Queen Sugar is the show you need to be watching. Photo / TVNZ
Queen Sugar is the show you need to be watching. Photo / TVNZ
BINGE
Queen Sugar is easily one of the most criminally underrated TV series ever. Having only recently discovered its existence, I've just been slowly working my way through all four episodes and have never once been disappointed. It's produced by the dream team that is Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernayand tells the story of the Bordelon family, who reunite to take over their father's sugar cane farm after his death. It has an insanely talented cast and is a truly beautiful and poignant look at family life, race relations and country politics that takes its time to craft each story perfectly. Catch it on TVNZ on Demand.
LEARN
On a whole other level of binge-watching is Netflix's Girls Incarcerated, which recently dropped a second season just as infuriating and heartbreaking as the first. Each season follows a group of teen girls who are in a juvenile detention centre and dives into the causes of their anger and insecurity, their need for love and stability and their attempts to make a better life despite the odds and environments being stacked against them. Some of them are Hollywood-worthy success stories, others fall victim to circumstance all over again - but all of them are worth having their stories told. This series does it well.
You know how sometimes you want to watch something short and sweet to pass the time while dinner is cooking, or to milk every last second before you have to go to the gym? Times like that have seen me spiral into more than a few YouTube black holes. My favourites at the moment are the Try Guys, in which four guys try random things like baking, drag, and forming a K-pop band; Jubilee, which conducts a series of social experiments from getting strangers to fall in love to forcing two sides of political debates to hash it out; and Kevin Hart's What the Fit? where the comedian takes celebrities for weird and wonderful workouts like goat yoga. Because really, why not?
DANCE
We may be well past Pride in New Zealand for this year but I've recently discovered Spotify has an entire Pride genre where you can find some amazing queer playlists to get you through your day from classic pride to Latin pride to new releases on the "Out Now" playlist. But what brought me here was the fact that the cast of Pose curated their own playlists for the streaming platform, so now you can listen to the same stuff Billy Porter, Dominique Jackson, Indya Moore and Mj Rodriguez have on repeat and let me tell you, you won't regret it.
