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Design: Tina Tiller
Design: Tina Tiller

Pop CultureMarch 7, 2022

Outlander recap: Welcome back to our favourite 18th century hornbags

Design: Tina Tiller
Design: Tina Tiller

Outlander is back, and so are Tara Ward’s recaps. The first episode of season six kicks off with a fun sponge, a powder horn and a whole lot of worry. 

Outlander is a ginger light in a world of gloom, and even though the show is filled with misery and grief, we’re stuck to it like 18th century mould on bread. After a two year absence, Jamie and Claire Fraser are back for another season of hijinks and hornbaggery, and we’ve never needed the distraction more. Season six kicked off quietly and calmly with a 90 minute premiere, giving thirsty fans an extra long episode to compensate for season six’s unusually short season.

Nice try, Outlander, but nothing can change the fact that this season we’ll only have eight and half hours of Jamie’s tricorns instead of the traditional 13. Yes, we could take a screenshot of Jamie in his hat, and yes, we could print it off in A3 colour at our local library and then pay extra for them to laminate it, and yes, we could take it home and put it in our top drawer and take it out whenever we feel sad because we all know that tricorns have restorative healing powers. It’s 2022, we need all the help we can get.

Did someone call for a doctor…and a tricorn?

Instead, let’s furrow our brows and look towards Fraser’s Ridge with the same level of concern that Jamie and Claire did all episode. They were probably wondering why there are always so many people in their front garden, but mostly, they’re worrying about the war that’s coming, and their daughter Bree, who lacks the confidence to unleash her 20th century inventions on an 18th century audience. They’re especially concerned about heavily pregnant Marsali, who’s usually-devoted husband Fergus is now a drunk and possible wife-beater.

That’s right, Marsali is up the duff again, even though she just had a baby in last season’s finale. Claire spent much of the episode refining her DIY anaesthetic, but maybe she could do Marsali a favour and invent the contraceptive pill as well. Claire’s still processing the trauma she experienced last season, and while outwardly she appears fine, she’s secretly relying on her homegrown ether to get a good night’s sleep.

“I don’t even know most of these people”

But no-one will sleep easy now the Christies have arrived on the Ridge. Tom Christie is an old foe of Jamie’s from Ardsmuir Prison, and a walking fun sponge. He’s pompous, self-righteous, and clearly jealous of Jamie. If anyone was likely to have a secret laminated printout of J-Fray in his top drawer, it’s this guy.

Outlander took us back to 1753 when the two men first met at Ardsmuir. Jamie with the Good Hair arrived and quickly earned the respect of the prisoners and the staff, which pissed Tom off big time. Tom pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes and then the wind changed, and he stayed like that until he reached Fraser’s Ridge 20 years later. He wants to build a church and a following, but Jamie’s not having it. There’s only room for one alpha male in this strawberry patch, and it isn’t Tom Christie.

The Christie family, with Tom trying to remember where he left his photo of Jamie

War is coming, there’s illness everywhere, and the nation has never been more divided. Sound familiar? The community meal at the Frasers took a turn when the feral Safety Committee arrived to accuse Tom’s son Allan of stealing a powder horn, which then created a right old sausage fest about which man should get to beat the crap out of another man for the punishment. It was a terrible end to a party, even worse than the time Claire operated on that exploding hernia at the theatre.

A hernia, a hernia, my kingdom for a hernia. Imagine if everyone had simply sat down to eat a big bowl of mashed potatoes and talked things through? Tom would’ve cried and said he wished he was more like Jamie, and Jamie would given Tom his kind eyes and said “don’t be afraid, there are two of us now” and everyone would have gone to sleep full and content.

Social distancing in 1773

But nobody was full and content on the Ridge, even though a few people had a nice time. Roger’s beard looked particularly lush, Jamie and Claire enjoyed a bit of colonial saucy time, and Marsali’s kids went for a hoon on Grandad Jamie’s horse and cart. Oh, to be a spoke on that wheel. This was a quiet start to what promises to be a tense season, but it’s a relief to see The Frasers as solid as ever. We know it won’t last, but like a ginger farmer eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for the first time, we’ll take it.

Outlander screens on Neon, with a new episode every Monday night. Read more of Tara Ward’s Outlander recaps here.

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26:29 is about a group of young vloggers break into an abandoned Sāmoan church. (Image: Archi Banal)
26:29 is about a group of young vloggers break into an abandoned Sāmoan church. (Image: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureMarch 7, 2022

TV anthology Beyond the Veil celebrates scary stories from across the Pacific

26:29 is about a group of young vloggers break into an abandoned Sāmoan church. (Image: Archi Banal)
26:29 is about a group of young vloggers break into an abandoned Sāmoan church. (Image: Archi Banal)

Supernatural beliefs and customs from Māori, Pasifika and Asian cultures are the inspiration for the new six-part series starting tonight on TVNZ 2.

Horror has a long and spooky history on our television screens. Shows such as The Twilight Zone, The X Files and Goosebumps have all successfully made us afraid of the dark, sent shivers down our spines, or both. TVNZ’s new anthology series Beyond The Veil does exactly that – but with a uniquely Aotearoa twist, highlighting the diverse voices of Māori, Pasifika and Asian peoples along with the supernatural beings and beliefs that form part of their cultures.

The idea for the series came from a screen hui a few years back focused on the need to establish more pathways for tangata whenua and other ethnic groups to get onto prime time TV, says Nevak Rogers, TVNZ’s general manager of local content. 

“Being of both Māori and Tongan descent, I know we have a wealth of stories and I’m aware that other ethnicities have similar yet different stories that deserve to be celebrated,” says Rogers. “The goal is that these storytellers will be able to use this platform to go on to bigger projects.” Already there are plans for three of the stories in the series, Tim Worrall’s Tappy, Taratoa Stappard’s Taumanu and Michael Bennett’s Te Kohu – The Mist, to be expanded into feature films, in the hopes that they can make the leap to an international stage.

Beyond the Veil’s second episode, 26:29, is a Pasifika story directed by Danny Aumua and produced by Wilhelm Voigt and Ngaire Fuata. In it, a group of young vloggers break into an abandoned Sāmoan church; their found footage tells the story of what happens next. Aumua says he was inspired by YouTube channel Buzzfeed Unsolved, which features US vloggers exploring supposedly haunted places with both humour and respect for the history each place holds. “I wanted a New Zealand version of that channel,” says Aumua, who explains that the fresh-faced, largely unknown cast of young actors helped to add a layer of realism to the found footage genre.

The cast of episode two of Beyond the Veil, ’26:29′. (Photo: Supplied/TVNZ)

Aumua, who is Sāmoan, says it was a challenge to create an exciting, scary story that remained respectful of his culture. “I grew up hearing the stories from my elders, but to write and direct it was a different experience. For some, the topics are taboo and the last thing we wanted to do was offend our community,” he says. Another issue was the use of  Sāmoan spirits, which tend to belong in the islands, and only in the islands. “We didn’t use a traditional spirit because they’re tied to villages and real families, so in consultation with our producer Wil [Voight], who is also like our Sāmoan adviser, we created our own spirit character.”

Many aspects of Sāmoan culture are embedded in 26:29. The most obvious is the setting: Sāmoa is a Christian nation, so it’s no coincidence that the haunted building for this episode is a church. For non-Sāmoan viewers, however, the significance of the date when the vloggers went missing – October 11 2019, according to a caption on the opening scene – may be less obvious.

In Sāmoa, the second Sunday of October is White Sunday, a religious holiday that celebrates the role of children in the church. Families wear their finest white clothes and young church members lead the service with scriptural recitations, skits and songs. The character Mel (Fay Tofilau), who shows the vloggers around her abandoned church, makes references to White Sunday – in one scene, she looks up at the church and, in an eerie tone of voice, says “the children are singing”, yet there are no children in sight. Towards the end of the episode, a young Sāmoan girl appears inside the church wearing a white dress – another reference to White Sunday.

Max Grean and Fay Tofilau in 26:29. (Photo: Supplied TVNZ)

The title of the episode references Leviticus 26:29, the bible passage that reads: “Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” There’s a scene where Mel sits in front of a mirror covered with a white lace cloth. She’s still, looking pale, frightened at what’s in front of her. This scene references a custom in Sāmoa. When the sun sets, many Sāmoans cover their mirrors, believing that the devil looks into the souls of those who look into the mirror at night. Neil (Max Grean) pulls the cloth off, revealing a cracked mirror underneath. Mel begins to weep, saying “this place is cursed”.

To ensure the story didn’t disrespect the Sāmoan culture, Aumua and his team not only conducted their own research, consulting with people such as Voigt who is deep in his Fa’a Sāmoa, but they also approached two church ministers from different denominations for guidance. Aumua was nervous about what they thought of his idea, so was relieved when one of the ministers not only gave his approval, but also suggested the names of children from the church who might be interested in taking part in the production. “There were a lot of keen kids who wanted to be a part of the show, so that same day we held auditions and that’s how we found Zoe-Monet Vainikolo who plays our young Sāmoan girl, and she ended up being very integral to the story,” Aumua says.

Beyond the Veil begins on March 7 on TVNZ 2, 9:30pm, with new stories each week thereafter. Episode two, 26:29, screens on March 14. All episodes will be also available to watch on TVNZ OnDemand.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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