Posts Tagged Television
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April 24, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
Those Days Were Ours: Part-Remembering Happy Days
Sunday, Monday, Happy Days! These days are ours… Happy Days was filmed in front of a live studio audience. I spent a huge amount of my childhood watching re-runs of Happy Days. I started watching it when the original series was winding up. But I didn’t know that. The timeline was all out of whack for […]Archive
January 27, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
In Praise of ‘Succession’
Succession debuted in 2018, created by British screenwriter and producer Jesse Armstrong. He was best known for the brilliant Peep Show – and his largely British writing team (you may remember I recommended Georgia Pritchard’s “anxiety memoir”) have, over three seasons, done the most amazing job of pitching black-as-the-inside-of-a-coffin-on-a-moonless-night comedy that satirises the Trump/Murdoch-level arrogance, […]Archive
January 26, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
The Crude Farce of After Life Season Three
I haven’t always had a problem with Ricky Gervais. I was a big fan of The Office – who wasn’t? I think Extras was possibly better, smarter. And, at the time, I was even into his stand-up comedy specials. Each one arriving with special-club buzz. They haven’t aged well. They weren’t really great at the […]Archive
January 3, 2022 by Simon Sweetman
What A Good Score! – #3: Battlestar Galactica Season 3 by Bear McCreary
Bear McCreary’s score for the TV show Battlestar Galactica (season 3) came to me in a rather weird way. It was the era of blank CDs, making copies, giving someone a ‘burn’ – I was always loaning CDs and making copies for people to hear music, making mixtapes sometimes too. And I was receiving music […]Archive
November 24, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
In Praise of ‘The Morning Show’
Over the weekend we finished the final episodes of season two of The Morning Show. I liked this show a lot. It’s a smart soap-opera, a compelling and very straight-faced satire. The Morning Show debuted in 2019 as a flagship for then-new streaming platform, Apple TV+ and its stacked cast – Steve Carrell, Jennifer Aniston, […]Archive
November 16, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
The Return of Curb Your Enthusiasm: Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good!
Curb Your Enthusiasm is back. Season 11 is playing currently – you’ll find it on the internet, it’s an HBO show and in New Zealand that means episodes are arriving weekly and available on Neon. It’s also available in other ways… There’s only a few episodes so far – and it’s got the feel of […]Archive
November 13, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
Good Mourning: Remembering The ‘Good Morning’ TV Show (1996-2015)
Even people who never watched the New Zealand TV show Good Morning still reference Mary Lambie (the host from 1997-2003). I never watched the show – well, hardly ever. It was a university holidays indulgence for a time. Like classic “sick-day” viewing. A mix of soft interviews and hard/heavy infomercials. And then, one day, in 2005 I […]Archive
September 6, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
Some Lockdown Viewing
Groundhog Day One of the greatest movies ever – and a perfect thing to re-watch as we live some privileged version of Groundhog Day, the same day over and again, time stretched but folding in on itself in a lockdown. We watched this as a family film under lockdown. It was bloody good eh. Just […]Archive
September 4, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
TVNZ Rebooting The Apprentice Was A Truly Horrifying Thing
TVNZ rebooting The Apprentice was a truly horrifying thing. Actually, no, that’s too dramatic. It’s just downright embarrassing is all. They’ve tried to brush away the fact that it brings Donald Trump back to mind – saying comparisons are inevitable; well of course they are it is the very platform that made latter-day Trump a […]Archive
September 1, 2021 by Simon Sweetman
The TV Show Is On A Loop For You To Find Your Placeholder Friends
I was walking home, a routine podcast-stroll, listening to Marc Maron – one of my forever go-to podcasts; it’s a habit. And he’s talking to A.O. Scott – the film critic. So I was leaning in on this one. Because I loved A.O. Scott’s book – which is the book that Marc is now reading, […]Archive
June 8, 2021 by Simon Sweetman