Pop CultureNovember 7, 2019

Here’s what we’re screaming about in 2020 from TVNZ

Staff writers

Tonight, TVNZ announced their slate of 2020 content, and they’re absolutely slammed with it. This is what we’re excited to watch next year.

NEW

The Bachelorette NZ

Call the police, call a priest, call your boss and tell them you need some time off because Art Green is returning to television as the host of The Bachelorette NZ. This. Is. A. Moment. All the other Bachelors must be quaking in their little town shoes. And if the scuttlebutt around the traps about Lily McManus is right, this is going to be the reality watch of the decade. / Alex Casey

The Great Kiwi Bake Off – Celebrity Christmas Special

If there’s one thing that New Zealand needs more than seeing good old fashioned Kiwis having a gentle lovely bake with one another, it’s seeing good old fashioned Kiwi celebrities having a gentle lovely bake with each other. This celebrity special will include Toni Street, Art Green, Jackie van Beek, Bree Tomasel, David Fane and anti-cannabis/pro-panini advocate Paula Bennett competing against each other. Hosts Hayley Sproull and Madeleine Sami return, as do the Fleischlschneider judges. Wholesome times and perhaps paleo cakes abound. / Sam Brooks

Taskmaster NZ

This season of Taskmaster has been an absolute joy and I genuinely cannot wait to see how a local version will tackle this wacky, utterly pointless game show. Taking five comedians and weekly nonsensical tasks to win horrible prizes, Taskmaster NZ feels like the much-needed antidote to all the toxic reality television that’s been oozing onto our screens. I can’t wait to see which New Zealand comedian can push a melon up a slide with a breadstick the fastest. / AC

Living with Your Boss

We love an original format where a boss steps out of their comfort zone to spend time with their lowly employees. Except this time, they won’t be going undercover: they’ll be sharing a roof with the people who work for them. It’s billed as “a real life social experiment”, and when have those ever gone wrong?!?!? / AC

The Luminaries

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Eleanor Catton novel-slash-murder-weapon gets an adaptation starring Eva Green. Filmed in New Zealand and starring a whole lot of our local actors, what the hell more do you want? / SB

Black Hands

A local adaptation of Stuff’s smash hit true crime podcast? We’re growing up! Proud of us! / AC

A dog and his handler, courtesy of Dog Squad.

Dog Squad Puppy School

Exactly what it says on the tin: dogs learning how to be better dogs. But don’t worry, they’re all very good dogs!!! / SB

Anika Moa Reunited

One of the best half hours of television last year was Anika Moa’s riotous, raucous and irreverent attempts to reunite Tru Bliss (sans Carly Binding), so it makes perfect sense that she continues her line of comedic/informative television in that vein. I’ve long espoused Moa’s talents as an uncommonly talented interviewer, and I can’t imagine a better task that her talents are suited for than reuniting once-famous bands and bringing them back together to perform the hits they’d probably prefer to forget. I’m praying for a Deep Obsession reunion. / SB

A Whole Heap of Web Content

TVNZ is fast becoming the home of great online local content, with a whole range of web series both fictional and factual coming to the platform, including: Life Is Easy, The Dead Lands, Meme, Kura, I Date Rejects, Glow Up, a second season of House of Drag and yet another Shortland Street summer webseries called Mistakes on a Plane. / SB

A drag queen does some SOS on *Drag SOS*.

Some International Shows With Great Titles

TVNZ is not just the home of great local content, it’s also the home of international series with some truly wild titles:

Motherland – Fort Salem, a show about an alternate history in which Salem’s witches signed a truce with the US government.

Drag SOS, a docu-series about a group of drag queens saving some villages in England. It is unfortunately not about drag queens teaching people how to do morse code.

Resident Alien, a show about… an alien who crash lands on earth and must figure out how to fit in.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, a show about a girl who starts hearing the most innermost wants and desires and thoughts of people… through song.

My Life is Murder, a Lucy Lawless cop drama with a title that sounds like a fake 30 Rock show, and one I will be watching every episode of.

Gold Digger, a show that is unfortunately not about a literal gold digger.

Why Women Kill, a Lucy Liu/Ginnifer Goodwin/Kirby Howell-Baptiste drama (spoiler: they all have fairly legit reasons to kill).

The Secret She Keeps, a psychological thriller about two pregnant women. The secret is not their pregnancies. / SB

RETURNING

Celebrity Treasure Island

The undisputed reality hit of this year has an expected second season, featuring the same dream team (Matt Chisholm, who maybe never sleeps, and rising star Bree Tomasel) with a whole new batch of celebs. Will my predictions from last year come true? Almost absolutely not. But if it involves more celebrities revealing their terrifying evil side (never forget, Sam Wallace), I’m in. / SB

BossBabes

Iyia Liu is heavily pregnant, which can only mean one thing: Boss Baby. / AC

The Casketeers

Simply the greatest New Zealand show. I hope it never dies. / AC

Renters

Will this be the day that renters finally rise up against their landlord overlords and take back the means of production? I have never seen this show. / SB

Wellington Paranormal + Christmas Special

Back for a third season (thank god) and controversial opinion: every New Zealand show should have a Christmas special. This is coming from the guy who happily cracks open his ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ jewel case to listen to every November 1. / SB

You can watch all these shows and more on TVNZ, obviously, next year.

