Every single Lip Sync For Your Life/Legacy, ranked. “Two queens stand before me. Ladies this is your last chance to impress me and save yourself from elimination. The time has come for you to Lip Sync For Your Life. Good luck and don’t fuck it up!” No, it’s not Game of Thrones. Eleven regular seasons, … Read more
Vodafone TV is yet another damn thing to plug into your television – but one you really should take a look at, says Duncan Greive. What is it? A small box – about the size of a sandwich – which you plug into an HDMI port on your television, along with a simple remote to … Read more
What are you going to be watching in October? The Spinoff rounds up everything that’s coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Lightbox, Neon, Amazon Prime and TVNZ on Demand. Click here to read our listings for September. The Biggies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-33JCGEGzwU Watchmen (NEON, Season 1 weekly, from October 21) This HBO series is set … Read more
Alex Casey wraps on a tinfoil hat and falls down the rabbit hole of the Married at First Sight NZ universe. Shared universes and character crossovers are having a massive moment right now. The last Avengers movie was basically just the Met Gala of superheroes. M. Night Shyamalan pulled a classic “him” on us all … Read more
Simon Sweetman on a collection of essays by Pulitzer-winning critic Emily Nussbaum, who righteously resurrected Buffy the Vampire Slayer – and, at her best, is unafraid to thoroughly critique herself. What Emily Nussbaum knows is that dressing up to eat a burger and pay double is fine sometimes, if it makes you happy. But what … Read more
TVNZ’s new online-only series Colonial Combat pits the the inhabitants of Kauri Bay – Māori, settlers, men, women, and many more besides – against each other in the ring. Dan Taipua reviews. The place is Kauri Bay, kind of. The year is 1836, sort of. The people are Māori, and All Other Comers. The stakes … Read more
This week’s Sunday Theatre feature is Ablaze, a drama about the 1947 fire at the Ballantynes Department Store in Christchurch that killed 41 people. Tara Ward reviews. The Ballantynes Fire disaster is etched in New Zealand’s collective consciousness as one of our greatest tragedies, but it wasn’t until I watched Ablaze that I realised how disastrous it was. … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. Jane is away, so the mice will play. Call the coppers, its a chaos pod this week no with proper doc, no proper stings and no proper adults. It’s been a great week of reality television, with … Read more
Ryan Murphy’s new show for Netflix indulges without excesses and fires off shots without finding a target, Sam Brooks writes. Ryan Murphy is a polarising figure in television. After a dodgy start to his career – the tonally bonkers Popular and the famously scuzzy Nip/Tuck – he achieved proper mainstream success with Glee, and pivoted … Read more
Alex Casey power ranks the final week of Celebrity Treasure Island and, folks, we have a winner. What an absolute doozy of a finale. With $100,000 on the line for their charities, the final three men went hundies to find the buried treasure chest that brought them all there. Yo ho ho and a bottle … Read more
When a Married at First Sight NZ contestant is a singer/songwriter, we simply have no choice but to listen to their entire back catalogue. It’s always exciting when a Married at First Sight NZ contestant has dipped their toes into some other public-facing arena. Bel Clarke gave The Bachelor NZ a go that time. Samuel … Read more
Following serious allegations emerging online, episode two of New Zealand Today has been removed from ThreeNow along with all relevant clips. Mediaworks have removed episode two of Guy Williams’ comedy series New Zealand Today from its streaming platform ThreeNow after being informed of recent allegations involving a person briefly featured in the episode. All content … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. With Duncan enjoying a MAFS-style beach holiday in Bali, Alex and Jane are left to cover another crazy week in reality television. Shannon Ryan has gone full beast-mode in Celebrity Treasure Island, Married At First Sight NZ … Read more
When comedy documentary Funny As was made, a lot of interviews got left on the cutting room floor which NZ On Screen quickly picked up. Here are some of our favourites. We’re a pretty funny bunch us Kiwis. Trapped on a tiny island at the end of the earth it appears we’ve evolved just a … Read more
Covering Climate Now: As the temperature of the planet increases, so to does the number of documentaries about climate change. Jean Sergent watched all of them to bring you this harrowing listicle. Do you want to know which climate change documentaries will make you depressed and which will make you hopeful? Do you want to … Read more
