Zeit bites: Lightbox loses its Spark
S o Sky has finalised the purchase of Lightbox, New Zealand’s first and, arguably, best TV streaming service, and plans to merge it with its own less-than-perfect product, Neon. On the plus side, it’ll save us $15.99 a month. On the downside, Neon is a cranky old beast at the best of times. Let’s hope mashing the two together to create some kind of giant entertainment chimera will mean a bit of an upgrade.
Ahead of that, I decided to have a bit of a nose around dear old Lightbox for old times’ sake before the service disappears.
There’s a lot of good Kiwi content to be found there, from Top of the Lake to Bro’Town to
Westside and many more. But grab your cultural cringe by the horns and ride it all the way to the national museum, as journalist Hayden Donnell does in Get It To Te Papa.
Or if you’re looking for something a little more soapy (and weird, and nostalgic), there’s turn-of-themillennium Kiwi sci-fi classic The Tribe, which comes with an unofficial and not sanctioned drinking game: every time you see a child actor who went on to star on Shortland Street, you have to do a shot.
In international drama, there’s Meghan Markle’s old show Suits, all of Breaking Bad, and five seasons of its award-winning spinoff Better Call
Saul, as well as The Handmaid’s Tale, Mr Robot and other crackers.
But the one you should binge-watch is The
Americans, the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning show about KGB moles undercover as a married couple in Ronald Reagan’s America. In comedy, there’s the sublime Brooklyn-NineNine and the almost perfect Parks and Recreation. And fill your boots with The Goldbergs, which shouldn’t be as great as it is but, thanks to Wendi McLendon-Covey’s pitch-perfect ‘‘Smother’’ Beverly Goldberg, is greater than the sum of its parts.
As for the genre stuff, there are the new X-Files seasons, Castle Rock, Preacher and Outlander, and don’t miss the short-yet-compelling Midwinter
of the Spirit, about a country vicar who trains to be an exorcist.