Pop CultureJanuary 17, 2025

The best things we watched (and listened to) over summer

A bunch of people

A selection of the best shows, movies, podcasts and playlists that kept us entertained over the holidays.

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Leo (Netflix)

My partner and I watched exactly one thing on the TV in our Japan accommodation while on holiday and it was, inexplicably, Leo. We hadn’t heard a peep about Leo before that fateful night and it was probably exhaustion that allowed us to hit play on a year-old animation about an old lizard, but believe me when I say neither of us have ever laughed more in a movie. Leo is a classroom Lizard in Florida, specifically a tuatara (we squealed at this reveal but also there’s no way he could’ve been a tuatara) with a life expectancy of 75 years. When he realises he’s 74 and about to die, he hatches a plan to escape. But his plans keep getting foiled by the kids who take turns looking after him at home, and all the problems they have that only an old, wise lizard can solve. Leo is an Adam Sandler vehicle with Adam Sandler sensibilities and I’m too scared to revisit it, even a little, now that I’m back to my regular life. Maybe it was just a bit of holiday euphoria clouding our judgment, or maybe Leo is one of the best, funniest movies ever made. / Madeleine Chapman

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix)

Scheduling issues meant that I missed this incredible documentary in the film festival last year, so it was a thrill to see it bobbing like a life raft in Netflix’s stinking sludge pit of recent arrivals. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian online gamer who passed away at 25 from a degenerative muscular disease. In the final years of his life he became a World of Warcraft obsessive and, thanks to some savvy archiving and brilliant animation, filmmaker Benjamin Ree is able to recreate the journey through his rich, thrilling and compassionate online life. There aren’t many good stories about the internet these days, and this is one the most moving documentaries I’ve seen in years – a testament to the power of community, even if that community is the fictional guild of Starlight. Watch it. / Alex Casey

Gavin and Stacey: The Finale (TVNZ+)

There’s always a risk when a beloved TV series gets rebooted after several years away from our screens: can you ever recreate the magic? Gavin and Stacey: The Finale proves the answer is yes. This one-off 90-minute special was the final episode of the award-winning British sitcom that began in 2007, and it delivered the last chapter in the love story between Gavin from Essex and Stacey from Wales, whose whirlwind romance brought two very different families together nearly 20 years ago.

The finale wasn’t perfect, but it was the perfect goodbye. I watched the entire thing with a mad grin across my face, thrilled to see that Gwen still makes a mean omelette and Three Steaks Pam is as gloriously hectic as ever. It was like reuniting with old friends: there were the same running gags and some delightful surprises, but it still celebrated the unique quirks of these ordinary people and their wonderfully everyday lives. When I got to the end, I immediately watched it over again, and then dove back into the original series (also on TVNZ+), hoovering down three seasons in two days. Tidy. / Tara Ward

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Netflix)

I like to wear a long, white, thin cotton grandma nightie on the beach. I’ll say it’s for sun and heat protection, but in fact there’s a romantic whimsy I’m trying to capture with its broderie trims. Just before I stained it with a cherry, my friend called it “pretty” and said it reminded her of a beautiful new show on Netflix, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1967 novel of the same name, the series follows the Buendia family and the town José Arcadio built in a swamp after trying to find the sea for years. The novel is famous as a representation of magical realism and Marquez never thought it suitable for adapting onto a screen. He’s been proven wrong. It’s been done with care, attention to detail and authenticity – Marquez’s two sons acted as consultants and co-producers. The result is beautiful – period costumes are carefully put together, sets are detailed and verdant, the acting restrained and powerful. / Gabi Lardies

Rob Has a Podcast interviewing Emily Nussbaum (Spotify)

Sorry to be one of those people who recommends a podcast about a book, but I loved hearing former Survivor player and longtime reality podcaster Rob Cesternino getting deep in the weeds with The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum about her new book ‘Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV’. Covering everything from early Big Brother, to reality TV cliques being like college alma maters (“Survivor players think they are Ivy League”) to the influence that The Apprentice had on the course of US politics, it is a super engaging discussion between two of the world’s leading experts on the genre and I am now frothing to get my hands on the book. / AC

