’s evil plans for Dom come true? How does … Read more
Duncan Greive watches the first episode of Lightbox’s murderous new drama The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, starring Christina Ricci. What’s it about? Lizzie Borden was a real life human animal – a perfect internet-era celebrity who just happened to be born a century or so too soon. She grew up relatively wealthy in a small Massachusetts … Read more
With the X Factor NZ going from bad to worse, Alex Casey watches Sesame Street’s Singing With the Stars in an attempt to get back to the music. Sesame Street first began in 1969, and in its first season featured the cameo appearances of BB King, Don McLean and Carol Burnett. Over the next few … Read more
Appointment Viewing is a regular column which features a Spinoff writer watching one or more episodes of a current show and attempting to decode its appeal. Here Tara Ward gets to know the political complexities of sixteenth century Tudor England in Wolf Hall. What’s it all about? Wolf Hall covers Thomas Cromwell’s rise to power in the … Read more
A confession: Sometimes when I sit staring uncomprehendingly at the blinking cursor, trying to figure out how something which once brought me so much joy came to be such a chore, I lean back and think of the winter of 2013. It was very cold, my wife very pregnant and our house a building site. … Read more
In the fourth of a five-part series – here are the first three parts – James Milne signs up to watch Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cancelled borderline softcore porn series The Client List in its entirety. This week Riley gets singing, and James rediscovers JLH’s musical career. There were some genuinely compelling moments of drama in episodes six … Read more
In this segment, Alex Casey tries recreate some iconic small screen meals. In this edition, she tackles the eleventh Doctor’s favourite snack – fish fingers and custard. When looking for more freaky forays into small screen snackage, this Doctor Who delicacy was very high up my priority list. Easy to make, relatively cheap, and combining two … Read more
Appointment Viewing 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: Duncan Greive watches the finale of Two and a Half Men. What’s it about? The most successful sitcom of this millennium was literally crushed under a grand … Read more
In an all-new Bachelor group think, the Spinoff knights meet at the television roundtable to discuss dreaming of Art, praying for Mike and where the love story all began. Paul Williams on the Origins of The Bachelor A lot of people think The Bachelor franchise began in 2002 with season one of the American show. These people … Read more
After blow-karting down The Bachelor NZ race track of love, Alex Casey delivers her fifth power rankings in our weekly series. If you missed last week’s power rankings, click here. Call the ambulance – nay (neigh, lol get it), the morgue. I’m officially dead after this week. We’ve been thrown down waterfalls, had our wrists broken and … Read more
With TV3’s drive to find a new 7pm weeknight rating-killer, Joe Nunweek looks back at their mid-90s effort, a venture so amazing and bold that it was discussed in Parliament. If the doomsayers are right – and Campbell Live is not long for this earth – it won’t be the end of an era so … Read more
After three long weeks the original gang is back together. Alex is back from Melbourne and Duncan back from dinner with his mum, while Jane’s busily raising her babies, as always. We drank a bottle of Lindauer Fraise – not our favourite – and ate a lot of lollies, then talked about this week’s Bachelor … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored feature in which we mine the extensive Lightbox catalogue for cool shows you might like to watch. This week, Alex Casey gathers a team of women who could give Hillary Clinton a run for her money in 2016. Throughout her years in the political sphere, Hillary Clinton has suffered … Read more
Please enjoy this excellent episode of Shorty Street Scandal, wherein James Mustapic recaps the past week of Ferndale hijinks. This week? Holiday madness goes completely awry, Chris Warner dresses like a Playboy bunny and TK says no to violence against women: Terrifyingly, Vinny’s son Michael walked around backwards this week wearing a paper mask, like some mash-up of … Read more
Appointment Viewing 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: Calum Henderson watches Flog It!, a sub-par Antiques Roadshow with bizarre new wave beats. What’s it about? I first became aware of Flog It! via an ad which … Read more
A DOUBLE elimination this week! Joe and Finlay are gone! And with them go all the things we thought we knew about this show and what it stood for. Where are we going? Why are we here? Why can’t we just let Mae Valley win? Former The Wireless X Factor commentator Matthew McAuley and Tumblr … Read more
Chris Bell tuned in to a National Geographic special called Hitler the Junkie, intrigued to find out the dictator’s penchant for unusual recreational remedies. It wasn’t cocaine, barbiturates or crystal meth that got me hooked. It was Bulgarian peasant faeces. Since it was Adolf Hitler who supposedly ingested them, wouldn’t Aryan faeces have been safer? I … Read more
Alex Casey visited the Breakfast set this morning to enjoy an intimate concert with hairy guitar chaps Counting Crows. // This morning I woke up early, got in a big yellow taxi (small gold Uber) and made my way to TVNZ to watch Counting Crows play live on Breakfast. My Uber driver Plamen was keen … Read more
Sophie Smith shares health lessons learned from watching House, and how the show both helped and hindered her struggle with hypochondria. I have always been excessively anxious about my health. For as long as I can remember, any prolonged or acute headache has been followed by the declaration that I must have a brain tumour. Pain in my … Read more