Twelve adults sit and smile at the camera
The Lego Masters NZ contestants for 2023 (Photo: TVNZ / Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureApril 10, 2023

Meet the teams on the new season of Lego Masters NZ

Twelve adults sit and smile at the camera
The Lego Masters NZ contestants for 2023 (Photo: TVNZ / Design: Tina Tiller)

Tara Ward gazes into the brick crystal ball to predict who’ll take home the coveted Lego Masters NZ trophy. 

Good news, mates: Lego Masters NZ is back. From tonight, Monday April 10, the wholesome reality competition that encourages adults to embrace their inner child returns to TVNZ2 as six new Kiwi teams compete for the Lego Masters NZ trophy. Over the next few weeks, these teams will showcase their building expertise and creative thinking in a variety of inspirational Lego challenges, while host Dai Henwood and Brick Master Robin Sather encourage the competitors to use every single one of the 2.5 million blocks in the LMNZ brick pit.

Dai Henwood and Robin Sather stand on the set of Lego Masters NZ
Robin Sather and Dai Henwood are back for season two (Photo: TVNZ)

In readiness for the new season, we’ve scoured the LMNZ press kit and studied the official photos to guess which team will impress the judges the most. Who will show the most originality? Who will take the biggest risks? Who can throw Lego into the air the highest? We’ve made our predictions, even though the teams are yet to set foot inside the LMNZ warehouse, which makes our ranking more wonky than a brick tower without vertical bracing. Let’s make like a Lego car and hoon straight into the rankings. 

6. Carsten and Angus

Two men, one wearing a hat, smile with their arms folded at the camera
Carsten and Angus (Photo: TVNZ)

These lads are beginning their LMNZ journey as strangers, having been paired up after each of their LMNZ teammates withdrew from the competition. Fate (or the show’s producers) intervened and joined them together like a pair of 6×4 bricks, and after meeting a few times on Zoom, this new team is raring to go. “We have very different building styles and techniques,” Angus says, which should be… fine? Don’t panic. Carsten actually grew up in Denmark, where everything is made of Lego, so this is bound to work out. 

5. Amy and Llewe

A man and woman throw colourful Lego blocks into the air and laugh
Llewe and Amy (Photo: TVNZ)

This pair live in Lower Hutt, and they’re coming to LMNZ to win. Amy really hopes they’ll get to do the exploding glitter challenge while Llewe wants to unleash his inner five-year-old in the iconic Lego destruction challenge. “Smashing things up is fun,” Llewe says, and never a truer word was spoken. 

4. Rachel and Jason

A man and woman throw Lego bricks into the air and smile
Rachel and Jason (Photo: TVNZ)

Look at those bricks fly high, just like Rachel and Jason’s LMNZ hopes and dreams. This Christchurch couple first met 19 years ago while ice skating, a sport that would definitely be better if Lego was involved. Rachel’s first Lego creation was a scale model of her house, while Jason’s most proud of his mechanical Lego water lily. They’re absolutely fizzing to compete on LMNZ, and if they don’t win, you know they’ll have a bloody lovely time trying.

3. Andrew and Harry

Two friends stand next to each other, smiling at the camera
Andrew and Harry

Andrew and Harry are both from Auckland, both 25 years old, and both mechanical engineers. Will they both win LMNZ? Only the Lego Master knows the truth. It’s a good sign that Andrew reckons his favourite Lego acronym is SNOT (Studs Not On Top), because “without SNOT we couldn’t hold anything interesting together”. That’s exactly the sort of messy smack talk we need more of in this competition, so good luck to them both. 

2. Henny and Pieter

A mother and son stand next to each other and smile at the camera
Henny and Pieter (Photo: TVNZ)

Who doesn’t want to see some tense parent-child dynamics play out on national television? Say hello to Henny and Pieter, a mother and son team from Dunedin. Competing on LMNZ is Pieter’s dream, but Henny admits it took some persuading for her to join the show. Perhaps Henny is just playing things cool, because she also says she once built a sewing machine out of Lego. What is this, the future? Plus, Pieter once spent five years building a Lego Dunedin railway station, so please just give them the trophy right now.  

1. Oli and Charlie

Siblings stand and throw Lego pieces into the air
Oli and Charlie

These siblings hail from Wellington and Palmerston North, and the long-time Lego fans counted down the days until they could apply for the show. Oli has been building a Lego underwater kingdom for 10 years and doesn’t think it will ever be finished, while Charlie once built a rideable motorbike out of Lego and – wait for it –  DROVE IT AROUND HIS SCHOOL. Do they get that sort of thinking on Lego Masters Australia? They heck they do. Stand down, we have our winners. 

Lego Masters NZ screens Monday-Wednesday on TVNZ 2 at 7.30pm from Monday 10 April, and streams on TVNZ+.


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Two cute bunny rabbits on telly.
There’s plenty to watch on TV this Easter. (Image: The Spinoff)

Pop CultureApril 7, 2023

All the TV we’re watching this Easter Weekend

Two cute bunny rabbits on telly.
There’s plenty to watch on TV this Easter. (Image: The Spinoff)

From stand-up comedy specials to road rage revenge sagas, here’s what we’re looking forward to bingeing over the long weekend.

