Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: What you lookin' at?

Alfie

Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:55:22 +1300

I see Max Key has made a dick of himself again.
Real men ride women.
Sure thing Max. Sure thing.

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 11 Mar 2016 15:57:47 +1300

...also YouTube has been a revelation in my feverish state – for whatever reason two of my favourite hard to find movies Primer and The Last Wave are there to watch in full!!

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:38:20 +1300

Been sick in bed for some days – ended up watching all of The Deep on TVNZ On Demand – must've missed it on broadcast...
Then went to TV3 on demand to see what they had to offer – couldn't find one thing I wanted to watch.

krothville

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 19:05:01 +1300

Thanks to whoever brought up The Expanse, devoured that in a couple of days, it's really good!

Alfie

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 06:59:56 +1300

Like this?

Almost, but more like this.

Steve Barnes

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 20:25:47 +1300

we eat babies in wheelchairs
Like this?
Good, honest, equal opportunity...
:-}

Alfie

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 10:33:14 +1300

We also eat babies and shout at people in wheelchairs.

And for ten points, we eat babies in wheelchairs. ;-)

Ian Dalziel

Sun, 06 Mar 2016 07:29:47 +1300

I do like watching John Oliver...
and it appears he like watching us!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/77475243/john-oliver-john-key-is-a-gigantic-clown

Steve Barnes

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 16:47:20 +1300

-Max-Key-cyberbullying-a-sign-that-politics-is-getting-too-nasty-
Not dirty then?
I am beginning to think this is just another ploy to attack "Lefties" as being mean, dirty, smelly, rent-a-crowd, bludging, lazy, useless and unkind to children.
Little do they know....
We also eat babies and shout at people in wheelchairs.

Ian Dalziel

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 13:13:57 +1300

Circle jerks...
no-one is allowed to speak ill of the boy.
don't worry Tracy Watkins has gone into bat for Max 'Headroom' ...
Stuff – we create the problem then we report on it...
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/77561157/Political-Week-Max-Key-cyberbullying-a-sign-that-politics-is-getting-too-nasty

Steve Barnes

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 12:42:59 +1300

What am I looking at?….
Well, it appears that I am watching “Key TV”
Last night, on “Johnno & Ben” we were “treated” to Key Snr being “Pranked” by the dubious duo, bushwhacked as they say, did they have any questions to ask? No…
Then we were inspired by the crash…

Kyle Matthews

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 11:51:23 +1300

Over the summer I've watched:

Manhattan S01 – good, historically probably a bit woolly, but interesting.
Fargo S02 – continues on the excellence of season 1.
Silicon Valley s01 and s02 – really enjoyable.
izombie – seasons 1 and 2 (to date). Quirky and light take on zombies.
Making a…

Ian Dalziel

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 10:25:45 +1300

Just the facts, ma'am...
But the truly weird thing – and it entirely befits the whole weird story – is TMZ’s scoop on the possible murder weapon that’s been at home with an idiot LAPD officer nearly 20 years.
I was just about to post that myself – seems to…

Russell Brown

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 10:02:41 +1300

I also saw half an hour of The People v OJ Simpson and was appalled at how wooden it was – David Schwimmer and Cuba Gooding Jr looked like they were reading lines taped on other actors or out of shot, with the emotional range of a gas stove –…

Simon Bennett

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 15:21:37 +1300

We've just ditched Sky. Couldn't justify the expense and we were hardly watching anything in the platform apart from the occasional drama on Soho: Girls, The Affair, Homeland and Game of Thrones have all been appointment viewing. However there are other ways to watch landmark drama, and Sky is ridiculously…

BenWilson

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 11:53:31 +1300

Context. All of these shows (and Dr Who is another example) need to be seen in the context of the time of original broadcast. A show with an unapologetically bad-ass arse-kicking female warrior as the lead, without her needing to be rescued by a man? Pretty left-field back in the…

Rich Lock

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 11:19:25 +1300

in talking with some of the people who were on the show they also knew they were mocking various genres and that was a big part of its charm.

