Capsule reviews of TVNZ shows

Here we’ve preserved Liam Maguren’s short and sweet reviews of TVNZ+ shows that have been moved from their original streaming platforms. You can find their current streaming homes by clicking each title.

The Adventures of Tumeke Space (2021, one season)

Aotearoa animation studio Mukpuddy channelled their love of Star Wars and Billy T James into this very pretty, very New Zealand sci-fi adventure series. Māori space hero Tumeke Space (Glen-Paul Waru), first seen in Mukpuddy’s own Barefoot Bandits, travels the galaxy in search of his missing Koro, picking up clues to his whereabouts while trying to avoid the unbearably fragile Pink Menace (who may or may not be loosely based on a real-life historical figure). Also features the voices of prominent Kiwi comedians Josh Thomson, Urzila Carlson and Billy T award-winner Kura Forrester.

The Good Lord Bird (2020, one season)

“[Ethan] Hawke in peak form, and wastes little time in dialling [it] up to 11.” That’s what we said about this standout seven-part pre-Civil War Western back when it first premiered in Aotearoa. Also created by the four-time Oscar-nominee, the show adapts James McBridge’s National Book Award-winning story of an enslaved teenager (Joshua Caleb Johnson-Lionel) who joins abolitionist John Brown’s (Hawke) ragtag crew hoping to initiate a slave revolt.

PEN15 (2019, two seasons)

Actual grown adult women Maya Erskine (Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and Anna Konkle (The Afterparty) play early teen versions of themselves in this comedy series that immediately earns a chuckle from the premise alone. Surrounded by proper 13-year-olds, the absurdist Emmy-nominee delights in maximising the awkwardness of teenage life in the early 2000s, with Erskine and Konkle valiantly making themselves the butts of the jokes.

Planet Earth III (2023)

Sir David Attenborough, the one true king of nature documentaries, guides us through this third iteration of the groundbreaking BBC series. With a clear-eyed focus on the climate crisis, this season blends the perilous dangers affecting all areas of the world with the eye-widening wonderment of the animal kingdom. It’s a sobering take-your-medicine edition of the series that arguably stands as the most important of the three seasons.