Two years ago, Alex Casey climbed into the on-set trailer belonging to Dominic Bowden – then Dancing With the Stars US backstage host, now host of The Bachelor NZ – to talk live TV, Kiwis vs Americans, and making it in Los Angeles. Just as all roads lead to Rome and all Suzukis lead to … Read more
You can’t move for a symposium or petition bemoaning the state of current affairs on television today. Yet John Campbell’s Checkpoint is a throwback to exactly the kind of programming people say they want, writes Duncan Greive. Yesterday on Face TV, a channel I have never knowingly before watched, we got a glimpse into TV’s … Read more
Jane Yee, Duncan Greive and Alex Casey gather around the oval table and talk about the latest happenings in New Zealand television and real life in New Zealand. The Bachelor took a giant emotional dump on us this week, via the tearful elimination of Nina, the show’s everywoman heart. Jane, Alex and Duncan picked themselves up off the … Read more
Alex Casey tackles the fourth week of The Bachelor NZ, including The Others, an elephant and a dramatic injury. Honestly, put me inside an egg and soak me in horse pee for 100 days if this wasn’t the best week of The Bachelor NZ so far. In his own words, Zac’s whole world has been turned upside … Read more
Memories and accolades from Michele A’Court, Kim Hill, Oscar Kightley, Guy Williams and more One of the sharpest wits this country ever produced has died at the age of 68. John Clarke, originally of Palmerston North, created an inspiring example for New Zealand comedy initially as laconic farmer Fred Dagg and latterly as one half of the … Read more
With the third season of Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul arriving on Lightbox tomorrow, José Barbosa makes his case for why the prequel may well be even better than the original. Remember around 2010, 2011 when everyone was talking about the continuing misadventures of Walter and Jesse? The show was so good people lost their shit, so much so … Read more
Everything Tara Ward knows, she has learned from Shane Cortese and the Nothing Trivial gang. Here she outlines the 10 stages of pub quiz grief. Watching three seasons of Nothing Trivial broadened my general knowledge more than the time I fell into a Buzzfeed Quiz vortex of time and space and spent seven hours discovering … Read more
Alex Casey talks to Sandra Clark and Francesca Emms about Together We Make a Nation, their multimedia storytelling project that shines a light on refugee women in New Zealand. Seeking to tell the stories of former refugee women who now call New Zealand home, Together We Make a Nation weaves together video, yum recipes, data … Read more
Calum Henderson watches TVNZ’s Darryl: An Outward Bound Story, a warm Kiwi comedy about how one moustachioed man goes bush to find himself. Few New Zealanders who watched it unfold on television will ever forget the men’s 50km walk at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Overcome by heat exhaustion, race leader Craig Barrett’s legs turned to … Read more
With the two-part miniseries now available exclusively on Lightbox, Alex Casey tells you why you need to take a trip to the scary island of And Then There Were None. What’s the story? Imagine… if you were invited out to a mysterious island with a bunch of people you didn’t really know, who slowly started … Read more
The Project showed its teeth this week, via Jesse Mulligan’s plea for someone, anyone to fix the Department of Conservation. It launched with a bang and a Bax and a song and a dance in February, but in recent weeks it’s been a little too easy to forget The Project NZ was on. Not because … Read more
Alex Casey tackles the third week of The Bachelor NZ, including blind tasting, onion layers and a scary bedroom clown. This week on The Bachelor NZ we got the first big ol’ proper pash, a huge avalanche of Tim Tam tat-peddling and a very, very, very overdue Shrek reference. Aka, the show is finally starting … Read more
Jane Yee, Duncan Greive and Alex Casey gather around the oval table and talk about the latest happenings in New Zealand television and real life in New Zealand. This week’s episode is notable for Alex emerging from a flu coma to valiantly attempt to record a podcast. Jane and Duncan are operating on about five hours’ sleep … Read more
This week’s social media viral video was bleaker than usual – a wasted woman in a garage, looking half dead. It took The Hui to bring her to life – and in so doing lay bare some of the functionless duplication in our contemporary media, says Duncan Greive. All week we’ve seen the footage. A woman, … Read more
