SBS Viceland - Programs and Schedules

So I got sucked into watching Shortland Street again and after a dire January and February the show has somewhat improved. Though the biggest problem is ambitious ideas with shoddy execution and awful writing.

All soaps are guilty of this, but I’m sick of the writers writing characters off for a holiday in show. It isn’t realistic to have Dawn swan off back to the farm for weeks multiple times already in the year when she’s only a nurse. Just have the characters not seen, they don’t always have to write in an explanation for their absences.

I’ll address the Carla story first. I love Carla first off. I loved her back in the 90s when I got to see the episodes years ago and I still love her. What I don’t love is how this story is progressing . It’s a problem Shortland Street has struggled with a lot lately and that’s nuance. Carla just has to be bat shit crazy. She just to be OTT manipulative and devious. Why? Why not just write her complex manner, which the writers do sometimes and then undo the next episode by making he do something outrageous.

Chris never should have even contemplated firing Carla as there was no grounds, just decades old innuendo and gossip. Her credentials checked out and there were no formal complaints. If Maeve, Leanne and Eddie had a problem with Carla and her therapy why didn’t they lodge an official complaint and nip it in the bud? Poor writing.

I did love Nicole mentioning to Chris why didn’t he have a problem when he first meet Carla over a month ago and Chris couldn’t even remember meeting her which Nicole then accused him of only remembering attractive women he could fuck and say maybe there was animosity held over from back in the day because she wouldn’t sleep with him. Burn.

Yes Carla has boundary issues and treating Nicole as a friend is all sorts of inappropriate but Carla does have valid points. Drew is misogynistic and does treat attractive women differently, Leanne is problematic, Tess is man crazy and relies on men and her looks far too much and she helped Damo’s self esteem, so I’m a little sick of all her help and valid points being tossed aside because the writers have decided to make her a psycho therefore invalidating all her work and correct actions.

Seriously she taps her fingers on the desk and everyone is magically hypnotized, except for Leanne of course. Utterly stupid and embarrassing. So Karl buggered off because she hynotized him but continues to stay away and ghost Tess. Crap writing.

Speaking of crap writing when Nicole and Carla are talking at her place after Carla has babysat Pele, Carla talks of her strained relationship with her sister and she says how lucky Nicole is for just having brothers and Nicole agrees. Hello, Nicole had a half sister Morgan Braithwaite, she was the reason why Nicole even came to Shortland Street in the first place.

All Carla needs is some therapy for herself. It’s sad she has no self esteem and is constantly lonely and isolated and always misunderstood.

The other major story is the laughable sex trafficking one. It’s just woeful.

So Theo breaks into a location, by herself and happens to stumble across a shipping container filled with sex workers in under two minutes and then takes on one baddie and liberates the workers and just as the police are showing up they allow Louie into a dangerous situation straight after them contaminating a crime scene. Rolls fucking eyes.

Then Zara gets involved and lets it consume her life (so much for promising Eve to look after her sons) until she is most likely murdered, that is after she gets shot in the arm at a protest rally.

So Michelle gets in on the action, gets jealous of Zara of hogging the limelight, tries to get involved until it threatens her political career, then umms and ahhs repeatedly over her involvement then her old never mentioned before friend rocks up conveniently when she knows the corruption goes to the top and puts pressure on her to leave it alone . Then just as things are progressing to the next stage Theo in one episode tells everyone she got the job no one knew she applied for and leaves in said episode after she was the driving force for the whole thing and getting everyone involved, including laying emotional guilt on everyone. Fantastic writing yet again.

Now onto the characters individually.

I hate Esther. Horrible character. She says Curtis is her soul mate, says Curtis wouldn’t mind her repeatedly fucking her baby daddy, then backflips and calls it cheating, yet still drops her knickers anyway and gets mad at Eddie for getting the wrong idea. Okay hun.

All throughout this Esther gets the Head of Surgery gig and Desi accidentally lets slip that she is paid significantly less than Boyd, so is mad and claims misogyny and racism. Yet she is a junior surgeon, has been at the hospital for significantly less than Boyd and is not as qualified or accomplished.

So after being rewarded playing the race card, even though Chris admits her gives her special treatment already (You know young, pretty and being a family friend), she is repeatedly shown she is incompetent and out of her depth.

Colour me shocked because I love TK now. After years of being a macho he man he has now matured and mellowed and I really like him. I love his partnering with CeCe and felt he has been unfairly maligned in multiple stories this year.

When Waimarama’s father was admitted to the ED, Marty, Dickhead Dawn and Louie all openly contradicted TK’s order of discharge when he is HoD and made him out to be uncaring when he’s doing his job and refusing to give preferential treatment to a staff member.