Keep going!

Pictured: Abs, but also Australian Ninja Warrior, the most wholesome show on television.

Pop CultureNovember 7, 2019

Ninja Warrior is what all sport should be

Emily Writes

Contributing writer

Pictured: Abs, but also Australian Ninja Warrior, the most wholesome show on television.

Emily Writes gushes about the show she never thought she’d enjoy so much: the endurance-testing, gravity-defying Australian Ninja Warrior.

I never intended to watch Ninja Warrior. I had originally thought it was similar to that show where people get nailed on a course above water. I didn’t really see the appeal of people getting smacked in the face and flying into waist deep water.

I only relented because my son simply would not stop talking about it. He begged me to watch it with him and to be honest, I was just glad to take a break from watching Shark Wranglers. For a show about catching great white sharks, Shark Wranglers just isn’t very exciting. In an entire season, nobody was bitten by a shark. I don’t know what it says about me but I want to see someone bitten.

And so I settled in to watch Australian Ninja Warrior. Within seconds, I was hooked.

Ninja Warrior is wildly wholesome. Each story tries to out-inspire the other – this man only has one leg, this man has a learning disability, this man beat depression and got rid of his ugly dreadlocks.

Like emotional napalm Queer Eye, I’m addicted to reality shows that render me dehydrated from crying. But mostly, I just love how uncompetitive such a competitive show can be. I’ve always avoided sport and growing up with a father who wrote about sport for a living didn’t always make that easy. In an incredible display of nepotism, I even worked at All Blacks.com for a while, reading emails to the team to pass on (and yes, that included the absolute filth thirsty women wrote to them).

I recognise that sport is extremely important to some people, but I’ve always found it somewhat perplexing. Especially rugby. I’ve played along because that’s what you need to do if you’re in a rugby family, but I’m now at an age where I can confidently opt-out of discussions and hysteria about sportsball of any kind.

Just casually hanging off a thing, much like a ninja.

Following the All Blacks not winning the World Cup (I watched no games but I understand that’s what happened) I’ve thought a lot about Ninja Warrior.

No matter how far along you get in Ninja Warrior, you’re celebrated, even if you bomb out immediately. This is because it’s entirely accepted that Ninja Warrior is really hard. This is despite the advice I scream at the contestants as I eat a family pack of nacho cheese Doritos in my pyjamas; useful advice like “lift your legs up!” and “jump with both legs!”

I’ve surprised myself by how invested I am in the journeys of people who spend 30 seconds trying to do the course and then are gone. I’ve also surprised myself with some of the judgements I’ve made. For example, the nerdy doctor who made a joke about how he didn’t need or like big muscles (which I thought was unfair on my favourite competitors who have big muscles) did exceptionally well when I’d been sure he had the confidence of a mediocre white man. Then there was the Ken Doll who looked like he was made in a Ninja Warrior lab but didn’t actually make it as far.

The excitement of having literally no idea whether someone will get through the first stage of the course cannot be described.

Leaping across the water on diagonal platforms, just what one person does on *Australian Ninja Warrior*.

After watching three episodes in a row and screaming so loudly I woke my child who had fallen asleep next to me after neglecting to put him to bed, I realised I might have a Ninja Warrior addiction. I love the high stakes tempered with the low stakes. Everyone is just so happy to be able to have a go and I feel like we’ve lost that so much in sport.

Ninja Warrior is so absurd it makes you think that even you could do it. I even looked up “Ninja Warrior Training Wellington” while watching and almost booked a ten-trip gym pass (but then I had a nap instead). It reminds me of my childless days when you’d do the walk of shame home and pass people going to church. You just know they have their life together, and you want that, but also nah.

The stories of people who actually said yes to all that hard work (Ninja Warrior involves a lot of swinging) are inspiring. I love that I’m introducing my son to the idea that there are many ways of winning in life. Stepping outside your comfort zone, trying something new, doing your very best – this is exactly the type of life lesson I need, so it’s handy to introduce him to them as I absorb them too.

Many people in this country absolutely shit the bed over the idea of participation awards, yet hyper-competition has been shown time and time again to turn kids away from sport. Maybe it’s time to adopt the Ninja Warrior approach – a half-way stage where your challenge is to beat your own expectations of what your body can do and your mind can achieve.

Surely that lesson is one our country needs more than another World Cup. Don’t we have a few already anyway?