Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Spice Girls: How Girl Power Changed the World (8:30pm Monday, TVNZ 2)
If what you want, what you really really want, is to suddenly feel very very old, consider this: 'Wannabe' by Spice Girls came out 25 years ago this year. It's a full quarter of a century since Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger and Posh bounded into the world with their zig-a-zig-aahs and their Union Jacks and their Girl Power.
Watching the hugely entertaining new three-part documentary Spice Girls: How Girl Power Changed the World, it does suddenly feel like a whole other era. The series, from Channel 4 in the UK, examines the whole cultural phenomenon through a modern lens, while still managing to tick all the right nostalgic boxes. It's as definitive a Spice Girls documentary as you could hope for without the input of any of the Spice Girls themselves.
Instead, we hear from people such as the group's original manager (who they promptly ditched after the audition process), a woman who almost made the cut (Spice Girls own version of the Beatles' Pete Best), and their former hair stylist. Their stories are all interesting, however, so who's to judge?
The first episode, in particular, is a trove of rare old handycam footage, dating back to the 1994 auditions for the film Tank Girl, where the future Ginger and Posh unknowingly stood side by side. These days they'd probably just go on Love Island, but in the '90s it was all about the audition circuit. Eventually, they would all respond to a crappy clip art flyer which asked "R. U. 18-23 with the ability to sing/dance," and the rest is history.
There are some fascinating glimpses of the group pre-fame, before they'd adopted their various personas. One thing they clearly all had in common from the start was confidence, which was needed to come in and shake up the extremely male-dominated '90s music industry the way they did.
Pact of Silence (TVNZ OnDemand)
Jack Evans is: the owner of a Welsh brewery, a cocaine addict, "an idiot" according to his employees, and before the end of Pact of Silence's first episode, dead. The British series (broadcast over there as The Pact) mostly deals with the aftermath of his death, on the night of a party at the brewery where just about everyone had a motive to kill him. A group of his shabbily treated workers - among them Hayley from Coronation Street - from the brewery floor, know who did it but make a pact to keep it secret. We'll see how that goes for them, then.
Squid Game (Netflix)
On one hand, the latest Netflix sensation is extremely violent and stressful, on the other it's also very brightly coloured, which seems to balance it out somehow. South Korean series Squid Game is a Battle Royale-type story about a mysterious series of playground games people are convinced to enter with the promise that winning it could lift them out of crippling debt – only once it starts and people are being slain left, right and centre do they realise the stakes are a bit higher than they had been led to believe. It's high-action and addictive viewing, despite or perhaps because of the familiar premise – the fact it's dubbed in English probably helps too.
Diana: The Musical (Netflix)
This is not, as the title might lead you to believe, some kind of joke. Diana: The Musical is a proper, serious, all-singing, all-dancing musical about the life and loves of Lady Diana Spencer, the Princess of Wales. Is it any good? That probably depends a lot on how you feel about musicals as an artform – reviews for the stage production that opened last year were extremely lukewarm. What's important is that it has beaten to the punch both the next season of The Crown and Spencer – the upcoming biopic with Kristen Stewart as Princess Di.
Movie of the Week: Searching (Netflix)
One of the few movies that's probably actually better to watch on a laptop than the big screen, Searching is a mystery thriller about a dad (John Cho) following a trail of digital clues to try and track down his missing 16-year-old-daughter, with the help of a detective (Debra Messing). The hook is that the whole movie takes place within the confines of his computer screen, playing out over chat and video and voice calls, with some good old amateur cyber-sleuthing in the mix too. The premise is executed really well, with the intimacy of the screen making the mystery all the more gripping.
From the Vault: Miracle (2004) (Disney Plus)
A tip for next time you feel like watching a rousing sports movie: Disney Plus has loads of them. From 2004, Miracle is the real-life Mighty Ducks story of the 1980 US men's Olympic ice hockey team, who overcame extreme underdog status to beat the Soviet Union in a match labelled the "Miracle on Ice". The movie focuses on the team's coach, Herb Brooks, (Kurt Russell) selecting his scrappy team, then training them to be world beaters. It's got all the big inspirational moments you could hope for, with minimal dramatic licence – everything in the movie is pretty much how it really happened.
Podcast of the Week: Your Own Personal Beatles
When was the last time you consciously listened to The Beatles? Maybe you haven't for years or even decades, but you probably still know all the songs like you were born with them preloaded to your brain's music folder. Weird, innit?
The band's unique cultural ubiquity makes them a prime target for the genre of podcasts that go very deep on a specific band (or TV series, or movie . . . ) because seemingly everybody can chat about them in a way that's usually reserved for concepts like "the weather" or "the rugby". Each episode of Your Own Personal Beatles, then, is a nerdy but easygoing ramble about the band between hosts Jack Pelling and Robin Allender and guests drawn from the British comedy pool and beyond.
Sounds like something that could get repetitive fast, but there's a lot to natter about when it comes to The Beatles and everybody seems to have a different angle, whether it's going deep on a certain era, nerding out over an obscure (by Beatles standards) album track or geeking out on their cinematic endeavours. Don't even get started on their solo careers.
What better way to prepare yourself for Peter Jackson's epic Beatles restoration due out later this year.
