Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was.

There’s a saying that I used to like that goes: you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I used to like the saying because I love psychological categorisation and it made me think, for a whole 30 seconds, about who I choose to spend my time with.

I collected my five closest people and tried to build a picture of myself. It was a strange and inaccurate representation (of course). It’s an inaccurate read of a person, but before we can truly get to know someone, we use these shortcuts to build a picture, and a lot of it comes down to their taste.

Does the person have good taste in people? In other words, look at their five closest friends.

Does the person have taste when it comes to cultural, social and political issues? In other words, do you think they’re considered and thoughtful?

Does the person have a tasteful presence online? A newer one but I’ll tell you what, it’s extremely jarring to meet a pleasant and mild person in real life only to discover that they’re shockingly unpleasant online.

And perhaps least important but most common, does the person have good taste in music/movies/books/TV?

There was a time when I would hold someone’s entertainment preferences tightly as a representation of them as a person. Someone I thought was cool loved something I thought was terrible? I must have made a huge mistake in my original assessment of them. This is both an ungenerous and deeply flawed way of thinking about three dimensional people. But it’s not uncommon. Millions of people around the world have made hating particular artists (and their fans) a core part of their personalities.

The danger in this approach really hit home for me in 2019 when I realised I’d have no more male friends if I disowned every person in my life who loved the trashfire film that was The Joker.

About a year ago, I shared one of my favourite Joan Didion essays with my partner and eagerly awaited her review of it. She was decidedly unimpressed and I was gutted. Why? Who knows, perhaps I had assigned self-worth to my tastes (ill-advised, don’t recommend it).

Now, I am far more self-aware about my own unpopular tastes (see: every food ranking I’ve done sparking much outrage) that I find genuine enjoyment in learning what arbitrary pieces of art others feel strongly about. Recently, I loved watching the gross, ridiculous body-horror The Substance. And loved even more that people whose tastes I’m usually aligned with hated it.

In two weeks I will be reviewing Coldplay’s concert at Eden Park for The Spinoff. I am not a massive fan but know enough about their shows to know I’ll have a great time. And when I messaged my partner to ask if she wanted to join me, this time I did it gleefully, knowing with 100% certainty that she would hate it.

Reading the Spinoff’s Top 100 NZ TV shows of the 21st century this week has made me realise how easy it is to dismiss local offerings, often literally because they’re local. Alex Casey and Tara Ward love local TV more than anyone else I know, and they made it clear the Top 100 was to be a celebration of our incredible productions, not an attempt at objective judgment of worth or quality. The process of putting the list together required an acceptance of all tastes and a willingness to see only the best in each show.

So it was perfect that the most looked-down-on show New Zealand has ever produced (Shortland Street) was rightfully handed the crown and given the glowing endorsement it deserved.

That’s not to say we’ll abruptly stop writing critical reviews of New Zealand TV – in fact, it’s more important than ever to critically assess our work – but rather that it’s reminded us writers of the breadth of taste in our readers, the varied reasons people get enjoyment from TV, and that no taste is better than the other.

Because if I’m honest, if I truly revealed my full taste in media and if I was judged as a person on it, I wouldn’t have five friends to speak of.

READ THE FULL LIST OF TOP 100 NZ TV SHOWS

Monday: 100-81
Tuesday: 80-61
Wednesday: 60-41
Thursday: 40-21
Friday: 20-1

This week on Behind the Story

Senior writer Alex Casey spent the past couple of months deep in local television, leading one of our most ambitious projects to date: The Spinoff top 100 NZ TV shows of the 21st century. Every day this week we have counted down 20 shows, each given its time in the sun as a crucial piece in our cultural puzzle. On Friday, we released the final 20, crowning a winner and drawing to a close more than 30,000 words published on New Zealand Television in one week. Alex joins Madeleine Chapman to discuss the complex process of judging local television, the surprise hits and the value in looking back at what we’ve produced as a country.

Listen here, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.