The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. Dress us up in shit-covered clothing and send us to Disneyland with Richie McCaw, The Real Pod is back for another stonker week of real life in this foolish corner of the globe. In real news, influencers … Read more
It’s week three of Celebrity Treasure Island, and what a forking great week it was. Tara Ward power ranks our favourite celebrity contestants as they compete to win that sweet charity cash. Welcome back to another glorious week in Paradise, as our beloved CTI contestants dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged their way through tense eliminations, … Read more
On the back of season 3 of Netflix’s hit teen drama 13 Reasons Why, Katie Meadows argues that the show’s unremitting darkness poses real risks to young viewers. Two years after it first aired, and a month before the release of season 3, Netflix announced it was at long last cutting the painfully graphic depiction … Read more
Sunday Theatre’s new drama Runaway Millionaires tells the story of Kara Hurring, the Rotorua woman who in 2009 fled the country with $10 million which simply landed in her lap. Tara Ward reviews. What would you do if one day you discovered ten million bucks randomly sitting in your bank account? Would you come clean, or … Read more
What are you going to be watching in September? 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 August. The Biggies The Good Place (Netflix, Season 4 weekly, September 24) It’s weird that the smartest, … Read more
A shocking Herald story alleging serious violence by of one of its grooms has forced an unprecedented move from MediaWorks. After further details emerged around the alleged behaviour of Chris Mansfield, a groom on the upcoming third season of Married at First Sight NZ, Three has made the unprecedented decision to cut his storyline entirely. … Read more
The Real Pod team assemble to discuss the brilliant Celebrity Treasure Island, The Block’s descent and worrying signs for the upcoming season of Married at First Sight NZ. It’s the show we didn’t know we needed, good-natured family entertainment that doesn’t forget the absolute drama. Shane Cameron nearly tore Jodie Molloy apart just because she … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews Carnival Row, an Amazon Original which can’t break free from its own shallow edginess. The fantasy ghetto is real, and it’s hard to get out of it. Game of Thrones managed to get out of it through the sheer quality of the first season, and also by keeping its more fantastical elements … Read more
No show has ever delivered more and better sex than True Blood. Emily Writes looks back on a trashy high-art masterpiece. This content is brought to you by NEON – where all seasons of True Blood are streaming now. It was the scene in the basement that did it for me. Sex swing? Check. Alexander … Read more
With Falling Inn Love, New Zealand gets its very own Netflix romcom – so how accurate is its depiction of small town NZ? Sam Brooks investigates. When the trailer for Falling Inn Love dropped earlier this month, I had my knives out, and so did the rest of The Spinoff office. A Netflix romcom set … Read more
It is the second week of Celebrity Treasure Island and the gloves are officially off. Alex Casey power ranks the celebrity contestants vying for that sweet charity cash. Two weeks in and I am here to firmly agree with my Real Pod co-host in saying that Celebrity Treasure Island is bloody mindless brilliance. If you … Read more
The Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak has just been released in toy stores worldwide. Alice Webb-Liddall got the chance to try one out. It’s a Tuesday, and a snowy owl flies above my head on the way to work. It poops on me. That’s extra good luck, I think to myself. I get to work, make … Read more
If you’re a fan of thrilling skill-based reality contests, Blown Away is the show you’ve been waiting for. Tara Ward reveals why you’ll fall in love with Netflix’s latest sensation. If you think the Earth needs another reality TV show like it needs a glass light fitting that looks like a diver’s helmet, then think … Read more
For years, New Zealand has bemoaned the gap between much of our television drama and the cutting edge out in the world. That gap might finally be closing, writes Duncan Greive. He’s just a minor character, eating an ice cream. It doesn’t seem all that revolutionary, but in the context of New Zealand drama, it … Read more
A War Story is one more attempt in a long line of art to make sense of 9/11 – this time from a uniquely Kiwi perspective. The coordinated terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 cut a razor-sharp divide between the relatively carefree time before and everything after, bleeding into the culture that stood on either … Read more
