FROM THE VAULT
Seinfeld
TVNZ On Demand, from Friday
In a week where so much good and exciting new television is coming out, be honest: you’re going to watch one episode of The Mandalorian and then spend the whole of next month rewatching all 30 seasons of The Simpsons (okay, maybe just the first 10 or so) on Disney+ instead. The new Wu-Tang Clan series on TVNZ On Demand is a great new drama and all that, but ... they’ve also got old Seinfeld episodes available this week. What can ya do?
MOVIE OF THE WEEK Whitney: Can I Be Me?
Prime, 8:30pm Wednesday
It’s not unusual for music documentaries to be emotionally devastating but you’ll go a long way to find one sadder than Nick Broomfield’s 2017 feature documentary Whitney Houston. Can I Be Me? charts the career of the brilliant, troubled, misunderstood singer largely through her relationships with her family and close friends. Along with interviews with those who knew Houston best, there’s also a trove of old footage, much of it previously unavailable and most of it a reminder of what a freakishly talented performer she was.
PODCAST OF THE WEEK Inside the Big Day Out
The best Big Day Out will always be the one before you were old enough to go. The best Big Day Out of all time? The very first one: January 25, 1992 at the Sydney Showgrounds. Episode one of new fivepart podcast series Inside the Big Day Out tells the story of that inaugural fest and, as you’d expect, it’s an absolutely ripper yarn. It begins with a music promoter called Ken West bringing the Violent Femmes to Australia, taking a massive punt on an all-day festival (which was almost called KenFest) and striking gold when the littleknown support act he’d booked blew up to become the biggest band in the world. We have Nirvana to thank for the many Big Day Outs that followed. Without them, the whole thing might never have got off the ground. The first BDO sold 52 tickets the first day they went on sale — then Nevermind was released.
The next four episodes chart the event's astronomical rise through the 1990s to some dark days — the death of a young woman during Limp Bizkit’s Sydney set in 2001, as told by the friend she was with — to its eventual chaotic collapse in 2014. Wild ride, wild podcast.