I think the difference is between 'affectionate-teasing-coming-from-a-place-of-love-but-c'mon-really-this-shit-is-ridiculous', and 'hur-hur-look-at-the-stupid'. No prizes for guessing which one generally ends up as a better…

Regan Cunliffe

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 11:07:45 +1300

I'm not questioning the relevancy, but the motives.

FWIW I completely agree with the need for a channel that is free from the commercial drivers that have pushed everything to where they are now.

But where is the line regarding the same people getting the same funding? Is it with…

Jason Kemp

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 10:19:56 +1300

Thanks Rich. I liked Xena for that female super lead idea which predated “Buffy” by some years but in talking with some of the people who were on the show they also knew they were mocking various genres and that was a big part of its charm.

I was just…

Alfie

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 10:19:21 +1300

Guardian writers are no better than Sun writers – they’re just doing a different job, informing vs building audiences.
That’s like saying there’s no real difference between this blog and venues like Whaleshit. Sure, they target different audiences, but the Guardian attracts a better standard of writer capable of providing…

Joe Wylie

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 07:28:27 +1300

One might almost say they are in 'unchartered' waters...

:)
"It's fun to charter an accountant
And sail the wide accountancy..."
https://youtu.be/7YUiBBltOg4

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 06:57:16 +1300

Equally the TVNZ commissioners work in a deeply commercial, precarious and risk averse environment. That is created by pressure from their bosses who are under huge pressure in turn from their shareholders, the government, to make as many $$$ as possible
One might almost say they are in 'unchartered' waters...

Myles Thomas

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 01:15:02 +1300

The thing to remember is that it's the system that creates these problems and not the individuals. Guardian writers are no better than Sun writers – they're just doing a different job, informing vs building audiences. Equally the TVNZ commissioners work in a deeply commercial, precarious and risk averse environment.…

Myles Thomas

Fri, 04 Mar 2016 00:50:06 +1300

So cynical. Even if Greive is plumping for NZME or Spinoff his points are still relevant. More relevant still is Russell's about the need for a non-commercial channel (note channel in the broader sense, ie not only broadcast) which is able to take risks a la SBS or ch4 in…

Trevor Nicholls

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 23:09:54 +1300

Spoilers, folks!
I am a big fan of Orphan Black and I didn't know about something I have just read here :-(

Rich Lock

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 21:59:45 +1300

Isn’t this the Golden Age of TV?

Maybe.

It is, if you're commissioning programming in the US.

As my wife observed recently, UK TV commissioning is stuck in the '90's – high cost costume drama (War and Peace, this year), or any number of police procedurals (plus the usual low…

Rich Lock

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 21:53:31 +1300

Manu Bennet

...is also in 'Arrow', as supervillain Slade Wilson/Deathstroke. Which is pretty cool.

Silicon Valley (my favourite by far)

You (and other techies) might enjoy hacker drama series 'Mr Robot', if you haven't already seen it. Another Amazon original.

Geoff Lealand

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:57:46 +1300

Bought series 3 of The Bridge on DVD from the UK. I like to be able to share things I love with others,

Geoff Lealand

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:55:52 +1300

The most thrilling viewing experience recently was series 3 of The Bridge' which we watched over 4 weeks, each weekend, with friends. It is as close to binge viewing as I can abide–you need time and space to saviour between episodes, with drama as rich as this, and with such…

Cecelia

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:22:14 +1300

Some series have been high quality all the way through like Mad Men and Breaking Bad – and of course my favourite European shows. You want more and more. You grieve when your favourite characters are no more, like Jesse in BB and Felix in Orphan Black.
True Detective went…

Jason Kemp

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:32:27 +1300

Isn’t this the Golden Age of TV?

Maybe. In our house it sort of is but it has very little to do with broadcast tv itself except as a historical source. Being able to programme ones own viewing “advertising free” for weeks via Netflix or some other streaming source makes…

BenWilson

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 14:37:19 +1300

I have little time for TV generally, my wife and kids being the main users of the device. She's a fan of reality shows, cooking and renovation. When we watch together we're recently doing Cuffs, Shannara Chronicles, Unforgettable (best heterological show name ever – I watch it only to play…

BenWilson

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 14:14:43 +1300

I have a soft spot for the Chronicles of Shannara, mostly for the locations around NZ that I recognize.

