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The Spinoff
3 days ago
- Lifestyle
- The Spinoff
Eat Well For Less NZ couldn't have returned at a more appropriate time
Tara Ward watches the return of TVNZ's popular lifestyle series that teaches us how to eat healthier while saving money. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. Amid the all-you-can-eat buffet of depressing news this week, the revelation that the price of butter has doubled in a year had me crying into my dry toast. The cost of living crisis appears to be just normal life now, so even if you don't buy luxury food items like butter, cheese, eggs or milk, there's no better time for Eat Well For Less NZ to teach us how to make our hard-earned bucks go that little bit further. Food educator Ganesh Raj and chef Michael Van de Elzen returned this week for a fifth season of encouraging New Zealand families to cook healthier meals while spending less money. In the first episode, the pair were fizzing to help solo mum Laura from Hamilton, whose busy lifestyle means she often turns to takeaways and convenience food. It's a tale as old as time: life is full on, everything is expensive, and sometimes you just want your kid to eat something so you can go to sleep and do it all again tomorrow. But Raj and Van de Elzen are here to help. They watch Laura shop at the supermarket, even though they could just check her receipt to find out she spends $254 a week on groceries. 'She's buying a lot of ready-made foods,' they worry, pointing out Laura's shopping sins: chicken nuggets, chicken tenders and mac and cheese bites. The pair estimate a family of Laura's size should spend $260 a week to meet nutritional requirements, but it's the additional $176 a week on cafe food and takeaways they reckon is key to Laura saving thousands of dollars a year. The pair proceed to make simple swaps to save Laura money and teach her how to cook a variety of fast and healthy meals, using leftovers and simple ingredients with value-for-money recipes that viewers at home will appreciate. It's a familiar format for Eat Well For Less, but what's apparent this season is that it's becoming harder to find significant savings at the supermarket. Ditching processed cereal for a healthier home-made porridge saves $0.73 cents, while upsizing a satay tuna can frees up $0.64. The biggest saving of $6.24 comes from swapping spreadable butter for a budget brand of regular butter. Replacing a Maggi Spaghetti Bolognese packet with raw ingredients that need to be cooked from scratch saves a measly two cents. Last time I wrote about Eat Well For Less NZ, I was steaming mad that a show sponsored by a supermarket (which was part of a duopoly making one million dollars profit a day) was telling a young family living in a sleepout about how to save money on their groceries. Eat Well for Less NZ is no longer sponsored by a supermarket, and the show feels more authentic for it (apart from the scene where Van de Elzen recommends Laura's daughter give up her Vanilla Cokes for a Sodastream drink – Sodastream being one of the show's partners). And weirdly, while Raj and Van de Elzen tell Laura to stop buying unhealthy mince pies for lunch, there's a segment in the same episode where a panel of pie makers taste test a variety of mince and cheese pies (the winner was Dad's Pies Mince and Cheese, $2.15 per 100g). But Eat Well For Less NZ isn't here to rage against the machine, although sometimes I wish it would. Imagine if instead of watching strangers eat pies, Raj and Van de Elzen popped into the Beehive to ask Nicola Willis what she's actually doing about the supermarket duopoly? In the same way that Location Location Location skims over the unfairness of the housing market, it feels tough to be placing all the onus solely on consumers to eat and budget better, without acknowledging that our choices aren't made in isolation. Ultimately, Eat Well For Less NZ has its heart in the right place. Raj and Van de Elzen are full of energy and experience and reckon with the changes they suggest (mostly: don't spend money outside of your grocery shop), Laura's family can save over $9000 a year and live a healthier life while doing it. As food prices continue to rise, the show's practical advice will help many New Zealanders get through these challenging economic times – especially when the shopping receipts leave such a bitter aftertaste.
