The 100th episode of Jono and Ben airs tonight on TV3, so we asked the cast and writers to share their favourite sketches from the last 99 shows. JONO PRYOR: Robbie Magasiva in NeXt Actor, the segment involves us controlling a celebrity through an earpiece while they pretend to work in a store. The first … Read more
Our resident Outlander fanatic Tara Ward shares her thoughts from the much-anticipated return of time-travel romance series. Contains spoilers. And smoulders. Christmas came early yesterday when Lightbox announced that they’d treat us to an early episode of Outlander, since we’d been such well behaved children. The skies cleared, the sun came out, and the world rejoiced as we marched … Read more
Tara Ward revisits the high fashion of the 1986 Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards, complete with wool, leather, and bold shoulders. The Benson & Hedges Fashion Design Awards was to fashion what The Dog Show was to farmers: the premier showcase of what made our country great. Which was mostly leather and wool, apparently. … Read more
Calum Henderson watches the return of The Block NZ, and pines for the rhombus daybeds of yesteryear. Host Mark Richardson took a deep breath and began to speak slowly, measuredly, the way a judge might deliver a long prison sentence. “Welcome… to The Block… for 2016.” It has been 178 days since the last edition of … Read more
The Spinoff wrangled a real-life mystery religious person to dissect the depiction of faith in The Path, a drama following members of a fictional cult. My husband and I sat down and watched an episode of The Path the other night. When you both work and have an eight month old child, sitting down and … Read more
As we come to the end of NZ Music Month, Joanna McLeod remembers the most iconic times that NZ music weaseled its way onto international prime time television. The year was 1994. It was stinking hot, because of course it was. May in Tokyo was sweaty, and the American School I attended didn’t have air conditioning. … Read more
Tara Ward brings you her Shortland Street Power Rankings for last week, including a grim Warner birthday scene and an astounding performance by TK Samuels. 1) Chris turns 49 and all his dreams come true The Warners threw caution to the wind and celebrated Chris’s birthday in a style not seen in Ferndale since Nick … Read more
Our resident Outlander fanatic Tara Ward shares her thoughts from the much-anticipated return of time-travel romance series. Contains spoilers. And smoulders. Oh, Scotland. It’s you, it’s really you! How we’ve missed your honest green hills and your giardia-free waterways. Even Outlander show-runner Ron D. Moore was relieved to say adieu to miserable old France, replacing King Louis’ sauntering … Read more
The kid from Milton has established herself as a journalist to be reckoned with, but much will depend on the Sam-and-Mike chemistry, writes Mark Jennings, former long serving TV3 news chief. Samantha Hayes’ appointment as Hilary Barry’s replacement is big news – in Milton. Hayes hails from the South Otago town of 2,000 people, best … Read more
A police drama set in a West Yorkshire village may not sound like a must-watch, but Ethan Sills finds that Happy Valley is a surprisingly tense and graphic thriller that packs an emotional punch. A police drama? Yawn! Happy Valley is not your regular British cop drama. This is more psychological than procedural, a cat-and-mouse chase met … Read more
To mark Hilary Barry’s last day at TV3, coworker and notorious BFF Sacha McNeil celebrates the legendary woman with the legendary secret snack drawer. “Knock, knock, knock… “ “Who is it?” “It’s just me, are you naked?” “Yes, but come in.” I open the door to Hilary’s changing room. “What’s up?” She asks, fresh from … Read more
Alex Casey watched in horror as Mike Hosking tried to recreate the Chewbacca Mask video on Seven Sharp. As it is written in the bible, every viral internet craze can enjoy only a few moments of purity before being sullied by a pack of vultures led by an Animorphs-style Ellen Degeneres with James Corden bringing … Read more
Fanboy supreme José Barbosa hitches his hoss and spends a little time in Preacher country, the latest comic book adaptation to hit our screens. Lately it seems 20th century pop culture has been sucked into the 21st century filter and spat out with a nose ring and a smartphone. The reconstituted mass includes Zack Snyder’s … Read more
Before the Housewives, before the Bachelorettes, there were the Flatmates. Calum Henderson revisits one of New Zealand’s first gritty, no-frills attempts at reality television. Like everything else on this dying earth, reality television is subject to a slow and irreversible erosion. Over the years, the genre’s rough edges have been gradually worn down, leaving a … Read more
A brand new influx of second-hand television shows has led Aaron Yap to question whether we are suffering a reboot epidemic. Last week Fox dropped a bunch of trailers for their upcoming 2016-2017 TV slate. Many of these were reboots and remakes of pre-existing film/TV properties: 24: Legacy, Prison Break, The Exorcist, Lethal Weapon and … Read more