Me too. "Oooo, the North Head tunnels! Oooo Stoney Batter! Oooo Woodhill Forest! Ooooo Bethells". I'd sort of never realized when I first read the stories that the setting is post…

Brodie Davis

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 11:06:57 +1300

How is "we worked really fucking hard to make this" a viable defense of a show that people don't like. I worked really hard to bake a fruit cake last christmas (it was hours and hours of work) and it still tasted terrible. Amount of effort is not a reliable…

Regan Cunliffe

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 10:16:24 +1300

Let's not confuse this for what it really is. Duncan's outrage is nothing more than the latest attempt at trying to secure NZ On Air funding for his NZME bosses.

With increasing click bait, poor reporting and appalling fact checking, the resulting decline in ad revenue has meant that the…

oga

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 05:43:06 +1300

I likewise have to pirate my TV and get the related subtitles if I want to watch TV at all. I live in Mexico and Netflix here does not carry English subtitles for the same shows that include English subtitles if I use a proxy to fake an US IP…

Kumara Republic

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 03:48:26 +1300

Our watching is dictated by my laziness in integrating new devices to our system* and my love of some key sports. To get cricket I have to get sky, which means we have sky on demand. Sky on demand has some nice and odd stuff, “About a girl” was typically…

Rich Lock

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:23:08 +1300

The People v OJ Simpson

Seconded

the exagerrated presence of the teeny Kardashian daughters

Which does actually serve to provide comic relief. There's a scene in the third episode where Robert Kardashian takes them all to a restaurant just as his new-found and unasked for fame is starting to kick…

izogi

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 22:16:23 +1300

the big dramatic shows continued to be made by the same small set of people

That reminds me of the annual school production. You could show up to the initial advertised session to show you were interested in taking part, but within 2 minutes it was patently obvoius that the…

simon g

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 21:50:23 +1300

I admit this is totally superficial and Auckland-centric (synonyms?), but one reason I struggle to engage with a show like Filthy Rich is the locations.

"Ooh look, they're in that bar at the Viaduct. Ooh, it's the Parnell Rose garden. Ooh, they've gone shopping in Newmarket ..."

Years ago it…

Lilith __

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 21:36:30 +1300

Also, like Bart, I would happily watch another season of The Blue Rose. It had flaws, but quirky character-driven drama with women at the heart? Give me more of that.

I’m also a big fan of Flat 3. <3 local creativity.

On that subject, at the risk of a threadjack, can I sing the praises of 3 Words? It’s a compilation of recent comics drawn by NZ women. Some of the artists are professionals and award-winners, others novices. The breadth and depth of talent is jaw-dropping. Some of the comics I love and some I don’t, but I’m so glad to see them all.

I wish there were a TV equivalent – a showcase for short videos, maybe? With funding and mentoring to expand on the most successful. Public voting! Why not?

I loved Funny Girls. Not all the sketches worked, but the best ones had me chortling for days.

Lilith __

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 21:16:19 +1300

I think Harry was the most promising NZ TV venture in recent times.

+1. Harry was brilliant.

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 21:01:18 +1300

telling vision...
Have to say the shorts/promos for filthy Rich put me right off, so haven't bothered – I also saw half an hour of The People v OJ Simpson and was appalled at how wooden it was – David Schwimmer and Cuba Gooding Jr looked like they were…

Steve Barnes

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 20:15:54 +1300

I love it. Bastion point or Springbok tour? Carless days or think big?

_Such_ good times.

Shame this is so hard to find on the TVNZ News site...
Back In The Day

In my humble opinion, there is a fair amount of good stuff on broadcast TV. Don't…

Tony Meyer

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:42:28 +1300

I would love it if we had access to something like Syfy TV here.

For what it's worth, The Zone has a large overlap with Syfy, and has a pretty decent mix of content that is very recent (e.g. The Expanse has just started, so is only a couple of…

Jonathan King

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:39:00 +1300

You spelled 'months' wrong.