The Spinoff
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Review: The SpongeBob SquarePants musical is more than nautical nonsense
Alex Casey heads along to SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical and reflects on the enduring power of the optimistic sea sponge. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. When I was a kid, I would sit agape in front of SpongeBob SquarePants after school everyday, a small bag of sour cream and chive-flavoured chips in one hand and the VCR remote in the other. With the arrival of each ad break, I'd diligently hit pause on the first frame, determined to craft the perfect ad-free omnibus tape to enjoy again and again and again. I felt as absorbent and porous as the titular sponge himself, wanting to soak up every moment of the subversive, optimistic, anarchic and sometimes demented undersea shenanigans of Bikini Bottom. Creator Stephen Hillenburger was a failed marine biologist, who first swapped the scuba mask for a pencil on the equally surreal 90s Nickelodeon cartoon Rocko's Modern Life. Soon he started pitching a cartoon about a wide-eyed 'spongeboy' who loved his job and his friends, and was surrounded by all manner of characters including a dim-witted bestie (Patrick Star) and a perpetually aggrieved neighbour (Squidward Tentacles). In 1999, SpongeBob wandered onto our screens in his shiny black shoes and notably square pants, and basically never left. While he still ropes in kids with his colourful world and silly faces, there's also plenty of adults out there who still believe in the power of the sponge. 'I think SpongeBob SquarePants is better than The Simpsons,' David Correos recalled during his My Life in TV interview last year. 'Spongebob is way deeper and way more intellectual.' Correos isn't alone in this thinking – much has been written about the show's postmodern ethos, fascinating patterns of masculinity, deeply Marxist ideas and construction of The American Dream. It's also just really funny, too. With all this in mind, I toddled along to Ōtautahi's Court Theatre to see SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical live on stage this week. Directed by Dan Bain, it was a kaleidoscopic trip, centred around the quest of 'a simple sponge' to stop a deadly volcano from destroying Bikini Bottom. The rich folk (Mr Krabs) capitalise on the chaos, the tyrants (Plankton) use it as an opportunity to seize control, the government flails around in incompetence and the media turns the whole thing into sensationalist frenzy. Sound familiar? Meanwhile, Sandy Cheeks (Libby McMahon) turns to science, SpongeBob (Cole Moffatt) stays eternally optimistic, and Patrick (Bill Cross) becomes a dim-witted distraction for those desperate for a saviour (reminiscent of Katy Perry saving the world by going to space). All of this is couched with staggering musical numbers, impressive costuming (Squidward's legs were a highlight) and classic gags ('Is that something we should worry about?' a concerned citizen asks. 'Breaking news: that is something we should worry about' the newsreader bellows.) Other highlights of the show included the pipes on Mr Krabs' daughter Pearl (Olivia Skelton) in her own 'Defying Gravity' moment, and a couple of scene-stealing cameos from kids in the chorus line. I couldn't help but feel envious of the excited little kids in the crowd being exposed to such big, bold themes and glittering production design before they've even got all their damn teeth. My earliest theatre experience was a weird old fella doing Punch and Judy in the chilly school hall, now it's all An Evening With Peppa Pig and Bluey doing arena spectaculars. Then again, these big, bold stories are precisely what kids – and, more crucially, adults – need to see right now. The youth edition covered a lot of ground in its truncated 60 minute runtime, sneaking complex ideas about capitalism, community and climate change under a dazzling spectacle of bubbles, fairy lights, sequins and imagination. Not bad for a simple sea sponge.
