Picks of the week for 19 January

Here are last week’s high­lights from my out­put at RNZ – on the web and on the air.

Five reasons to watch Watchmen

2019’s won­der year for tele­vi­sion ended with a bang – I whole heartedly recom­mend Watchmen, still stream­ing on Neon.

Lindelof and his team of writers are not inter­ested in play­ing all their cards at once, nor are they much inter­ested in explain­ing what’s been going on. You just have to let it roll over you and trust that, when you do work it all out, it will have been worth it.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/widescreen/story/2018729839/five-reasons-to-watch-watchmen

The myth persists: Online streaming algorithms need reboot

I’m frus­trated that the per­son­al­ised prom­ises made by the new stream­ing age are not being delivered on. My ori­gin­al title for this art­icle was “Algorithms my butt!”

Because of the algorithm, Netflix got a repu­ta­tion for being the smartest TV people in the room. They had insights that net­work exec­ut­ives could only dream of. All that data. All that track­ing. They would be able to tail­or a stream­ing ser­vice to your unique pro­file. Who wouldn’t be hooked? But it appears that what they dis­covered by min­ing mil­lions of viewer’s habits is that people like watch­ing Friends. And whatever they were told to watch (as they had been doing for sev­enty years of broad­cast scheduling).

https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/widescreen/story/2018730198/the-myth-persists-online-streaming-algorithms-need-reboot

Bombshell (Roach, 2019) and Bad Boys for Life (El Arbi & Fallah, 2020)

My final new release movie seg­ment on RNZ’s Summer Times with Emile Donovan where I finally got to sit in the flash new National suite with the mood light­ing and the brand new gear. Very nice.

This week I’m back filling in for Simon Morris on At the Movies. I’ll post the res­ults here.