I suspect in ten or twenty years, kids will be amazed that "broadcast TV" was ever a thing.

Bart Janssen

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:24:27 +1300

Russell Brown

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:34:33 +1300

My secret dream has always been a period drama with SIS spooks picking over the underbelly of Muldoon-era Wellington, but I suspect our defamation law means such an exercise would be a bit risky, to put it mildly.

My experience with Roger Douglas's response to Media 3's 25-years-on consideration of…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:17:44 +1300

But the people on the network side of commercial television work in an increasingly risk-averse business. Even when a locally-produced series is funded by the taxpayer, a failure puts everyone's job at risk. And there have been a few failures in the past five years; more misses than hits. For…

James Littlewood*

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:13:26 +1300

period drama with SIS spooks

I love it. Bastion point or Springbok tour? Carless days or think big?

Such good times.

James Dunne

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:08:31 +1300

James Littlewood*

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 17:05:55 +1300

NZ on Air
Far as I can tell, there is one argument that rages in every single funded production: the licence fee.

Indy producer sells concept to broadcaster. Broadcaster goes yeah. Indy producer writes prop, then rewrites it to broadcaster specifications. Prop gets accepted by NZOA. NZOA then requests licence…

Cecelia

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:53:57 +1300

Isn't this the Golden Age of TV? The French and Scandinavian shows, US TV. From the Wire on there have been such superb shows available that why would anyone want to watch something second-rate? Through Netflix, and Plex (friend's UK TV and more) I've seen Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Orphan…

James Littlewood*

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:51:50 +1300

Freeview

We fell deeply in love with our first recorder. When it failed after a couple of years, we went straight out to replace it. Then that one also went kaputt. By then on-demand was up and running and we just unplugged the aerial one day.

But a few years…

James Littlewood*

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 16:34:27 +1300

My pre-viewing perceptions of Filthy Rich are that it's a rehash of Gloss with a bit of – I dunno – Go Girls or something round the edges, neither of which holds any interest. If my perceptions are wrong, I eagerly await correction.

I think Harry was the most promising…

Rich of Observationz

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 15:04:53 +1300

All I had to do to get (US) Netflix to work on my Chromecast was to acquire a new WiFi router, program it to redirect attempts to hit Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server to Unotelly and make sure both the Chromecast and the laptop casting to it were on the same…

B Jones

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 15:04:00 +1300

I've enjoyed The Expanse – I like how it's less of a cookie cutter version of modern Western Earth society than Battlestar and Caprica.

My other summer viewing has been Narcos, a dramatization of the Colombian narco-wars through the eyes of a DEA agent and Pablo Escobar. Vivid stuff, plus…

Emma Hart

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:51:30 +1300

One of our main issues with watching television is accessibility. What we watch with our hearing-impaired daughter must have subtitles. Preferably subtitles for the hearing-impaired, which include sounds like doorbells, phone chimes, gunshots, etc, which often carry plot details.

By far the easiest way to do this is to wait…

Peter Cox

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:51:29 +1300

My 2 cents, for what it’s worth:

I see a large number of people in the industry sick of a culture of jealousy, bitterness. General lack of grace, a readiness to think the worst about one another. In that sense, I don’t see how tearing down Gavin and Rachel helps…

Geoff Lealand

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:33:16 +1300

I have long admired the work of Gavin and his writing partner Rachel Lang. They have also been very generous in coming down to talk to my students. But somehow I can't yet bring myself to watch Filthy Rich. It is being recorded and I may get to it but…

bob daktari

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:24:17 +1300

Lightbox, Netflix and Neon at ours... we've switched on broadcast TV once this year, on hearing of the recent big shake in Christchurch I turned on TV3 to be greeted with Ice Road Truckers.. so I switched off and unplugged the arial device to make way for a charger for…

Danyl Mclauchlan

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:10:53 +1300

I had Netflix and liked it until it mysteriously stopped working on my smart TV and their support guys couldn't fix it so I was forced to cancel my subscription. Also, I liked the first couple episodes of 11.22.63; more than I liked King's book.

Public Address

Wed, 02 Mar 2016 14:10:53 +1300

Discussion from blog post.