How you respond to this group of people says everything about you.

Pop CultureJanuary 28, 2022

Below Deck: Mediterranean is the best reality show on the seven seas

Senior writer

How you respond to this group of people says everything about you.

While we wait for the local reality machine to kick in into gear in 2022, Alex Casey makes an impassioned plea that you all watch Below Deck: Mediterranean.

After watching Below Deck: Mediterranean in its entirety, I became a different person. I walked around the house demanding in a shonky South African accent that the chief stew (my partner) commences dinner service (kibbles) for the primary guest (the cat). The car became the tender, the kitchen became the galley, and I considered buying a red polo shirt and a black skort not once, not twice, but three times. I became a Below Deck Med Head and I’m bloody proud of it.

Now, as we twiddle our thumbs and wait for the likes of Celebrity Treasure Island, Drag Race Down Under, Mystery Love Island Adjacent show and all the other reality delights we’ve been promised to arrive on our screens this year, I implore you to get onboard with Below Deck: Mediterranean. Following the exhausted, cranky crew who work on horrible super yacht charters for the filthy rich, it is the perfect rat king of reality television elements that delivers something for absolutely everyone.

Because nobody asked and I’m sick of writing this out on toilet walls, here is my thesis.

Below Deck: Mediterranean is Love Island

Romance is a Below Deck cornerstone, as each season the brand new crew members from around the world couple up, couple swap and uncouple at a rate of knots that would make Captain Sandy haul anchor. Whether it is Hannah “getting a text” on the giant communal iPad from a flirtatious guest in season two, or the love triangle of Malia, Wes and Adam on the very same charter, fans of Love Island will froth Below Deck: Mediterranean harder than the jacuzzi jets on a crew day off.

Tfw someone reads your texts on the iPad

Below Deck: Mediterranean is Too Hot To Handle

In Too Hot To Handle, a sentient yet prudish air freshener punishes hotties for hooking up by taking money off them. In Below Deck, the same tension exists without any of the ridiculously contrived dystopian premise. The more that the crew pash, the more distracted they are at work, and the less money they get in their tip envelope at the end of the charter. No air freshener required.

Below Deck: Mediterranean is Masterchef

If you like kitchen nightmares and succulent seafaring meals, Below Deck: Mediterranean has that too. Every season a single chef with weird tattoos and a death wish gets thrown into the purest of hells, faced with supply issues, demanding guests who want a bowl of white gumballs in the middle of the sea, crappy kitchens, endless dietary restrictions and, in the case of Mila in season five, only a recipe for oven tray nachos in their arsenal.

Below Deck: Mediterranean is The Masked Singer

Whether it is Roy Orbison (Jr), baseball legend Johnny Damon, or Mr Skin, who I genuinely thought was made up for a gag in Knocked Up, the D-list celebrity guests that brave the Below Deck: Mediterranean gangway will have you humming “who is it, who is it, who is it underneath the mast”.

Below Deck: Mediterranean is The Apprentice

If you watch it in chronological order, Below Deck: Mediterranean follows the journey of certain crew members as they forcefully ascend through the strict boat hierarchy, gaining new positions and stripes on their epaulettes in a system that is not dissimilar to shows like The Apprentice and Undercover Boss. Every episode is packed with what is essentially employment drama – who will Hannah appoint as second stew? Which deckhand will Captain Sandy let drive the boat out of the port? And who will hear “you’re fired” over a weed pen in a handbag? I’ll never tell.

Below Deck: Mediterranean is Piha Rescue

What’s cool about being rich as hell in international waters is that, even if you are ratarse drunk, the only thing standing between you and your jet ski dreams is a wee man named Colin in a red polo shirt. The amount of treacherous rescues on Below Deck: Mediterranean rivals the most dramatic moments in Piha Rescue, whether it is drunk deckhands slipping off the lazarette or guests having heart murmurs on an inflatable banana. BYO life jacket.

Angry rich guests fight on Below Deck: Mediterranean

Below Deck is The Real Housewives of Everywhere

The dinner service on Below Deck: Mediterranean is a show within a show, as the audience takes the side of the bemused, exhausted interior crew watching rich idiots slur nonsense at each other from behind crappy Look Sharp Venetian masks. And when they really get into it (it being the wine), the drama rivals any good Real Housewives food fight.

Below Deck is Man vs Wild

And while all of this drama is happening onboard, it is easy to forget that they are all in the middle of the fucking Mediterranean sea, which any seafarer will tell you is some of the most tumultuous water in all of the… sea. In a matter of minutes, the weather can change from sun-soaked bliss to black clouds and lightening bolts. It is rare that a charter goes by without nearby boats sinking, jellyfish stinging up a storm or anchors getting tangled overnight like necklaces in the bottom of a jewellery box. Outdoors with Geoff could never.