Then there’s when he was accidentally stoned and Louie blabbed all over the hospital almost costing him his job, after he tried to give Louie space and respect despite having Gangja plants growing in his house around his young teen daughter.

Dickhead Dawn, dear god how I would love to stick her head in a blender. She is still such an annoying idiot. She lurches from one manic fad to the next. First it was hoarding stray dogs and traipsing all the dogs around the hospital (how did she get through security), then it was her aggressive competitiveness now it’s pushing Prince to work harder and take more shifts and bring in more money to buy a house after she has spent weeks off work going to the country.

Desi is another idiot. I do laugh at her comments sometimes and she is funny, but she’s way overused and she goes too OTT most of the times. Most of the things she says and does gets no backlash, take the ‘affectionate slurs’ against lesbians. Would the writers dare repeat some of the ‘cute slang’ directed at Maoris or POC like they had Desi do. Judging by how quick the Maori entry at Urban Dictionary was cleaned I think not. Sick of the hypocrisy when it comes to diversity.

I was also finally liking Boyd too, especially his pairing with Zara, now that’s gone to custard. Shame I was really loving Boyd, Zara, Rani and the twins together. I was also coming to love Zara too just as she was offed.

I like Damo and was offended at the Damo’s bully storyline. I hated how Prince told Damo to just get over it and move on after Damo was physically and mentally abused for years and still has PTSD over it. Not to mention Damo still struggles with low self worth and poor self esteem. Then the writers copped out and gave the bully cancer (how emotionally manipulative) and after convincing Damo that he too was a bully (thankfully Desi saw through this BS) had Damo run around for him, helping him and copping abuse only for some lame apology at the end in a kumbaya moment. F off.

I really like Michelle and she works well with Chris even if she’s too good for him at times.

I love Cece but wish she wasn’t such a martyr. Rani has a father and Boyd she would have been fine to go spend time with her dying sister in Fiji. She clearly wanted to but was finding excuses to stay.

Thank god Theo has gone. 'nuff said.

Little Louie and his gigantic ego. Yeah Rani really wants you and can’t stop thinking about you after her mother is most likely dead. Didn’t like him either in the silly ganja storyline or him fucking a guy to get into Theo’s knickers. Yes kids it’s okay to sleep with someone to impress someone else and use them as a sex pawn.

I went off Sophia too when she was horrible to Rani. She’s been nice to Rani lately but dumping Rani just because you wanted to be mature and have mature friends that weren’t at school(which is probably one of the most immature things ever) only to come crawling back because you had no better offers was spineless.

Leanne is just a nasty, petty vindictive bitch. Telling everyone who will listen what an ungrateful cow Nicole is when she is shocked why Nicole doesn’t want her in her life. Insults her daughter’s parenting, causes conflict in her son’s love life, constantly goes behind her daughters back and against her wishes and undermines her daughters marriage almost on a weekly basis. I wish Carla enacts on her threat and bashes her head in just like Bernie.

Then she is constantly goading and harassing Carla at every opportunity, filming her illegally and is guilty of exactly what she is accusing Carla of, unprofessional (when she barges into Carla’s office and starts snooping), manipulative (running to Maeve to put pressure on Nicole to change her feelings) and being a witch (demanding to Zara that it’s either her or Carla when she isn’t even employed at the hospital or pushing Chris to fire Carla).

I like Drew and Harper together.

Loathe Eddie.

Marty is too pushy and desperate. Love Waimarama and really feel sorry for her.

I’ve already typed enough so I don’t have it in me to launch a tirade against Maeve.

Love Rani & Nicole.

Tilly is a little cow. Don’t like. I don’t like Pele either. The other kids are good.

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World’s Greatest Hotels

Saturday 22 May at 08:40 PM

Caesars Palace has been the heart and soul of Vegas for over 50 years. It was the first themed hotel in the City and credited with helping creating the Vegas we know today. We’ll meet the staff that keep make this 4000 room hotel running 24 hours a day, go behind the scenes of a high rollers secret luxury villa, learn how to cater for 3000 people a day on one of World’s biggest buffets, hear the secrets of the Casino Floor and a young couple tie the knot, Vegas style.

Interesting show, little bit more interesting than Home and Away. Carla with her tap hands thing is annoying.

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Today, The Fifth Element (film) will be airing on Viceland five times. Thanks to the date being the fifth of the fifth. The first film starts at 12 noon.

As of recently, Jeopardy has been airing on SBS at 5.05pm, and repeated on Viceland at 7.05pm. On last night’s Viceland airing, there was a scrolling disclaimer at the beginning of the show stating that the show wont air on Viceland due to the movie, and you can watch Jeopardy on SBS instead . Glad they did that.