Conclave (in cinemas)

“The premise is gossipy priests,” I explained to my boyfriend, separating him from the recently released video game Path of Exile II. We were going to see Conclave, the new Ralph Fiennes movie about all the Catholic Cardinals gathering to choose the next pope. Fiennes is Dean Cardinal Lawrence, responsible for convening the election process, but not without his own ideas about what direction the global church should go in. Questions of how progressive the church should be, the role of women and queer people, the increasing population of Catholics in Africa and Latin America compared to declining traditional power centres in the US and Italy linger at the edges. Really, though, this is a drama about ambition, with a sparse colour scheme of white, red and black, bouncy sound design, lush vestments, huge amount of emotion conveyed by twitches of Fiennes’ face and yes – gossipy priests. It’s the perfect blend of fun (you may have seen the memes about the vaping priest) and political. / Shanti Mathias

Broomgate (CBC podcast)

A podcast about curling doesn’t seem like it will be the most interesting thing, but this story of a scandal that rocked the world of curling is gripping. The star of the show isn’t the sport or the people involved, but broom heads and the sweeping techniques that changed how the game was played during the 2015/2016 season. Full of the same intrigue you’d expect from any series revealing a bombshell kind of truth, there are business rivalries, heroes and villains and the near destruction of the sport at the heart of it. Hosted by comedian and former curler John Cullen, it’s a six-part series. Cullen is involved, referring to himself as “patient zero” of broomgate as he was one of the first curlers to use the new broom heads. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell

‘Balearic Beat’ playlists (Spotify)

This summer I finally cracked the code for putting on background music in social settings (that doesn’t involve spending hours carefully putting together a playlist then getting the pip because no one’s even listening to it), and the secret word is “Balearic”. Named for the group of famous party islands off the coast of Spain (Ibiza et al), it’s not so much a genre as it is a state of mind, a way of life, a movement started by linen-clad DJs in the 1980s playing eclectic, cosmopolitan, breezily danceable sets on the beach at sunset. If you want to cultivate that vibe at home (or in your shop, cafe etc) all you have to do is type “Balearic” into Spotify, put one of the playlists on shuffle (I recommend this one curated by ultimate taste merchants Numero Group) et voila, your DJ duties are done and all your guests will think you’re a suave and sophisticated host. Also good for putting on while cooking, doing a puzzle or otherwise pottering. / Calum Henderson

Keep going!

Adam Scott as Mark in Severance (Apple TV).

Pop CultureJanuary 17, 2025

Move fast: The best TV show of the century so far returns today

Toby Manhire

Editor-at-large

Adam Scott as Mark in Severance (Apple TV).

Toby Manhire tells you everything you need to know ahead of season two of Severance.

After an agonising wait – nearly three years between waffles, thanks to US actor and writer strikes and, some say, creative squabbles – Severance returns today, Friday January 17. For my money the first season was just about the most compelling television of the century to date. Part workplace satire, part dystopian thriller; enchanting, funny, contemplative, absurdist, beautifully acted, exquisitely scripted, mesmerising to look at – I almost feel sorry for the second season having to follow that.

Severance takes place in the wintry fictional city of Kier, a company town named after the cultishly revered founder of Lumon Industries, Kier Eagan. Half of the action plays out on the Severed Floor of the vast Lumon HQ. Here, the workers do not know themselves outside of work, just as their outside-work selves (or “outies”) know nothing of their “innies”. The outie existence begins, naturally, writhing around on a board table.