Education is a topic critical to us as a nation. It deserves so much better than the pandering polemic Bryan Bruce delivered last night on TV3. Last night TV3 screened a “special report”, “written, directed and produced” by Bryan Bruce, the veteran of dozens of documentaries over the years, many of which he has fronted with a … Read more
Tara Ward brings you her Shortland Street Power Rankings for last week, including a web of hairy lies, Victoria’s restless hands, and the return of the mighty Damo. 1) The claw of catastrophe returns Yaaaas, Shorters is BACK. Last week I lamented the lack of action, but this week there’s been more drama than a … Read more
Our resident Outlander fanatic Tara Ward shares her thoughts from the much-anticipated return of time-travel romance series. Contains spoilers. And smoulders. This week’s Outlander offering had more tragedy than a Bee-Gees tribute karaoke party. It was a raw, emotional watch: Claire gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Fergus revealed he was abused by Black Jack Randall, and … Read more
Comedian and celebrant Penny Ashton pulls back the veil on Married at First Sight. “So are you going to fuck him?” was, let’s face it, the classy question on everyone’s minds. It was 25-year-old retail manager Erin’s wedding night. She was beautiful, he was hot, so why wouldn’t he march up her aisle? Sure, her … Read more
Sophie Smith discovers a feminist firestarter in Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and shares how her own life has since been influenced by the cult ’90s icon. Despite being a feminist killjoy and enthusiast of most things Joss Whedon, it was only this year that I finally sought out the cult classic Buffy the … Read more
Sarah Robson reminisces with National MP Nikki Kaye about her time on Fish Out of Water, the reality show that was dumping people on an island years before Survivor. In 1996, before the term “reality TV” entered our everyday lexicon, TV3 decided to strand six Auckland teenagers on Rakitu Island in the Hauraki Gulf. They were … Read more
With more television shows than we have time to watch, Laura Vincent searches for the rare on screen couples that are worth looking up to. “They have their problems, but they always work it out by the end of the episode” I was casually catching up with my two best friends, the three of us … Read more
With Survivor NZ set to begin its debut season, Joseph Harper puts host Matt Chisholm through the ringer to see if he has what it takes to lead the world’s most challenging reality television series. Survivor fever is most certainly sweeping the nation, with an unpredictable finale of Survivor: Kaoh Rong almost ready to be illegally streamed and … Read more
New Zealand is rightly proud of the multi-ethnic and -cultural society it’s growing into. But while Māori and Pacific representation has improved since the ’80s, our exploding Asian population remains near-invisible. In part one of a two-part series, Sonia Gray tries to find out why. Lately, I’ve been looking at the people around me and … Read more
Tara Ward brings you her Shortland Street Power Rankings for last week, including a tomato sauce surplus, Finn’s on-point point and Rachel’s pill popping. If only every Shortland Street episode was filled with rambunctious pool parties and hysterical urine-drinking hijinks. Imagine the hilarity! Alas, the past week in Ferndale was a long, hard slog, where … Read more
Our resident Outlander fanatic Tara Ward shares her thoughts from the much-anticipated return of time-travel romance series. Contains spoilers. And smoulders. There was so much plotting and conspiracy in this week’s episode of Outlander that Jamie Fraser officially changed his name by deed poll to ‘Schemey MacSchemeface’. Charles Stuart schemed with Jamie, Jamie schemed against the … Read more
Absent the big budgets and bigger meltdowns of its major network cousins, Matthew McAuley reckons Aotearoa’s most low-key cooking competition might just be its best. For most people across most periods of human history, the rituals of preparing, eating and sharing food have meant more than the simple sustenance provided. Cooking allows us to communicate … Read more
For its entire run The Bachelor NZ was a bore. Then Naz, ‘The Women Tell All’ and Story helped it explode into the best entertainment of the year, says Duncan Greive. After 10 weeks and 20 episodes of some of the most interminable and vacuous television New Zealand has ever seen, season two of the The Bachelor … Read more
For Monitor this week, Aaron Yap tackles Underground, a escape drama that seeks to combine modern times with history. When Quentin Tarantino released his blaxploitation-cum-spaghetti western opus Django Unchained in 2012, he had a justification for his typically incendiary, controversy-baiting approach to one of the most awful and shameful periods in American history. “When slave narratives are done … Read more