Jerrod Carmichael – Rothaniel (NEON)

Jerrod Carmichael’s star has been steadily rising over the past decade with his own short-lived sitcom and a notorious Golden Globes hosting stint. Neon has all three of his stand-up specials and while the first two are great, messing with form and structure in their own way, they’re mere set-ups for Rothaniel. That 2022 special, directed by Bo Burnham, is a fascinating twist on the stand-up format, less an hour of punchlines and more an exorcism with the occasional, well-earned laugh. If this is all you read about Rothaniel, read no further, just go and watch it. I’ve seen it twice and eagerly await the third. / Sam Brooks

Am I Being Unreasonable (TVNZ+)

Daisy May Cooper is a comedic force to be reckoned with. She’s a master of panel shows, especially her stint on Taskmaster UK, as well as writing and acting in things like This Country. In Am I Being Unreasonable, she manages to utilise her comedic chops while also finding room to give an impressive dramatic performance. What starts out as a pretty straightforward sitcom soon becomes anything but. It’s at times thrilling, emotional and yet always funny. It’s very hard to describe this show – go in blind and have fun with it. At an easily-bingeable six episodes, this is a perfect long weekend watch. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Emergency NYC (Netflix)

One of the first shows to capture what life was really like for hospital staff coping with the first Covid outbreaks was Lenox Hill, a Netflix reality documentary series that just happened to be filming fly-on-the-wall in a New York hospital when the pandemic began. Clearly, that was gripping enough for producers to plan a second show, so Emergency NYC is born. Filmed in the same hospital, it’s an unofficial sequel that follows some of the same doctors, nurses and surgeons during their working life. Yes, there’s plenty of drama but it’s also the little moments, the personal touches that happen in between the life-and-death situations, that make this feel far more relatable to someone who doesn’t deal with scalpels, sickness and surgery on a daily basis. / Chris Schulz

The Power (Prime Video)

With savvy-switching an entrenched behaviour in our house, we dip in and out of subscriptions to various streaming services. Right now, the Amazon-run Prime Video is worth signing up to. At $8 a month, it’s definitely the cheapest of the streaming services. In the last couple of weeks I’ve binged Donald Glover’s deeply unnerving and moreish satire about fan culture, Swarm; started The Power, the TV adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel of the same name starring Toni Colette; and am romping through the highly watchable 70s music nostalgia fest that is Daisy Jones and the Six. The final season of the delightful if slightly irritating Marvelous Mrs Maisel hits on April 14 and the service’s back catalogue includes the TV version of A League of their Own and A Very British Scandal starring Claire Foy. That should be more than enough to get you through the Easter weekend if your plan is to lie down. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell

Physical 100 (Netflix)

I will admit it took several weeks of Duncan Greive fizzing about this Squid Game-inspired Netflix reality show on The Real Pod before I took the plunge. I’ve never been particularly charmed by macho shows like American Ninja Warrior and Wipeout, so the idea of watching 100 strong folks coming together to show off how strong they are was pretty low on my priority list. Too low brow for me, I thought, I’m too busy getting to the bottom of the latest MAFS sexting scandal.

I am unfortunately here to say that Duncan Greive was right. Physical 100 is a hugely compelling watch, bringing together Korea’s finest Olympians, dancers, body builders, muscly car dealers and wiry mountain rescuers to decide which physical form is… the best?… or something? Whatever the point is, the challenge structures are spectacular, the characters are loveable and the deft cliffhanger endings will keep you binge-watching while contemplating doing a single push up. / Alex Casey

Tiny Beautiful Things (Disney+)

Grab the tissues for the latest drama from Reese Witherspoon’s production company, because it looks like Tiny Beautiful Things wants to give you plenty of  big feels. Based on the best-selling novel by Cheryl Strayed (Wild, another Witherspoon project), Tiny Beautiful Things follows Clare (Kathryn Hahn), a writer who is struggling to simultaneously navigate the breakdown of her marriage, a hormonal teenage daughter and the death of her mother decades before. I feel drained just typing that, but who doesn’t love both tiny and beautiful things? Plus, Kathryn Hahn will never let you down. / Tara Ward

Party Down (TVNZ+)

Party Down is older than I would have guessed – it predates Glee, to which it lost Jane Lynch midway through the first season, and Parks and Rec, to which it lost Adam Scott at the end of its second. Like the equally bittersweet comedy Freaks & Geeks, it’s a prematurely-cancelled cult hit with stars who mostly went on to bigger things (Ken Marino, Lizzy Caplan and Jennifer Coolidge even pops up in a few episodes). But unlike Freaks & Geeks, it’s now been revived after a 13-year hiatus. Is that a good thing? I’ll find out this weekend. / Calum Henderson

BEEF (Netflix)

I sit in a lot of traffic. I get cut off, undertaken, honked at, yelled at and given the fingers. I’m a good driver, honestly! The people in Beef are not. Netflix’s new series is about an extreme version of exactly that. It stars fiery comedian Ali Wong and The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun who have a minor car clash that escalates into the pair unleashing all hell on each other. They’re both at fault, yet they refuse to back down, and reviews say what follows is an escalating game of cat-and-mouse taken to extremes. The star turn, says Indiewire, is by Wong, who “tears into her most fearsome scenes with giddy satisfaction”. Can’t wait to head off on my holidays – calmly – through some traffic to see this one. / Chris Schulz