Your aunty’s favourite show, Outlander, is returning exclusively to Lightbox September 11. Tara Ward watched the brand new trailer and had some thoughts. I was as happy as a tiny donkey trotting through the Scottish countryside when the official Outlander Season 3 trailer landed last week. It was Outlander D-Day, the beginning of the end: only … Read more
Sneaky speakeasies, insider tradie-trading, backstabbing, broken alliances and heaps of quality side-eyes peppered a very dramatic week four on The Block. It was Master Bedroom week, but also Masterstroke week as Ling and Zing set out to cut the twins down to size like a length of two-by-four. Aggrieved by Julia and Ali’s spoilt, bratty, … Read more
Raiza Biza’s first full length album since 2012 is on the horizon. He talks to Simon Day about the local hip hop community, growing up black in New Zealand, and his upcoming all-ages gig – which we’re giving away tickets to. It’s been a complicated journey for Raiza Biza. His family left Rwanda when his … Read more
TVNZ 1’s Sunday Theatre is one of the oldest surviving timeslots in New Zealand television. Duncan Greive reviews the excellent Resolve, and looks at the lessons it contains for our struggling serial dramas. Through winter, for a while time now, some of the most expensive television we make has aired. On TVNZ 2 and Three that tends to … Read more
The Spinoff and Spark proudly present Pod On The Couch, a weekly podcast exploring music and the people that make it. This episode: Henry Oliver talks to Kirin J Callinan about his new album, Bravado, and his debut acting role in Top of the Lake. Spinoff Music editor Henry Oliver talks to Australian music eccentric Kirin J Callinan about encores, … Read more
Aaron Yap watches the new Scandi-crime drama Midnight Sun and finds it gross yet engrossing. Midnight Sun is as slick, engrossing and assured a cop procedural as I’ve seen since the dawn of the Nordic Noir boom. Its top-flight craft shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the creative force behind the show is the writing/directing duo of … Read more
Henry Oliver talks to Denver McCarthy, who made perhaps New Zealand’s best techno album nearly 20 years ago. In 1998, a 20-year-old Denver McCarthy released perhaps New Zealand’s best techno album, Inside a Quiet Mind, on Kog Transmissions. It was a more-than-promising debut for a young producer, combining dancefloor-ready four-to-the-floor bass drums with ethereal, introverted synths. … Read more
Tara Ward washes up on the shores of Love Island, the British reality sensation that has been compared to the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare. I am late to the Love Island party. I am Jessica, sauntering in with my pleather swimming togs, ready to board the love train after every other bastard has already coupled … Read more
Jane Yee and Duncan Greive are joined by a very special guest, Sam Cable, one of last year’s winners of The Block NZ and a man with at least $200,000 sitting in his bank account. Duncan and Jane went full Blockaholic this week with special guest Sam Cable, 2016 winner of The Block NZ, and … Read more
The Spinoff presents the video premiere of SWIDT’s ‘Player Of The Day’, featuring UFC champion Dan “The Hang Man” Hooker and New Zealand Warrior Roger Tuivasa Sheck. SWIDT MC Spycc says: ‘Player Of The Day’ is stadium music. It’s a song about winning, beating the odds, and just owning whatever field you’re in, whether its music, sports, … Read more
One day last year Sam Brooks started re-watching The Nanny and didn’t stop. Six seasons later, this is what he learned. “Did The Nanny ever actually play in primetime in New Zealand?” This is something I often wondered as I made my way through all the show’s six seasons last year. My main memory of … Read more
Hussein Moses reads the 2004 memoir from the Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman for the first time – and uncovers some unholy truths about our lovely little nation. “There’s a devil in my dick and some demons in my semen.” That’s an actual line from a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I’m not messing with … Read more
Martyn Pepperell talks to Jet Jaguar about his new album ‘Grounded’, the transportive power of field recordings, and the unreliability of memory. “I find it hard to relate to music critics or fans who only like music they see as some kind of direct personal outpouring of that musician’s thoughts and feelings,” explains Michael Upton, … Read more
Everyone loves a nostalgia trip, remembering a time when the world wasn’t melting so fast. Join Lucy Zee as she looks back at the white guys who once were on New Zealand TV way too much. Imagine a world without white men. Well for starters, New Zealand would have hardly any television commercials. My parents … Read more