The Spinoff
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Review: Ocean with David Attenborough is brutal – it's also a must-see
Tara Ward watches Sir David Attenborough's new documentary film. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. These days, I try to avoid watching anything remotely bleak. I even had to turn off Emmerdale the other day when misery guts Cain Dingle got drunk on his dead dad's moonshine. But there's one type of TV that I can't turn away from, no matter how grim it gets, and that's any nature documentary involving Sir David Attenborough. His latest project, Ocean with David Attenborough, is a two-hour National Geographic film about the importance of the sea to the health of the planet – and it rides one heck of a wave. Released in cinemas on David Attenborough's 99th birthday (and now available on Disney+), Ocean begins with Attenborough sitting on a beach and telling us how much our knowledge of the ocean has changed in his lifetime. Over the past century, we've made more discoveries and reached greater depths than in any time before. Our awareness of the world beneath the surface has been transformed, in part thanks to the astonishing nature documentary series Attenborough gave us over the past seven decades. In Ocean, Attenborough wants to remind us of how precious this marine world is. The photography in this film is spectacular – it captures colourful coral, vibrant marine forests and deep sea darkness, all pulled together by powerful storytelling delivered with Attenborough's rich, timeless voice. It's a visual symphony, one with so much motion and detail that sometimes it feels like you're actually down there, swimming through those forests of seaweed and tiny fish. Then, Attenborough delivers a furious sucker punch: humans have munted the ocean. Governments around the world allow bottom sea trawling and commercial fishing industries are overfishing, and as a result, we've screwed up the sea's delicately balanced ecosystems. Abundant and pristine marine worlds have been brutally ploughed, leaving behind a grey 'nuclear winter' on the ocean floor. Now, local fishermen only catch plastic in their nets. It's a horrifying, heartbreaking shift in tone. We've let ourselves down, but even worse, we've let Sir David Attenborough down. In his 100th year, he's probably still sitting on that beach, the cold wind blasting through his white hair, quietly shaking his head at the damage we've done. He lived through this change. It didn't have to be like this. The reality about the state of the ocean is confronting, but Attenborough leaves us with a message of hope. If we leave the ocean alone – if we protect areas through legislation and create ocean sanctuaries – it will regenerate and thrive. Fishing stock will flourish. Plants and plankton will soak up carbon emissions and produce more oxygen than the trees on Earth combined. Saving the ocean is key to saving us from ecological disaster. Ocean is Sir David Attenborough reminding us – once again – that we need to sort our shit out, and fast. This is a powerful, must-watch film that will fill your heart, rip it into tiny pieces, and then put it back together again. It's a stunning watch on the small screen; I can only imagine how impressive it would be in the cinema. For all our sakes, don't miss Ocean – and don't forget how lucky we are to have the legend that is Sir David Attenborough.
The Spinoff
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Huge news: Chris Warner has made it to Brokenwood
Michael Galvin kills it in the new season of The Brokenwood Mysteries. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you're a fan of murder, small towns and Chris Warner, then the return of The Brokenwood Mysteries is all your dreams come true. The 11th season of the popular local drama begins this Sunday on TVNZ, bringing with it a fresh round of bizarre and unusual deaths that take place in the sleepy rural community of Brokenwood. You're likely to get murdered the moment you arrive, but that doesn't stop detectives Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea), Kristin Sims (Fern Sutherland) and Daniel Chambers (Jarod Rawiri) from solving the endless number of chaotic killings that keep happening in their town. The new season launches with a cracker of an episode. It guest stars Michael Galvin, aka Dr Chris Warner, who sheds his Shortland Street skin to play faded 1980s rock star James Hathaway. Hathaway's flamboyant lace cuffs are as droopy as his career; he sings lines like 'two by two/take me to your ark' and languishes through a reunion tour that opens in the murder capital of Aotearoa. The crowd is smaller than James had hoped: just 19 people, one of whom is about to cark it in suspicious circumstances. 'I've had root canals more enjoyable,' pub owner Trudy says of James' musical performance. Galvin, however, looks like he's having the time of his life. Ferndale must be the only place in New Zealand television more dangerous than Brokenwood, but Galvin is a delight as the emotional, pampered rock star whose spotlight is fading by the second. It's not the first time Galvin has treated us to a memorable musical number, but this does mark a rare and welcome step outside of Shortland Street hospital and reminds us of Galvin's acting talents. He also joins an impressive list of New Zealand legends to appear in Brokenwood over the past 11 seasons, including Robyn Malcolm, Rebecca Gibney, Ian Mune, Miranda Harcourt and Sara Wiseman. I won't spoil how the murder takes place, or give away the twist that comes near the end. Just know that this episode is Brokenwood at its best: familiar, funny and a little ridiculous. The writing is sharp and focused, the humour is wonderfully acerbic, and in its most bonkers moments, it feels like Brokenwood is happily taking the piss out of itself. Every time Galvin's New Romantic curls flop all over his run-down motel room, it's as if Brokenwood is saying: we know this is absurd, but we know what you're here for, too. Far-fetched? Absolutely. Quietly entertaining? Always. After 11 seasons, there aren't many TV shows that continue to feel as fresh and energised as Brokenwood. It's giving the people exactly what they want – murder, music and some dry one-liners – without ever resting on its laurels. Brokenwood is a true New Zealand TV success story, a show that sits comfortably in a niche of its own making, but continues to charm and surprise. You should never trust a stranger in Brokenwood, and yet, I hope they never stop coming to town.
