He saw: ‘I think of TVNZ+ as the closest thing to a free Netflix’
COUPLES THERAPY (ThreeNow)
After a long day of behaving passiveaggressively towards your life partner, there’s nothing more therapeutic than putting your feet up and watching other people admit to far worse. The heart of the show is therapist Orna Guralnik, whose slow nods and empathic eye contact alone would be enough to make this appointment viewing, were appointment viewing still necessary. Her ability to listen to people’s BS and then call them out, without being an a-hole about it, is an example for us all. If you were to attempt to design the ideal society, there would be no place in it for watching others talking through the most difficult times in their lives in what is supposed to be a private setting, but we’re hardly the ideal society, are we?
MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE (TVNZ+)
I think of TVNZ+ as the closest thing to a free Netflix — the most likely of the country’s free streaming services to air something fresh and zeitgeisty and able to draw me away from one of the far too many services I currently pay for. Mr Bates vs The Post Office (pictured) is the latest in this line. It’s not just a very good drama series but also that rarest of things: a genuinely compelling true crime story about sub-par computer software. It’s a difficult story to tell and it has some moments where it’s not as exciting as something involving, say, stalkers and kidnappers, but if excitement is all you’re after, TVNZ+ also offers Naked Attraction. Mr Bates is a series that demonstrates the pitfalls in putting all your faith in computer software and the power of people to put it right, and if you think that sounds relevant to our current moment, so did the producers.
ALISTER BARRY COLLECTION (Beamafilm)
Alister Barry is one of New Zealand’s most important film-makers and historians, and the six films that make up this collection are the best imaginable course of study for anyone wanting to understand why this country now looks and behaves the way it does. The films, spanning the years 1973-2013, provide a brilliant and forensic insight into the people and forces that have shaped us, but — just as importantly — make for compelling and often gut-wrenching viewing. To have the skills to excavate truth and produce insight is rare enough — to also possess the skills to make it impossible to look away? True genius.
THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (Filmzie)
Much of the value of the lesser-known free streaming services is in their stellar selection of B-movies, trash and cheese, which comes into its own late at night, when you lack the focus or desire for the intellectual demands of anything else. While there are plenty of great ones to choose from, (e.g Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury on Tubi),
The Little Shop is easily the greatest — a B-movie so influential that it created a whole industry of remakes, sequels, series, subcultures and spinoffs and people who think it’s funny to say “Feed me, Seymour!” A young Jack Nicholson is in it, but the real thrill is in the bonkers premise and even more bonkers execution. It was shot in two days on a micro-budget using a leftover set from a horror movie, making it arguably the greatest return on investment, creatively, in Hollywood history.