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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A TVNZ exec made headlines last week for calling Netflix a fad. But after another big budget failure, Duncan Greive asks if it’s time the state broadcaster tried to learn from the streaming giant, rather than embarrassing itself by dismissing it. Last week Andrew Shaw, TVNZ’s veteran deputy director of content, made headlines for describing … 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
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
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
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
Alex Casey talks to Sarah Aldridge, costume designer on Westside, about dressing the early-80s West family. Look, I love a spot of opshopping as much as the next person. Give me a giant, musty Sallies out in the wops any day, just as long as it contains at least three dog-eared copies of The World … Read more
She missed it the first time around, so Tara Ward decided to watch the first season of Filthy Rich in one marathon binge. Filthy Rich hits our screens again this week like a stripper with a heart of gold dropped from a great height by her evil business associate. New Zealand’s glitziest show is back … Read more
Duncan Greive and Toby Manhire rate the current crop of political shows on New Zealand television right now. Most New Zealanders, as John Key was fond of calling them, would very likely be shocked and appalled to discover that our politics shows run just about all year, every year. Irrespective of the election cycle, or … Read more
The Real Pod returns, late but not never, with a lot of bum talk and a similar amount of trash talk. This week arrived late on The Real Pod thanks to Jane’s colonoscopy, a frightening event she describes in great detail on this week’s pod. We also discuss the combination of vitriol and silence which … Read more
It’s the most important room in the house! Jane Yee checks in on bathroom week on The Block NZ. Click here for last week’s installment. “Is anyone getting that sinking feeling?” Mark ‘Rigor’ Richardson asked this week, smashing out another cracking pun in honour of bathroom week. Me. I am. I’m getting that sinking feeling, … Read more
Sherlock fan Jean Sergeant reflects on the place of Holmes and Watson in her own life, through grieving and pad thai nights. I remember when the Christmas special of Sherlock, ‘The Abominable Bride’, came out at the beginning of 2016. I nagged my best dead friend Michael to watch it. I’m not sure if he … Read more
Our regular Survivor columnist Joseph Harper wraps up the season that was and the emotional finale, and looks to the future with high hopes. Click here for yesterday’s special pre-finale power rankings. It’s all over. I’ve been crapping on the show’s editors all season long for being too obvious, but in the end they managed … Read more
Tara Ward watches the time travel literary hybrid Lost in Austen and drums up some more classic TV tales that could do with a bit of tinkering. It’s not every day one of the much-loved characters from English literature turns up in your bathroom. All I have in my bathroom are five scratchy towels and some dead … Read more
Superfan Joseph Harper tackles the last week of Survivor NZ, and makes his predictions for the big finale. Click here for last week. So we’ve got our final three. Three big episodes down and one massive (very long) finale to go. Tom, Barb, and Avi have squirmed, tricked, and made nice all the way to the … Read more
The 7 Days Twitter account posted a table ranking the most successful regular panellists yesterday. But they also revealed something else… Since its launch in 2009, there’s no denying that weekly panel show 7 Days is still by far New Zealand’s most successful comedy vehicle. Friday nights on Three has long seen a revolving rota of panellists including … Read more
It’s been 10 years since Bret and Jemaine first appeared on the small screen in their HBO series Flight of the Conchords. By way of celebration, The Spinoff writers enter a fierce debate to complete one gargantuan task: ranking every song that featured on the show. 44) “Stay Cool” I mean, I went to the … Read more
With Harlots arriving exclusively to Lightbox today, Tara Ward delves into the teaser trailer for the women-led period drama. Harlots has me more excited about a television programme than the time I found out they were bringing back Anne of Green Gables. While my Anne anticipation ended badly with a red-haired orphan running across a WW1 … Read more
Jane Yee has committed to watching four-and-a-half hours of kiwi renos on TV every week for the foreseeable future. This week we meet the new batch of Block NZ contestants. “Okay, fine.” These two seemingly innocuous words have effed up my life for the next three months. They’re the words I reluctantly mumbled when asked … Read more