Sometimes New Zealand broadcast television feels like a wasteland, so we set our weekly columnist Tara the tallest, most terrifying task imaginable: recapping The News. The 6 o’clock news bulletin is a time-honoured tradition, like death and taxes and only finding one sock when you definitely need two. The News has always been there, yet who … Read more
There is no greater torture than seeing a delicious meal in your favourite TV show and knowing you will never be able to eat it. Here are some that we wish we could try. From the deliciously disturbing dishes of Hannibal to Mr Bean’s botched turkey meal, there are countless fictional dinners that will remain … Read more
Over the weekend, legendary film and television writer Aaron Sorkin said some amazingly bewildered things about diversity and representation. Sam Brooks takes him for a gentle walk and talk. “Are you saying that women and minorities have a more difficult time getting their stuff read than white men and you’re also saying that [white men] … Read more
While battling a bout of bronchitis, Claire Adamson rediscovers the ’90s magic of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. In honour of its twentieth trip around the sun, I recently sat down (read: reclined on my bed with my laptop on my chest) to watch Space Jam, that much reminisced-about Michael Jordan vehicle from 1996. I had … Read more
With The Mindy Project season five coming to an end today, Alex Casey rounds up some reckons from the dramatic finale. Contains spoilers and delicious food. The Mindy Project remains one of my most reliable sitcoms these days, maintaining my affections where New Girl lost it years ago. It’s a love letter to the modern rom-com, … Read more
There’s a bevy of great new television shows that we can’t stream in New Zealand without breaking the law, and Aaron Yap has had it up to HERE. If there is one downside to this golden age of television on demand – where we’re all losing our minds over no fewer than ten amazing shows … Read more
Jane Yee, Duncan Greive and Alex Casey gather around the oval table and talk about the latest happenings in New Zealand television and real life in New Zealand. This week on The Real Pod, Alex, Jane and Duncan open with a disastrous Tim Tam slam before diving right into the latest in reality television and real life … Read more
Alex Casey tackles the second week of The Bachelor NZ, including Shakespeare, funny tummies and bathroom tears. Time is limited. You could go at any point. Nobody is safe. That is both a beautiful haiku about the fragility of human mortality, and a direct quote from The Bachelor NZ last night. It’s the second week … Read more
Following the announcement that The Big Bang Theory is getting its own spinoff series, Angela Cuming goes off like a bloody rocket to Mars. There are three things I never bring up in a social setting: politics, religion, or The Big Bang Theory. The first two are tricky, but I can handle them OK – … Read more
In celebration of Rent Week, Calum Henderson watches the hilariously bleak docu-series Renters and finds Kiwi comedy gold. On the face of it, the TVNZ 2’s Renters show seems to exist solely to reinforce every negative stereotype about tenants in the Evil Landlord Handbook. It cynically takes all the worst and most extreme examples of bad … Read more
The planned restructure at the public owned TV network is the wrong path. Paul Brislen issues a plea: turn back before it’s too late. I’m writing this instead of watching television. I’ve just installed Amazon Prime TV so I can catch up with American Gods when it airs. It’s free for the first wee while … Read more
Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored feature where we look for shows you might like to watch from their catalogue. This week, we figure out how you can fill the void before the next season of Vikings with help from the show’s newest star. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s that … Read more
Please enjoy the final episode (for now) of our online series Repressed Memories, wherein James Mustapic revisits weird local shows from his childhood (click here to watch episode one on Sensing Murder, episode two on Sticky TV and episode three on NZ Idol) When I was in my tween prime, Shortland Street was also in its prime. I … Read more
Game of Bros returned to Maori television tonight and picked up right where it left off: in a vat of coconut oil. Madeleine Chapman made a few crucial and important observations to keep an eye out for as the show progresses. Before I go any further I feel I must disclose that Aunty Henga and … Read more
Aaron Yap has become obsessed with the latest season of Married at First Sight Australia. He explains why the ingenious reality show puts traditional scripted television to shame. I wouldn’t consider myself an avid reality TV viewer, but I am admittedly susceptible to the cheap, junky pleasures of the genre. The more fucked-up the hook, … Read more