As a format it predates almost all reality TV, and that’s precisely why it works in 2019, writes Duncan Greive. There’s something deeply comforting about watching Celebrity Treasure Island. It is a very pure form of escapism, largely because it explicitly recalls a world without the internet, and before everything started going to hell. It … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. Sound the alarm, because it’s time for another absolute chaos pod. We’re talking haunted dolls in Waipu, we’re talking giant hands taking over Wellington, we’re talking soft serve cones dipped in powdered Milo. If you can keep … Read more
The lanky sidekick from Jono and Ben journeys around New Zealand trying to solve small town problems. Does he succeed? Guy Williams, hardly a shy, retiring type, has been screaming out for his own vehicle for years. A loud, lanky, fearless comic, he’s spent nearly a decade in MediaWorks purgatory, sat off to the side … Read more
One part telenovela, one part family drama, one part addictive love story. Sam Brooks reviews Jane the Virgin, the great show with an unfortunate name that should be your next Netflix binge. The following piece contains very mild spoilers for Jane the Virgin. While watching the last season of Jane the Virgin, one of my … Read more
The first week of Celebrity Treasure Island had it all – mud, vomit and coconut brassieres. Alex Casey ranks the celebrity contestants vying to win $100,000 for their chosen charity. It’s 2019 and mostly everything is bad, so I am choosing to focus on the positives of Celebrity Treasure Island NZ. I love the opening … Read more
Stranger Things owns all the oxygen for period-piece teen TV, but Ireland’s impossibly charming Derry Girls deserves as much acclaim, writes Duncan Greive. There’s a reason why high school is the backdrop to so much fantastic television. That cusp between childhood and the adult world is ripe with dramatic possibility. Relationships are made which last … Read more
Alex Casey chats to Bree Tomasel about hosting Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, farting in the ZM studio and going viral on the regular. The most important thing you need to know about Bree Tomasel is not the fact that she peed her pants during Celebrity Treasure Island NZ, but the glee with which she tells … Read more
Roll Red Roll is a brutal, painfully illuminating documentary on the Steubenville High School rape case, a shocking crime that made headlines worldwide. Emily Writes reviews. This review discusses rape and sexual violence August 11, 2012: two teenage boys rape an unconscious teenage girl as two of their peers watch and take photos on their … Read more
Jamie Wall reviews Jonah, the two-part Three telefeature that follows the life of our most famous All Black, and finds it an effective but mixed retelling of the legend. Honestly, it’s a wee bit disappointing that the only notable on-screen dramatisation of the All Blacks in recent years was centred on replacement first five Stephen Donald. … Read more
Over 300 hours of interviews condensed into five episodes that cover the entirety of New Zealand’s comedy history – how do you even start to approach that? Sam Brooks interviews Paul Horan, the documentarian behind the show. It’s one of those projects that sounds utterly futile – how does one cover the comedy history of … Read more
Today, TVNZ released its latest findings on who is watching what on TVNZ OnDemand. Sam Brooks analyses the results. Today, TVNZ released the 2019 figures for who is watching TVNZ OnDemand, what they’re watching and in what kind of numbers. The big numbers are hopeful – over 1.4 million people reached so far this year, … Read more
It’s the season finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, and we’re desperate for a happy ending. Will we get one, or will we be left weeping into our revolution muffins? Tara Ward recaps. I didn’t think anything could be tenser than the time Maria made the Von Trapp kids hide from the Nazis in the Sound of … Read more
Tara Ward reviews Deep Water, a new British drama that’s been compared to Big Little Lies that lands on TVNZ OnDemand today. There’s three shows called Deep Water currently available on TVNZ OnDemand, but only one is a new British drama about the lives of three very different women living in the Lake District. This Deep Water is … Read more
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s. It’s a galaxy brain episode of The Real Pod this week and we’re not just talking about the new Australian Bachelor who is trying to find another Earth. Sam Wallace has been talking about udders, Alex bought … Read more