The Spinoff presents the best viewing options this weekend.
The Spinoff presents the best viewing options this weekend.
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).
Fail Army, Friday TV3 at 10pm
Comedian Joseph Moore teams up with Guy Montgomery to host Fail Army
With the metamorphosis of Jono and Ben at Ten to the clearly more catchy Jono and Ben at Seven Thirty, their old 10 o'clock territory was left wide open for occupation. In the dead of the night, executing a slick surprise invasion, Fail Armycame out of nowhere and set up camp. Hosted by Billy T winner Guy Montgomery and Jono and Ben writer (and Billy T nominee) Joseph Moore, it's a deftly curated collection of YouTube's greatest fails. I for one am looking forward to freeing up the 3-4 hours a week I spend getting my fix of internet fails.
In an exclusive Fail Army interview, Joseph Moore told me a little mo(o)re about what we can expect. "We promise viewers all the hilarious depiction of actual human beings in all sorts of physical pain. If we show someone on a skateboard or motorcycle, we guarantee you they will fall off it within 4-7 seconds of being on screen." The first episode includes a seagull eating an ice-cream, an old woman lighting herself on fire and so much more. Get a little more fail in your Friday. / AC
I've recently been reading Peter Fitzsimon's excellent The Rugby War, chronicling the violent birth of professional rugby in 1995, an era which feels almost forgotten but nearly tore the game apart. As much as I find arguments for sporting amateurism fatuous and often exploitative of the players, there is a vein of sweet sadness running through the book at the looming loss of a particular vision of rugby. As a hard game played strong men, who would beat the hell out of each other for eighty honest minutes, then share a beer afterwards and let that be enough. It's romantic horse****, but affecting nonetheless.
Friday Night Lights arouses similar emotions. It's based off a terrific, Pulitzer-winning piece of reportage by Buzz Bissinger, and set in Dillon, a small rural Texas town obsessed with its high school football team to an extraordinary, vaguely lunatic degree. The show ran for five seasons, and by its close was one of the most loved and acclaimed shows on television in America. It's easy to see why. The performances, lead by the always brilliant Connie Britton, are exceptional in their humanity, and the visual style - grainy, handheld camera-work - gives it an intimacy which brings these flawed people into vivid relief. At the show's heart are the Taylors, a coach, a school counselor and their daughter - a sentimental dream family, yet one whose struggles and successes you carry like they were your own. / DG
Masterchef Finale, Saturday TV1 at 7.30pm
The Masterchef Australia judging line up
It's been a really, really long journey to the stylised Masterchef stove element of victory. I got deeply involved in Masterchef Australia during the period of time where Marco Pierre White swept the scene with his greasy, long yet strangely alluring locks. "Would you like to see me cut an onion?" he asked no one, thrusting a bag down onto the bench with the all of the might of an upcoming book deal. What followed was the most incredible thing I have ever seen on a cooking show. Eyeballing the contestants, he began frantically chopping the onions into a fine dust without looking down once. "The first thing they give you is onions," he whispers, "because they want to make you cry." The whole Masterchef kitchen held their breath, terrified he might cut off his fingers, "so the only way to not cry... is to not look." It was a beautiful allegory for the trials and tribulations of life, a reminder that Masterchef is about more than cooking. It's about dreams. / AC
Beetlejuice, Saturday FOUR at 8.35pm
Winona Ryder as Lydia in Beetlejuice
Michael Keaton is an Academy Award nominee this year for Birdman, a delirious look at the nature of fame, art and wigs. If he doesn't win the Oscar on Monday (the Redmayne and Cooper game is particularly strong), it's important that we remember and celebrate him for his other superbly disturbed performances. Enter Tim Burton's 1988 creepfest Beetlejuice, a spooky comedy caper through the highs and lows of domestic disturbance. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin play a ghost couple who, joined by a pesky Netherworld spectre (Betelguese), work together to scare away the people who have moved into their deceased estate.
This is one of Tim Burton's best films in my opinion, made long before the friggin' futterwacken of Alice in Wonderland and the terrifying CGI Deep Roy army of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If you like the macabre, the demented and the hilarious, say "Beetlejuice" three times and he might just appear (provided you are watching FOUR on Saturday night, obviously). / AC
12 Monkeys on the Zone 9.30pm Sunday
12 Monkeys on The Zone
The past few years have seen the idea of porting movies down to TV - once a cheap cash in - become associated with more ambitious and satisfying projects. From Dusk Til Dawn premiered to mostly positive reviews last year, but it was Showtime's Fargo, based on the Coen brothers' film of the same name, which really set the bar. While initially a little over-whimsical, leaning heavily on the cutesy Minnesota stereotypes, as the series progressed it became a genuinely chilling thriller, a series of escalating crimes centering on a singularly odd and unprepossessing protagonist. 12 Monkeys dates from the same fertile mid-90s era as Fargo, and the original Terry Gilliam film fused Terminator-style time travel-to-save-the-world stakes with the tension of a virulent virus and a dose of philosophical provocation. Early reviews were of the lukewarm-but-promising variety, but if it works half as well as the source material it'll be well worth your time. / DG