Below Deck Mediterranean is available to watch here on Netflix

Keep going!

Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester star in Trigger Point (Image: TVNZ / Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureJanuary 26, 2022

Missing Line of Duty? TVNZ’s new crime thriller Trigger Point is a real blast

Tara Ward

Staff writer

Vicky McClure and Adrian Lester star in Trigger Point (Image: TVNZ / Tina Tiller)

Everything you need to know about TVNZ OnDemand’s explosive new thriller, made by the team behind Line of Duty and Bodyguard.

I’ve watched the trailer, put on my protective gear and sharped my wire cutters, but it seems like TVNZ’s new drama Trigger Point is Line of Duty…with bombs?

Exactly, and that’s because the show is produced by Jed Mercurio, creator of hit dramas like Line of Duty and Bodyguard. Trigger Point is another crime thriller about hard-working officers in high-pressure situations, and while the storylines aren’t as complex, it has the same tense twists and turns that made LOD and Bodyguard such gripping TV.

It also stars Vicky McClure (LOD’s DI Kate Fleming), who chucks on a new bulletproof vest to play Lana Washington, a no-nonsense yet maverick bomb-disposal expert.

I’ve never met a bad Lana. Lana Coc-Kroft, Lana Searle, even Larnach Castle.

She’s called Wash for short, but wait til you hear the name of Lana’s trusted partner: Joel Nutkins. Mr Nut. Old Nutty Nutkins. Sir Nutalottus with the big bomb.

Look, if I was kidnapped, forced to wear an an explosive vest and locked in a car boot, I wouldn’t care what the bomb disposal officer’s name was.

Lana Washington and Nutty McNutface stare down the bombs

Sure, and that’s exactly what happens in the first episode. Wash and Nut (Hustle’s Adrian Lester) are experienced Metropolitan Police explosive officers – or “expos” – whose job is to neutralise explosive devices. They’re the double act who go running into dodgy situations when everyone else is running out, and they’re the only ones who know which cables to chop with their lucky wire-cutters. It’s more nerve wracking work than when Line of Duty’s Steve has to choose which waistcoat to wear.

It does sound stressful. I struggle to untangle my phone charger cord at the best of times.

There’s a moment in episode one where Nutkins realises a bomb is triggered by a light switch, at the exact moment Washington goes to turn the light on. Have you ever tried to keep a light switch half on and half off, when your life depended on it? You’ll be sweating in cracks you didn’t know you had.

Look forward to it. What else happens?

The first episode – available now on TVNZ OnDemand – sets up the drama for the rest of the season. Washington and Nutkins (both ex-military who served together in Afghanistan) are part of the bomb squad dealing with a suspected explosives factory in a London housing estate. They don’t know it yet, but it’s the start of a terrorist campaign that will threaten the safety of the city over one long, hot summer.

In one hour, Nut and Wash dispose bombs in a toilet, behind a hot water cylinder, under cars and on a kidnap victim. There’s a cracker of a cliffhanger at the end of episode one, and while you might have predicted this event about seven minutes in, the result will still make you wish all six episodes dropped at once. Also, by the end of the first hour, you’ll be yelling phrases like “deploy the robot” into your walkie-talkie like you were born for it.

I’m here for one thing, and one thing only: what’s the difference between Lana Washington and LOD’s Kate Fleming?

They’re both tough cookies who say “nice one, mate”, but Lana Washington is much cooler than DI Fleming. Lana loves a snazzy pair of sunglasses, and at the end of a long day detonating bombs, she cranks up the music and bobs her head in time with a nodding dog. She’s also just started dating her boss, DI Thom Youngblood. That’s another amazing name, and when has dating your superior ever gone wrong?

So what else can we expect?

This was a really tense episode of First Dates

There’ll be a lot more crawling into small spaces while people scream “don’t move!”, because it’s clear this bombmaker is here to cause trouble. Washington will be determined to find out who is behind the attacks (I’m picking an inside job, someone alert Ted Hastings), and we’ll also meet more of the supporting cast, which includes Kerry Godliman (After Life, Taskmaster), Ralph Ineson (Peaky Blinders) and Lee Robins (Vigil).

So is Trigger Point the explosive drama to fill the Line of Duty hole in our lives, or a bit of a fizzer?

It’s more predictable and less convincing than Line of Duty, but despite the far-fetched situations Nut and Wash find themselves in, it’s still thoroughly watchable TV. Did a toilet ever explode on Line of Duty? Sadly never, and that show was all the poorer for it.

New episodes of Trigger Point hit TVNZ OnDemand every Monday at 11am.