The Spinoff
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
An ode to Scotty Morrison's spontaneous Te Karere sign-offs
It may only be a few seconds of magic, but Scotty Morrison's Te Karere farewells are full of joy. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. My daughter and I have a daily ritual. Each afternoon when she comes home from school, we sit down together to watch Deal or No Deal Australia on TVNZ1. Hosted by the indefatigably cheery Grant Denyer, Deal or No Deal is a ridiculous game of luck that requires absolutely no skill or expertise – yet we watch it with a passion matched only by the Australians on our screen whose entire future rests on shouting out random numbers in public. We groan in sympathy when they inevitably lose $100,000, and we cheer when they win just enough to take their dying grandad up in a hot air balloon. I also love watching Deal or No Deal because of what comes before it: Te Karere. More specifically, I love watching Te Karere to see just how newsreader Scotty Morrison will end the show. Every afternoon at the end of the reo Māori news bulletin, Morrison cuts to tomorrow's weather forecast and concludes with a hearty ' turou parea, turou Hawaiki '. Then, as the camera slowly pulls back from the news desk, my eyes are glued to see what he will do next. Often, it's a gesture so subtle you could almost miss it. Morrison might unleash his speedy fingers onto the keyboard in front of him, all ten fingers moving with such ferocity that whatever important message he's writing can only contain one word: sa;dlfjkas;ldfjas;ldjkf. On other days, Morrison's surprise end-of-news move is more obvious: a shimmy in his swivel chair to Shane Walker's 'Coasty Girl', a jovial pat of his puku, a smooth worm-like arm wave, some jazzy finger points in time with the music. Sometimes, Te Karere ends before Morrison has a chance to do anything. These days are a crime against television, leaving me more disappointed than an Australian octogenarian who said 'no deal' to the banker's top offer of $17,400 only to discover she had 50 cents in her suitcase all along. It may only be a few seconds of magic, but Morrison's unpredictable sign-offs are a rare, joyful moment of spontaneity and personality in my TV day. Those impromptu finger points and surprise shoulder shimmies are a quiet rebellion against the expected order of things, and a delicious secret signal to the loyal audience watching at home. We've lost a lot of this spontaneity with the cancellation of shows like AM and The Project, where anything could happen on live TV. Even Breakfast has calmed down since the glory days when Matty McLean dressed up as a dinosaur and John Campbell rode a train, just because they could. It's a great thing that Herald Now started last week, a new live breakfast show that reaches out to viewers in the moment and reminds us of television's power to connect with people (while also making us wonder what the heck is going on in the background). I hope Scotty Morrison never stops doing these Te Karere farewells. In fact, I hope they get bigger and better (is a cartwheel too much to ask?). In a world where our streaming services are filled with prerecorded international content that has little connection to Aotearoa in the here and now, there's something wonderful in remembering that live broadcast TV can still be appointment viewing – arm worms and all.
