Binge Watch: Party Down on Lightbox
Hollywood's symbolism for the entire damn planet, as a magical place where dreams come true and fortunes are made, remains as seductive today as ever. Plenty of shows (like Entourage and Episodes, to arbitrarily name two beginning with 'E') have explored how sweet the lifestyle of the rich and famous can be.
Party Down is perhaps the best screen articulation of the humdrum reality that awaits the vast majority of those who head west and try and make it in show business. It concerns a group of out of work actors and writers which caters parties for A and B listers. The setup is perfect for exploring that intersection of a certain kind of very public success with those who desperately want it, with the cast's slowly curdling ambition providing ample opportunity for melodrama.
That would've been a good show, but thankfully the makers mostly eschew that easy option, instead drilling into the frustrations and indignities of the job and the deformed personalities and sloppy work habits of the personnel.
The show has a ridiculous cast, including Lizzy Caplan, Ken Marino, Glee's Jane Lynch, and Parks and Rec's Adam Scott, and was littered with huge stars playing disgraceful versions of themselves, a trope which while now familiar to the point of cliché remains a good time.
It never caught on during its 2009-2010 run, and got cancelled by Starz after two low-rating seasons, but remains one of the sharpest black comedies of the last decade; bitter and cynical yet tender and oddly poignant.
Gadget Man - Monday TV One at 7pm
Gadget Man is a wide-eyed look into the ridiculous and not-so-distant future of frivolous gadgetry. Richard Ayoade of the IT Crowd is the kooky suit wearing host, guiding you through shiny new products from the useless to the potentially game-changing (aka a machine that butters your toast and brushes your teeth for you in the morning).
Joined by the likes of Stephen Merchant, Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathon Ross and about every other British entertainment heavyweight - it's like browsing a SkyMall catalogue without the inconvenience of having to hold all that paper. Ayoade is the ideal host, his veneer of bemusement cracking sometimes to show genuine fascination with the whacky and the weird inventions being thrown at him. I don't blame him, it's hard to not be impressed by some of the cutting-edge concepts.
I've seen the future, and the future is a necktie with a straw that you can keep hot and cold drinks in. /AC
Nicki Minaj: My Time Again - Friday MTV 8.50pm
Few rappers have announced their arrival in such an emphatic style as Nicki Minaj did on Kanye West's 2010 single 'Monster', a verse filled with elastic joy and pent up rage. She was 28 when the song came out, long past the time when most rappers have determined whether the world cares for them or their vision in any profound or even fleeting way. But, with the energy and focus of someone who thought this opportunity would never come, she's risen to become one of the biggest and most fascinating stars in pop music. This documentary covers the leadup to the release of last year's The Pinkprint album, and despite its trashy MTV production style, it gives a compelling insight into what has propelled her career to date. As the clip below (not from the documentary) shows, boxing Minaj up based on her image or presentation artist is a grave mistake - she can be whip smart and caustically funny, often in the space of a single line. /DG
Deep Blue Sea - Saturday TV Two at 8.55pm
Remember how there was a great white shark swimming around Auckland harbour? And how all of Australia has been wrapped in netting to fend away hoards of angry sharks? And how they just found some freak old dinosaur shark with 4980 teeth somewhere? It's safe to definitively say that 2015 is already the year of the shark, so why not bite a big chunk out of your Saturday night by watching one of the best shark movies ever made.
Deep Blue Sea is like Jaws meets Jurassic Park meets a LL Cool J video. Set in a shonky underwater laboratory, it's a cautionary tale of why you should never inject sharks with smart brain juice, and why you should never stand too close to the edge of a shark tank (Samuel L, I'm looking at you). We've got our own New Zealand made ghostly sharkfest coming to cinemas this year (@ghostsharkmovie), so it is your patriotic duty to do your damn research this weekend. /AC
More Spinoff:
• Mike Puru will host The Bachelor NZ, but Duncan Greive was hoping for a stranger personality at the helm.
• Aaron Yap applauds the metaphysics behind a particularly trippy episode of The Twilight Zone.
• Spark have just announced 12 months of free Lightbox to their broadband customers, so we handpicked some of their best new January shows.
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