Local TV Shows Enlightening US Audiences

New Zealand and Australia “have long been in the business of making excellent television that American audiences really would dig,” Alexis Gunderson reports for entertainment news site, Vulture. “Never before have there been so many ways to watch so many different shows hailing from Adelaide to Wellington to the bush in between.” Gunderson lists 20 Antipodean shows currently streaming in the US.

Included are: The Brokenwood Mysteries, The Casketeers, Mean Mums, My Life Is Murder, Nothing Much to Do, Taskmaster: New Zealand, Wellington Paranormal and Starstruck.

“As far as human experiences go, death is both the most mundanely universal and most exquisitely personal. The Casketeers, a tastefully lighthearted unscripted docuseries acquired by Netflix from local New Zealand outfit Southern Pictures, underscores just how true both ends of that spectrum are,” Gunderson writes.

“The series opens a window to both the general goings-on of a modern-day working funeral home and the specific grief practices of Māori, Samoan, and Tongan communities – multiple worlds the average American viewer is likely to know very little about.”

Original article by Alexis Gunderson, Vulture, July 1, 2021.