Pete Douglas asks Queens of the Stone Age about their new album, classic rock and fate of the humble guitar. Last week Queens of the Stone Age played a great show in that strange school hall of a venue known as the Logan Campbell Centre on a very stormy night. I was there and chatted with the … Read more
The Southern gothic comic book fable Preacher is back and exclusive to Lightbox. Dominic Corry sat down with Joseph Gilgun (Cassidy) to talk about acting anxieties, American money, and living the ganja dream. Instantly recognisable to fans of Emmerdale, This Is England and the beloved cult series Misfits, English character actor Joseph Gilgun had been kicking … Read more
BBC have announced that the 13th Doctor in Doctor Who will be played by a mere human woman and men are not happy. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a woman has committed an act of violence against thousands of men. Madeleine Chapman ranks the worst of them. There’s nothing worse than blatantly miscasting a fictional … Read more
TVNZ’s New Blood competition crowned its winner last month and awarded one team $100,000 to make a web series. Emma Clark talks to Isla Macleod, one half of the winning pair behind Oddly Even, about producing quality content on a non existent budget. TVNZ web series competition New Blood has lived up to its namesake … Read more
Simon Day talks to Grayson Gilmour about spatialised audio, his Silver Scroll nomination, and new album, Otherness. Grayson Gilmour has been recording music since he was a teenager, but it has taken the arrival of his 30s for him to make peace with the direction of his career. On his eighth solo album, Otherness, released … Read more
It is week three of series six of The Block NZ and Jane Yee has figured out her Lings from her Zings. But how are they doing? Are they any good at renovating property? Does it matter? What is life? “I do not want Julia and Ali’s house because they have ****** those two rooms” … Read more
Our regular round-up of new songs and singles, this week featuring Selena Gomez, Diaz Grimm, Widowspeak & more… SONG OF THE WEEK Selena Gomez – ‘Fetish’ ft Gucci Mane Starting with ‘The Heart Wants What it Wants’ in 2014, Selena Gomez embarked on a streak of hot singles as good as anyone currently active. Discounting … Read more
With the new season of Suits coming express to Lightbox, we found an unlikely fan in the Right Honourable Bill English, Prime Minister of New Zealand. Earlier this year when Spinoff editor Duncan Greive interviewed Prime Minister Bill English, there was one question that didn’t make the final cut. Today, The Spinoff can finally reveal … Read more
For years Lucy Zee thought maybe she had dreamed a hot and steamy TV series set in Auckland’s boy-racer underworld. But it was very real, and there hasn’t been anything quite like it since. In the middle of the 00s, New Zealand was struck with boy-racer fever. You couldn’t step outside your house without hearing … Read more
In an attempt to reclaim their position atop the music industry, MTV are going back to basics and reincarnating their most iconic series. Don Rowe attends the first ever MTV Unplugged in New Zealand. Back in a time when the M in MTV stood for music and not ‘mediocre reality shows for munters’, the channel was … Read more
As music director for this year’s Silver Scroll Awards, Shayne Carter’s job is to design song reinterpretations of the five finalists for the best New Zealand songwriting. He spoke to Calum Henderson about the skill of covering a song, writing his book, and not really liking awards shows. The midday temperature in Dunedin is 3 … Read more
Jane Yee, Duncan Greive and special guest Mad Chapman gather around Jane’s table to talk about the latest happenings in New Zealand television and real life in New Zealand feat. Survivor correspondent Joseph Harper. With Alex Casey waltzing through Paris eating baguettes in a beret, Duncan and Jane ushered Mad the producer into the limelight. It was a night of … Read more
Rising Hollywood star Ansel Elgort has a reputation for being kind of bad. Madeleine Chapman met him to find out the truth. Ansel Elgort sounds like a douchebag. He’s 23 and famous, with a Vogue photographer for a dad and an opera director for a mum. He grew up rich in New York and skipped all … Read more
A year on from a critically-mauled first season, big-budget local drama Filthy Rich returns. Duncan Greive watches to see if they’ve fixed what was broken. A persistent criticism of the dialogue in Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan’s shows is that it sounds stiff and dated. It seems to come from an imagined New Zealand past which might never have … Read more
Ahead of his four New Zealand solo shows starting this week in Auckland, singer/guitarist Steve Gunn discusses the decline of the mom and pop guitar store, childhood buddy Kurt Vile, and the colourful characters and misadventures of his youth. While laconic musicians playing lo-fi rock will never totally go out of style, popular culture has … Read more