In Weekend Watch, New Zealand TV blog The Spinoff takes the stress out of your time with the remote, pointing out the five best places to rest your eyes on your days off. Selected by staff writer Alex Casey (AC) or editor Duncan Greive (DG).
Our First Home
According to ancient Chinese proverbs, the new year only truly begins when the first home-grown reality franchise launches. And with 2015 the year of the Sheep, it's appropriate that it's Our First Home leading the pack, a blatant re-engineering of The Block's telegenic-couples-renovate-and-sell formula. The twist hereis that it's young couples teaming up with their parents to do the deed, with the post-sale profits supposedly financing them into their First Home. Got it?
This is a much more fun concept than The Block, for a number of reasons. Firstly the parents select and purchase the house outright - meaning they have much more skin in the game than the glorified contractors of The Block. Secondly, they all live together on site throughout, meaning an already strained process (renovating) is turned all the way up to 11 through being completed with your kids, parents or in-laws.
The part which most interests me is the potential the show has to discuss in oblique or explicit fashion the unintended consequences of baby boomers' favourite hobby: property accumulation. The most prominent being that of locking their children out of their home city's housing market, to the point where the only plausible way you can gather a deposit is by appearing on a reality show.
Ultimately, though, Our First Home is a revenue vehicle, designed to sell mortgages and paint, so it will probably shy away from anything too political. And, as with all programmes like this, the devil is in the casting. So far all we know is that everyone is white, which isn't a great start.
Still, it's TVNZ's first big local vehicle of the year, and thus deserves a good hard look. Much like the contestants, the show has a lot riding on it and precious little time - from next week it will be head to head with a formidable opponent in 3's X Factor. May the best franchise win.
Where: Sunday, 7.30pm on One
Burning Love
Consider Burning Love your ideal prep for the impending New Zealand series of The Bachelor, and a chaser for the various Australian and American iterations of the show currently airing. A brilliantly executed spoof of any starry-eyed but deeply cynical romantic reality show, Burning Love is produced by Ben Stiller (who guests) and over the course of its various seasons has the likes of Adam Scott, Kristen Bell and Ken Marino in key roles playing only slightly exaggerated versions of the disgraceful humans who end up on the Bachelor et al. It's incredibly silly, full of in-jokes and references to non-existent seasons of the show. Plus E! plays them in a jumble, often out of order, for no sensible reason. But each and every episode is a delight, forged as much out of affection for the bizarro world of manufactured love shows as glorious bemusement. / DG
Where: Sunday, 11.30pm on E!
Binge watch: Boss
Ever since the sordid details of his extra-marital canoodling oozed out across Whale Oil toward the end of 2013, Len Brown has scuttled from shadow to shadow, giving all the appearances of a man cashing checks and biding time until he can slink off to a rural backblock and become a political equivalent of Keith Murdoch. Other contenders - staunch ally Penny Hulse, national heavyweights like Phil Goff and Maurice Williamson, the ghost of John Banks - were all breezily denying interest while building war chests and assembling teams. Until last week, when our Len's coffin lid creaked open exactly long enough to announce he would be seeking a new mandate after all. It all calls to mind the short-lived, trashy yet often brilliant political drama Boss, which followed the endless scandal and connivance of realpolitik, Chicago-style. Kelsey Grammar stars as Tom Kane, a ruthless and corrupt mayor battling wars and contenders on any number of fronts. It's extremely OTT and often deeply implausible, but gripping all the same. We can only hope next year's mayoral election provides half as much chaos.
Where: Lightbox
Queen City Rocker
Written by a 16 year-old in 1981, and eventually made in 1985, this anarchic kiwi teen flick could live with the alternate title Auckland Without A Cause. Based around the rivalry between two real life local gangs at the time, including The King Cobras, it's a reactionary and manically-edited early MTV-style ode to the Auckland youth underground. I'll admit, being born a little too late for this era and having missed its limited theatrical release and imaginably smaller VHS run - that all I've seen of it is this exciting clip on Youtube. Featuring an aggressively 80s punk/ska/reggae soundtrack from the likes of Dave McCartney and the unforgettable Cheek ta Cheek - it's got earrings, it's got hairstyles, and it's got a dramatic forklift crash scene. All that beneath the glittery lights of downtown Auckland. What a historic treat for this historic weekend. / AC
I am proud to admit that I have watched this magic special twice on TV2 now. Cosentino, who wears nicer eye makeup than I ever will, is a small screen sorcerer who deserves your full attention this weekend. He's a rare character with the excessive showmanship of his Vegas equivalents (think Criss Angel in his heyday), the old school escapology of Houdini, and the beautiful bone structure of the late Aaliyah. All topped off with the most incredibly disarming Australian accent the magic world has ever seen. The special itself? It's an absolute shambles. Oscillating between elaborate steampunk-style escapes to underwhelming Dynamo-style street action - you get a pick 'n mix bag of tricks that will keep you guessing and or laughing. One extreme underwater stunt goes wrong to the point where he starts to bleed from the ears - but that doesn't stop Cosentino. He just dusts himself off and tries again. / AC
Where: Sunday, 2.35pm on TV2
More Spinoff:
It has been 'Bad Week' at The Spinoff, a week-long bender celebrating all things Breaking Bad before the launch of its prequel show Better Call Saul exclusively on Lightbox from Monday 9th. Key highlights of the meth-y madness include:
