Hayu relaunches as a full streaming service

Reality-based streaming service Hayu has relaunched in New Zealand as a full streaming service, it's been announced.

The service, which is primarily known for franchises such as Below Deck and Vaderpump Rules, as well as the Real Housewives series, will now also feature NBC Universal shows such as The Office and Parks and Recreation, as well as movies like Wicked: For Good and Bridget Jones.

Plus there will also be New Zealand exclusive content in the form of Hacks Series 4 and 5, which have not yet aired in the country.

Newly added content means there’s even more to goss about, with Hayu’s offering evolving beyond reality TV, offering extensive general entertainment and featuring premium, scripted titles from NBCUniversal. Starting from May 12 (and rolling out through the following weeks) the content line up includes: 

• First-run scripted drama TV series exclusive to Hayu: Hacks (S4 and 5), Prisoner, The Five Star Weekend, and Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy 
• Much-loved classic Universal Television comedies The Office, Parks and Recreation, Will and Grace and 30 Rock 
• Beloved NBCUniversal drama series Suits, House and Downton Abbey 
• Recent blockbuster Universal movies Jurassic World Rebirth, How to Train Your Dragon, Wicked: For Good, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and Prime Minister 
• Iconic Universal films from the Fast & Furious, Jurassic, Bourne, Mamma Mia, Fifty Shades of Grey, Pitch Perfect and Bridget Jones franchises, alongside classic hits Back to the Future, Jaws and E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial  

Still also super-serving reality fans, Hayu continues to bring subscribers every episode and every season of a broad selection of reality TV franchises, all in one place – and available to download and watch on the go – completely adfree. The majority of shows stream on the service the same day as the USA – including hit global franchises The Real Housewives, Below Deck and Vanderpump Rules, alongside fanfavourite titles such as Summer House  and Southern Charm. Hayu also offers exclusive access to fan-favourite reality shows only available on Hayu in New Zealand including Made in Chelsea, The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. 

Hayu is available in 45 markets on a full array of devices – mobile, tablet, connected TV, console and web. New Hayu subscribers can access the service for $10.99 per month. Hayu is available to existing subscribers at $9.99 a month for a limited time. T&Cs apply, content availability is subject to change. 

FIRST-RUN SCRIPTED DRAMA & COMEDY TV SERIES COMING TO HAYU

Hacks S4 and S5 

The Emmy®, Golden Globe® and Critics Choice Award-winning comedy series returns to follow the ever-evolving dynamics between legendary Las Vegas stand-up Deborah Vance (six-time Emmy® winner Jean Smart) and her talented young comedy writer Ava (three-time Emmy® nominee and Critics Choice Award winner Hannah Einbinder). In season 4, friction between Deborah and Ava mounts as the pair looks to make history with the launch of Deborah’s new late night show.  

In the aftermath of mistaken and unflattering news reports that she passed away, season 5 sees Deborah Vance and Ava return to Las Vegas more determined than ever to secure Deborah’s legacy as a comedian. 

Prisoner  

The series follows Amber Todd (Izuka Hoyle), a principled young prison transport officer tasked with escorting Tibor (Tahar Rahim), a trained killer and high-value inmate, to court to testify against his elite crime syndicate. When their convoy is brutally ambushed, she’s forced to put her life in his hands. As the sole survivors, handcuffed and on the run, they must race to reach their destination alive and on time. Along the way, their uneasy alliance is tested as the syndicate closes in. Trust becomes a weapon and their shackled survival a moral dilemma, forcing Amber to confront how far she’ll go to protect what matters most. Prisoner is created and written by acclaimed writer Matt Charman (Hostage, Bridge of Spies) and directed by BAFTA-winner Otto Bathurst (Peaky Blinders).  

The Five Star Weekend  

Hollis Shaw (Golden Globe-winning and Emmy Award-nominated actress Jennifer Garner, The Last Thing He Told Me, Alias), a famed cook and best-selling author known for her delicious recipes, impeccable taste, and warm demeanor, who suffers a devastating loss. Unable to move forward, the death starts to expose the cracks in Hollis’s picture-perfect life—her strained marriage, her complicated relationship with her daughter, and her growing pursuit of validation from her fans. In an effort to overcome grief and find herself again, Hollis gets the idea to host a weekend away at her house on Nantucket with three friends from different stages in her life: her childhood, her twenties, thirties, and one surprise fifth star. Set against a luxurious and coastal backdrop, the stars will mature in ways they could never imagine as boundaries are pushed and secrets are exposed.  

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy  

From 1972-1978, 33 young men were kidnapped, murdered and buried in a crawl space beneath their killer's house. And no one was the wiser. Not for all those years. Why? He was charming and funny. Had a good, All-American job. Was a community leader. He even volunteered to entertain sick kids... while dressed as a clown. “Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” peels back the twisted layers of Gacy’s life while weaving in heartrending stories of his victims; exploring the grief, guilt, and trauma of their families and friends; and exposing the systemic failures, missed opportunities and societal prejudices that fueled his reign of terror.

For more info and to sign up, visit Hayu.com.

Obsession: Movie Review

Cast: Michael Johnson, Inde Navarrette, Megan Lawless
Director: Curry Barker

Meshing together the Monkey's Paw idea, Companion's social commentary and ethos along with Pearl and Smile's unsettling edges proves to be extremely fertile ground for Milk & Serial director Curry Barker's fresh and bracing horror movie.

Bear (Johnson, Teen Wolf) is hopelessly in love with his co-worker Nikki (Navarrette, the film's MVP) - their long-term friendship dips into playful banter, finishing each other's sentences and crossing boundaries. But Bear's unable to tell Nikki how he feels, leading him to be permanently friend-zoned.

When she loses a necklace she adores, he seizes on the chance to buy her a gift, then confess his affection. But while shopping in an old antique store, he finds a "One Wish Willow" artefact which can grant the holder the wish of their dreams. After failing to reveal the depth of his adoration when Nikki directly asks him, he uses the artefact to wish she loved him as much as he does...

Trading in both dysfunctional romances and commentary on adoration and co-dependency in relationships, Obsession is a deeply unsettling movie that traffics as much horror from its uncomfortable moments as it possibly can muster.

It helps that Navarrette delivers a truly upsetting performance, one that wildly swings from outright adoration to utter incredulity as to what just happened with ease - and her screams in the moments of her character's swing are just stomach-curdling.

But it's Barker who makes the leap here from a 62-minute found footage short on YouTube to something that's genuinely distressing to behold. With the film's suspense dragged out as much as possible and the brutal jolts delivered with aplomb, Obsession becomes something devilishly nightmarish as it plays out. Drenched in the kind of muted aesthetic which was deployed in It Follows, the film delights in its dour darkness.

It's a film that plays with horrific extremes and does so with glee - and by keeping the cast list small, the shocks are even more upsetting than you'd expect - or hope - them to be. 

Along with the two power performances, Obsession is the horror film you'd least have imagined to leave you reeling - it's 2026's most twisted love story.

Rivals: Season 2: Review

Dame Jilly Cooper's bonkbuster returns for another round after its rip-roaring success back in 2024.

In this second series, there's no sign of the stakes letting up, either dramatically or in terms of what audiences expect when it comes to sex romps and passion within the fictional county of Rutshire.

Picking up after its cliffhanger which saw Lord Tony Baddingham (a cigar-chomping, scenery-chewing David Tennant) lying in a pool of his own blood after being hit across the head by a wronged colleague and MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) finally acting on his impulses for his colleague's daughter Taggie (Bella Maclean), there's a lot to get into in this unabashedly hedonistic 1980s set OTT drama which delights in its OTT nature.

Of the three episodes of season two which were made available for review, it's fair to say that the second time around, there's no compunction from the writers and the cast about embracing the absurdity of the setting and the drama's premise, with the latest high-production series feeling like a trashy soap at the high-end of its game.

It has to be said, those who were not fans of the first series won't find anything new to enjoy here, with more episodes and even more parochial fighting between the two groups fighting for a lucrative TV franchise as the incumbent Corinium (led by Baddingham) takes on the upstarts of Venturer.

At the heart of Rivals Season 2, there's a deliciousness of interplay between the main leads. You can't dispute that Tennant's having a ball playing the villain, and there's a level of malevolence this time that he just manages to pull back from being too cartoony. While Hassell and Turner (as former Baddingham employee Declan O'Hara) seem to be trying to elicit more sympathy this time around, there's a softness and more emotional resonance to their characters throughout.

And while Taggie continues to pine for Rupert (a thread that rapidly feels like it's losing its audience, thanks to its overplaying), the women on the periphery of this come more to the fore. From Emily Atack's TV host Sarah through to Lady Baddingham (Clare Rushbrook) and Declan's wife (Victoria Smurfit), the arcs are a little stronger and more enticing rather than just shoulder pads and lustful eye-candy.

It's perhaps here that among the 80s precision needle drops Rivals' second season feels like it's embracing its own DNA and expanding it out to cover all of the cast, as opposed to just some of the key players. 

Because of that, Rivals remains an evolution of its trashy, soapy UK premise - it's a riotously OTT romp that's watchable, yet highly disposable fare.

Rivals season two premieres on Disney+ on Friday, May 15.

Caterpillar: Movie Review

Cast: Marta Dusseldorp, Anais Shand, Lisa Harrow, Matt Whelan
Director: Chelsie Preston Crayford

Set in the 2000s in New Zealand's capital Wellington, director Chelsie Preston Crayford's first full-length feature is clearly a personal passion project.

It follows three generations of the same family - there's single mother Maxine (A Place To Call Home's Dusseldorp), who's struggling to finance a film she's been pursuing for years; her daughter Cassie, an aspiring actress (Shand, almost a double for Crayford's looks) and matriarch Huia (Harrow), who's on the cusp of dementia and is obsessed by Monarch butterflies and wants to go to Mexico to see them.

In terms of plot, Caterpillar is light on developments outside of the home, with Crayford fixing her gaze on the internal dynamics of an errant mother and her struggling daughter, and keen to explore the parallels of how her own life was affected by the relationship she had with her own grandmother.

As a result, Caterpillar feels almost insular in its execution and less coherent in terms of drama and narrative than perhaps it could do.

And yet, there's a radiant beauty in this movie that plays out with subtlety, restraint and great heart.

Shand's excellent as the daughter, struggling to get her mother's attention and trying to find her own place in the world. While Dusseldorp has perhaps the more thankless role in proceedings given the perceived gaps and conflict within the family, the moments she shares with the two other protagonists sees the somewhat stereotyped creative character, pursuing it all whatever the cost may be, elevated.

Harrow has perhaps the more wistful role as her Huia struggles with the implications of what's coming while trying to never burden the family. It's a very familiar role and route that she pursues, but the narrative restraint that's bestowed upon the arc adds much to the heft. 

Yet the film's narrative failings are overcome by Crayford's eye for moments that stay with you after the movie's finished.

Whether it's a near perfect final shot that will emotionally destroy those who invest or the revelation of what chaos a Post-It note causes, there are plenty of eye-catching scenes within this to lift it from a female gaze to a director who has an eye for beauty in front of the lens.

There's a quiet dignity in Caterpillar and even if the drama comes crashing in at around the one-hour mark, the work done by the quartet of women involved does much to make it powerfully evocative and its considerations universal, no matter how occasionally insular and singular it feels.

The Testament of Ann Lee: Disney+ Movie Review

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, Christopher Abbott, Thomasin McKenzie

Director: Mona Fastvold

Technically adept, heavy with symbolism but emotionally aloof and thematically repetitive in its structure, The Testament of Ann Lee is an intriguing film, one that blends musical and hagiography to varying degrees of success - and which will test your patience for religious preaching.

A fully committed Seyfried is Ann Lee, who's born in Manchester in 1736, and whose world is forever changed when she sees her parents having sex and is struck by a vision of sin. Deciding to shun her family and falling into a life of piety, Ann discovers faith in the form of Quakers during a visit to another family.

Struck by one group, who are Shaking Quakers and who have a physical reaction to faith, she is driven towards the belief that she is the second coming of Jesus Christ after losing her four young children and gradually excluding her husband, thanks to her abstinence.

Following her new beliefs, she leads a small group of Shakers as they head to find a new life and found a religion in America.

The Testament of Ann Lee becomes an exercise in patience as it plays out.

Despite some dodgy accents and some weaker musical numbers (all of which have been drawn from the Shaker faith and which use their rhythmic thumping and drumbeats to lead their number into a religious fervour), there's a craft at play here that works from director Mona Fastvold.

However, it's the script that feels like it's not quite reached the rhapsodic highs of what's to be expected. Perhaps it's a little too in love with the Shaker story, and keen to mythologise the tale of her ascent and growing followers, but there's little drama and conflict, not to mention interaction, between those on screen.

Aside from one brutally dramatic moment at the end of the two-hour film, The Testament of Ann Lee hangs solely on Seyfried's shoulders. Thankfully, her impressive performance is just enough to guide any naysayers through the movie, but the overall impact of what is clearly a film which relies on the exposition of its narrator (Thomasin McKenzie) is muted and feels like an odd piece of propaganda, rather than an insight-heavy movie that dives deep into the psychology of what it takes to found and lead a religion against all the odds.

The Testament of Ann Lee is streaming on Disney+ from May 13.

It Was Just An Accident: Blu Ray Review

Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Ebrahim Azizi
Director: Jafar Panahi

It starts off simply with a man driving with his young daughter and wife through the night. 

But after the driver hits a dog (and shocks his daughter with the news it's dead as she realises he killed it), they're forced to a random house when the car dies.

As they seek help from the owners, it soon turns out one of them Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) recognises the driver - he was the Iranian secret official who tortured them during captivity - or so he believes.

Following him and then kidnapping him the next day, Vahid plans to kill him in revenge - but a stab of doubt pangs his belief and in desperation, he turns to former colleagues who also were Peg Leg's victims...

Mixing Panahi's real life internment and a hefty dollop of "what would  you do" morality, It Was Just An Accident's mix of uneasy comedy and blood curdling use of sound makes for an unsettling watch.

As he deftly builds a level of quiet discomfort, the film skates a line of ambiguity with deftness as bitterness rises to the surface between the core group of those afflicted by Peg Leg's previous reign of terror. 

With the cast representing differing and unswerving points of view, there are plenty of moments of feelings of allegiances being switched and moments of severe moral discomfort. Yet sandwiched in between those are moments of near high farce that feel occasionally awkward and shift-in-your-seat uncomfortable.

The Palme D'Or winner delights in duality and a commentary on the bribes ethos that runs deep within Iranian officialdom.

But where it soars is in its lead - Mobasseri's deft playing of a man who is 100% sure and bent on revenge before his latent humanity comes to the fore is nothing short of exceptional. The emotional internal turmoil is as obvious as the physical discomfort he feels.

This, coupled with Panahi's almost visceral dialogue in parts, makes for a powerful mix that takes audiences deep into a world that feels all-too-far away.

And while the film's resolution feels disappointing in some ways, its final moment involving such stillness and abject terror evoked by sound is one of the singular and disturbingly memorable images committed to celluloid this year.

Send Help: Disney+ Movie Review

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien
Director: Sam Raimi

If Misery collided with Survivor, Castaway and Sam Raimi comedy horror, its bastard child would be this delightfully delicious movie.

Starring McAdams as the much-maligned, put upon Linda Liddle, an office employee who's put seven years into the company she's been at, only to see the founder die and his spoilt son Bradley (O'Brien) take the helm. To make matters worse, she's denied the partner role she was promised after years of due diligence and mocked by the meathead bros in charge. And to compound that, she's brought along on a boys' work trip to Bangkok to solve a problem, after which she will be, unbeknownst to her, thrown out from the company she's loved.

But when the plane they're all on goes down in a storm (one of the opening salvos from Raimi that delivers laughs, horror and sly notes on powerplays), Linda and Bradley are the only survivors on a desert island - and suddenly, with Bradley injured, Linda's now the one in charge...

Send Help is inventively bonkers, but smart enough to know what will deliver the most of the psychological warfare that erupts a la The Roses. sending up Survivor, the romance of two people stranded alone on a desert island and giving it some ground-level chasing through the woods that have become his trademark, Raimi's take on the genre proves to be a smartly engaging time.

There's a joy to how Raimi delivers the film's stand-out moments and the mix of gore, horror and comedy that worked so effectively in the likes of Drag Me To Hell come vividly to the fore here, proving once again that a roller-coaster ride such as this one is more than worth jumping on for. (Though there is an argument that a slight trim in the back third would have greatly benefited proceedings.)

Yet it would be nothing were it not for McAdams' committed and at times, subtle performance. Growing through the humiliation she's afforded early on, she delivers a performance that's unglamorous, stripped back, raw and powerful, yet comedically adept and aware of everything that's required of her. 

Send Help is the kind of film which ironically needs no help of its own. It's got a perverse knowing wink playfulness that's infectious, a perverse streak that's contagious and such a perverse desire to please that you'd be a fool to ignore.