If that sounds like something out of Black Mirror, yes, it is a bit, but it more than survives elaboration into a full-length series. The show is full of mysteries and hypotheses, but never feels stunty. The seed of the idea was planted in the brain of creator Dan Erickson when he was working temp jobs so tedious that he found himself fantasising about the idea of being able to leap immediately from clocking in to clocking out without enduring the tedium in between. Fittingly, somehow, given the corridor warren of Severance, he was working in a factory that made and repaired doors.

Most of the season one action centres in the Macrodata Refinement department. “These people,” executive producer and director Ben Stiller told the New York Times recently, “are in a workplace doing a job that they don’t understand; they don’t know who they are or why they’re there.” One of them, Helly R (Britt Lower) is newly arrived. Mark (Adam Scott) has been promoted to team leader, following the disappearance – sorry, resignation – of Petey. Outside work, a desperate Petey is trying to warn Mark’s outie about something very serious.

It’s hard to recount the plot without sounding silly, so I’ll stop at that and say simply this is a majestic meditation on memory, grief, loneliness, friendship, personality, the role of work and HR piffle. Insofar as it’s sci-fi, this is the offspring of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind rather than Star Trek. In atmosphere and mischief there is a discernible debt to the late, great David Lynch. If you haven’t watched it, do give it a chance. If you have watched already, it warrants a second viewing – in my household we planned to space out rewatches in the lead-up the new season but ended up devouring it in three nights. True completists might like to revisit the first season complete with the freshly released podcast postmortems from Stiller and Scott.

Among the pressing questions that may get answered, in part at least, in the episodes to come (some S1 spoilers, I suppose, follow):

What response will Helly’s (innie) bombshell speech at the Lumon expo have, and what will her outie have to say about it?
Just how much trouble and time in the Break Room will Dylan (Zach Cherry) for going full insurrectionist and engaging the Overtime Contingency Protocol?
What is really going on on the Severed Floor – and what is microdata refinement (try it here)? Are the workers undertaking neural experiments in an R&D facility for the world’s most elaborate anaesthesia, to inoculate the psyche from, say, childbirth or war, or to somehow irrigate memories? Or, even, crash test dummies for efforts to bring people back from the dead?
Speaking of: did Mark’s wife, “Ms Casey” (Dichen Lachman), in fact die, what is she doing on the severed floor as a wellbeing coach, and can Mark’s innie and outie conspire to liberate her?
What on earth is going on with Mrs Selvig aka Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette)? Is she in a permanently severed state, what grip does Lumon have over her, and who, exactly, is the “Charlotte Cobel” on the hospital bracelet (birth date 3-17-44) in the Kier shrine at her home? Is it her mother? A sister? Or her?
Why does the outie of Irv (John Turturro) spend all his time painting canvases black, is his outie an insomniac or deliberately trying to make his innie sleepy and isn’t he sick of listening to Motörhead and does he have any future with Burt?
Will Ricken receive the accolades he deserves for the seminal text The You You Are, A Spiritual Biography (sample line: “Bullies are nothing but ‘bull’ and ‘lies’; at the centre of industry is ‘dust’”)?
What is/are The Board? What happened to Reghabi and how much does she know? Why the waffle parties? And what in the name of Eagan is up with the infant goats?

To the unconverted, the above must read like the garble of a brainwashed dynastic cult devotee superbore, and, look, fair cop, I’m a fan.

‘If you regularly enjoy The Spinoff, and want it to continue, become a member today.’

Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large

I’m sure many of my fellow frothing Severance devotees will be approaching the second season with some trepidation. Television graveyards, after all, are littered with enigmatic, concept-heavy shows that in return seasons quickly got lost – or Lost, if you prefer – in their own vacuous onanism. But both Stiller and Erickson insist they have the bigger arc mapped out and know how it ends. (Erickson has said that arc could span as much as six seasons). And the early assessments from reviewers who have seen screeners are, frankly, glowing.

And so I, for one, am approaching season two with a clarity of purpose: vision, verve, wit, cheer, humility, benevolence, nimbleness, probity and, naturally, wiles. Praise Kier.

Severance returns today to AppleTV+.