The Top 100 NZ TV Shows of the 21st Century

Our definitive list of NZ TV is here and Rec Room subscribers will be alerted as soon as its live each day this week. Today: the shows ranked 100-81.

To celebrate our 10th birthday, we wanted to do something big and bold that both spoke to our humble television roots and signaled a brave and ambitious step into the next decade.

We are proud to be a place that New Zealanders can turn to for both in-depth reflections and plenty of laughs about New Zealand popular culture, which is why we are launching a week-long celebration looking back at the last quarter century of local television. 

Starting today and counting down 20 shows a day, we will be arguing the case for each show, and why they deserve a place in the history books. You can read my full introduction to the week here. Rec Room subscribers will receive an alert each morning when a new list goes live.

Let’s get into it!

The top 100 NZ TV shows of the 21st Century (100-81)

A show released as an antidote to the decidedly vanilla The Bachelor NZ, a classic sleeper hit, New Zealand’s answer to Jersey Shore and more…

You can check off all the shows you have seen each day on the lists, and be sent a custom watchlist to flesh out your television education. The comments section will be open for Spinoff members to debate, reminisce, and gently tell us that we forgot a cult favourite web series from 2011. 

We’ll bring you the next 20 tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Ngā mihi nui,
Alex Casey and Tara Ward

Join us for a one-night only live event

Not every show could make the list and not every show could get the number one slot. To fight for the fallen and the forgotten, we are also putting on an exciting live event on October 31 in Auckland at Q Theatre. Join Alex Casey, TV stars Kura Forrester and Rhiannon McCall, and The Spinoff’s Stewart Sowman-Lund and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith as we each argue our case for why our favourite low ranking (or entirely excluded) show is worth a prime slot in our television history books.