With only a few more sleeps until the 2019 Rugby World Cup, Tara Ward looks at the variety of ways you can watch the tournament from the comfort of your own home. Set your clocks, sound the alarms and gird your scrum-loving loins for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, which kicks off this Friday in … Read more
It was another wild week in our favourite island paradise, as our remaining celebrities continued their quest to win cash for charity. Tara Ward power ranks. The bells of change have rung on Celebrity Treasure Island, and we’re now knee deep in an individual game of trickery, ping-pongery, and Tim-Tammery. The two teams merged into Team … Read more
New Netflix movie The Tall Girl was roundly mocked before it even came out. Josie Adams, a tall girl herself, reviews it. “You know that really, really, really tall girl you go to school with? The one that people call LeBron, Skyscraper, Patty long legs?” That’s Jodi, the 6-foot-1 protagonist of The Tall Girl. I’m … Read more
Tara Ward delved into Māori TV’s impressive OnDemand catalogue and found some of the best TV taonga for your viewing pleasure. From lifestyle shows to documentaries, from current affairs to reality TV, Māori TV has an abundance of quality telly that celebrates and acknowledges the people, places and cultures of Aotearoa. Te reo Māori … Read more
Bad erotica never sounded so good. Sam Brooks talks to Jamie Morton of My Dad Wrote a Porno, about the hit podcast’s fifth season and upcoming return visit to New Zealand. Forget Joe Rogan. The real superhero of podcasting is Belinda Blumenthal, the sex-loving protagonist of Rocky Flintstone’s Belinda Blinked series of erotica that serves … Read more
Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick watches Patrick Gower’s documentary on cannabis, On Weed, which starts tonight on Three. We haven’t had a great deal of local, in-depth, visual reporting on cannabis in Aotearoa New Zealand, so when Paddy Gower announced his intention to produce a documentary on the issue, public interest was piqued. It’s been … Read more
What is it like to crash a Married at First Sight NZ wedding? Two brave reality TV fans went to Swanson to find out. A couple of months ago, Alex Casey and Tina Tiller of The Real Pod, The Spinoff’s weekly reality TV podcast, headed out to an undisclosed location in West Auckland to watch … Read more
In these days of alienation, singletons need all the help they can get. But who is doing love right? Only the hottest couple in Fountain Lakes, explains Don Rowe. There are a lot of unhealthy behaviours on the television folks, a lot of cheating, philandering, and promiscuity. From Game of Thrones to Euphoria, our stars … Read more
Terrace House is so real that it can’t be anything but fake. Uther Dean writes about what makes the Japanese Netflix dating reality show so addictive. Do you know what a parasocial relationship is? Because I promise that you’re in heaps of them. Parasocial relationships are the ones that occur between you and the people … Read more
As The Block NZ fizzles to an end, psychologist Dougal Sutherland argues that the show now seems designed to destroy relationships, rather than build houses. Over the past few months we’ve watched four couples designing, planning, painting, papering (sometimes poorly), plastering, and dressing the rooms of converted firehouses to auction them off to the highest … Read more
It’s auction night on The Block NZ, and tonight the Firehouse burned with the smell of broken hopes and dreams. Tara Ward recaps the hijinks and heartbreak of this year’s live finale. “IT ALL ENDS RIGHT HERE!” yelled a perky Mark Richardson, as he welcomed the nation to The Block NZ 2019 live auction. Mark was … Read more
Married at First Sight NZ returns to Three tonight in a storm of controversy. Tara Ward takes a closer look at the brides and grooms who will marry a stranger in search of true love. Friends, we are gathered here today to lift the veil on a new series of reality juggernaut Married at First … Read more
It’s the grand finale of The Block NZ: Firehouse, but after a snooze of a season some fans are past caring. Long time Block NZ fan Tara Ward has a few ideas on how the show could get its mojo back. For eight long years, I’ve lived and breathed The Block NZ until my veins pulsed with … Read more
With American comedy PEN15 landing on Neon today, Alice Webb-Liddall chats with its creators and stars about uncovering all the shameful secrets pre-teen girls thought they got away with. Being a 12-year-old girl is hard. There’s schoolwork, there’s parents who just don’t understand, there’s friendship dramas and there’s the encroaching threat of periods, first kisses, … Read more