Our morning news shows are back for another year. Tara Ward tuned in bright and early to bring us these highlights.
There’s only one place to turn for your life lessons these days, and that is breakfast television. It’s the only show where you can learn about inflation and lymphatic drainage in the same half hour, not to mention a rare universe where stories about sausage crime, the war in Ukraine and the weather happily exist side by side. This morning, Breakfast and AM returned to our screens refreshed and rejuvenated after their summer break, and it turns out they’ve lost none of their magic. Here’s everything we learned from the return of our early morning current affairs champions.
Breakfast’s new set is really, really bright
TVNZ’s Breakfast returned with a loud bang this morning, showing off a fresh set that may or may not require sunglasses at six o’clock in the morning. Perhaps this background kaleidoscope of bold colours represents a rich sunrise, or maybe it’s a metaphor for the fractured state of the world as seen through the complex lens of morning television, or maybe as Anna Burns Francis suggested, “it’s a punch to the face.” Either way, good morning, Aotearoa!
Meanwhile, AM’s background was a mysterious scenic wonderland
Where is this majestic New Zealand city behind Ryan Bridge, and when can we all move there?
There’s some new-old faces on Breakfast
Breakfast kicked off 2023 by welcoming Anna Burns Francis and Chris Chang to the team, and it felt like they’d always been there. That was because they had, with Chris previously filling in on Breakfast and Anna regularly crossing live from cold places throughout America. It was “Changman” this and “ABF” that, and while Matty reckoned they were already “part of the furniture”, Anna was just glad they’d all turned up on time. Also new: this big bird, continuing the short history of big birds watching over Matty McLean on the Breakfast sofa.
It was the battle of the Chris’s
It was a very merry Chris-mas when Chris Hipkins and Chris Luxon appeared on Breakfast and AM simultaneously after the seven o’clock news, and AM kicked things off with this extremely chill image:
Breakfast missed the chance to have Chris Chang ask Chris Hipkins about whether there are too many men named Chris, instead leaving it to Anna Burns Francis to question Hipkins about things like “the economy” and “the election”. Boring! Luxon, meanwhile, started speaking in rugby metaphors, saying Hipkins becoming prime minister is simply an openside flanker moving to number eight. How many number eights have also been named Chris? Makes you think.
Chris Chang is still waiting for his invite to Matty McLean’s wedding
Breakfast kicked off with a quick debrief on Matty’s recent nuptials, but poor Chris Chang was quick to point out his wedding invitation was seemingly lost in the post. Awkward? Not at all.
Someone on Waiheke Island is putting sausages in letterboxes
Both AM and Breakfast covered the important issues of the morning, like business confidence and water safety, but they saved the most important issue until their final hour. A mystery figure is leaving sausages wrapped in bread in people’s letterboxes on Waiheke Island, and both Breakfast and AM are determined to get to the bottom of this heinous crime.
Both shows ruled out Waiheke resident The Mad Butcher as the culprit, with AM asserting that Sir Peter Leitch “would never treat sausages that way”. “Usually a sausage in a letterbox is a good thing,” Ryan Bridge mused, but Breakfast offered a more shocking theory, put to them by none other than The Mad Butcher himself. “He says it’s a hoax,” they reported, but without pointing the sausage finger, that sounds like something the Surfdale Sausager would say to put us off the scent. Is this a spicy joke stuffed inside a casing of confusion, or someone’s new year’s resolution gone wrong? You decide.
Jenny-May Clarkson once went on Celebrity Treasure Island and shot Marc Ellis in the neck
Look, it was just a paint-ball thing that happened “a few haircuts ago”. It’s not like she’s putting sausages in someone’s letterbox, OK?
New Years resolutions suck
“Are they motivating or do they just remind us of our personal failings?” Breakfast sliced straight into our fragile emotional cores after eight o’clock, with a discussion on new year resolutions. Matty’s 2022 resolution was to learn the guitar, but he revealed his guitar had sat in his car boot for the past 365 days, and his 2023 resolution was to get it out of the boot. None of his colleagues held any hope, while on Instagram, a Breakfast poll revealed that 85% of viewers were resolving never to make a resolution again. “Thank god,” sighed Anna, as guitars in boots around the nation sobbed in cold, dark silence.
‘Coming up next: something’ is the supertease of 2023
AM knows how to keep viewers hanging on. “Something’s coming up,” Ryan told us as the show went to an ad break. “Tune in, it’ll be next.” Can’t argue with that.
AM and Breakfast screen on Three and TVNZ 1 every weekday morning from 6am-9am.