Shortland St on at 2.10am lol.

This baffles me greatly. What is so special about that movie to Viceland that they feel the need to run a marathon every year of it since 2017.

Still it could be worse like World Movies where Esio Trot, the god awful Fame remake & Watership Down are played nearly every week multiple times.

Carla being exposed was such a damp squid. Why didn’t Nicole call the police? Why couldn’t we have some drama? Instead we had the three stooges in Maeve, Nicole & Leanne telling Chris all about it and idiot Leanne presenting him with a dossier of all her misdeeds as proof. This is the same Leanne that couldn’t even record a video with sound or the same Leanne that if she had concrete proof of Carla’s antics would have presented them sooner to Nicole or Chris or presumably gone to the police.

Chris talking to Carla was laughable. Chris wasn’t even sympathetic, despite him shoving his previous bout of mental illness in everyone’s face and saying how much he gets mental health. He wasn’t compassionate at all. As much dignity as possible, that’s right Chris making Carla do the walk of shame through triage with everyone gawking and acting smug, very dignified.

I also hated how one dimensional the writing was. Carla wasn’t purely evil, she helped Waimara, Rani, Boyd & Tess but instead all it focused on was how she exploited Nicole. Though they couldn’t even get that right. Nicole was the one that had problems with Leanne before she had even met Carla, it was the reason she saw Carla first. Nicole originally wanted distance from Leanne, Carla only exploited that later and she didn’t plant the seeds first, and really it was never pressed on because the writing was so weak and all over the place. The writing hyping up Carla to be some monstrosity of evil (thanks Holly) was pathetic, not to mention how damaging the writing became of treating the subject of mental illness and taking it serious.

It’s ironic that Carla had more legal grounds to make complaints against people than any of her victims (Harassment, sexism, agism, libel, slander, intimidation, unfair dismissal, break and enter), I think that alone sums up how poor the writing was.

Shortland Street used to be able to have complex morally ambiguous characters, now all they have is characters either reduced to being wholly good or bad. They also used to manage slow burn stories quite well, now everything is at a breakneck speed and very much blink and you’ll miss it, as a result the payoffs aren’t nearly as good.

As for the rest.

Please Eddie FO and take Esther and the rest of your shit family with you. Seriously Esther just give your kid away. Though why should I be surprised. The Samuels always dump their children on other people. TK dumped Tillie on relatives offscreen for years whilst he was being a whore.

Maeve acting smug as Carla was apologising and saying how strong their love was. Short memory Maeve. I guess we are all supposed to forget that Maeve was encouraging Theo’s sexual advances some months ago. Within a year one will cheat and by that time Nicole would have probably discovered penis again, like she always does.

Desi hasn’t been on screen for weeks yet she is still pissing me off. I’m sick of hearing about her and how much Damo loves her nearly every episode. Speaking of Damo was it really necessary to have an episode revolve around Damo’s foreskin. Just no. Also troubling is that twice in a month we have been subjected to storylines involving Damo abusing his genitals. It isn’t funny. It’s awkward and juvenile.

Speaking of juvenile I’ll address dickhead Dawn. So okay first up she was pressurizing Prince to work harder so they could buy a house together, then she changes her mind and doesn’t want to buy a house with Prince. She says how much she loves Prince and wants to be with him forever, but baulks at commitment like marriage (but buying a house was okay) and says she only envisaged getting married once to her true love, which was Ali. Then she backflips again and asks Prince to marry her after Prince has assaulted someone and might go to jail. She has moaned for months about money, yet has not rented the spare room out vacated by Theo and is again taking another extended leave from work to visit the farm, her third in three months. Gee I’d love to work at Shortland Street hospital too, endless vacays, no blowback.

Like Dawn, Nicole is really inconsistently written. So one minute Nicole genuinely wants to be Carla’s friend, without Carla’s hypnosis, then she ices her out over nothing and calls her clingy and needy (holy fuck. Pot. Kettle. Black). Has experienced her own mental health issues, but is dismissive of others. Knows how lonely and isolated Carla is, then proceeds to ignore and alienate her further without telling her why. She hates how Leanne treats her and interfers in her life, yet allows Leanne to call her a bad mother and repeatedly lets Leanne interfere in her life by the next episode. She runs so hot and cold and flip flops all the the time I’m finally done with her.

CeCe is never around much which is a shame. I knew Aggie would die in Fiji, but yet again it was such a missed opportunity for drama or compelling television. Hearing over skype Aggie was dead. Boring.

Still love Waimara but wish she would dump Marty and her using brother. So the brother really cares about their father, but can’t even wait until he’s cremated to discuss the will and throws a fit that Wai was left all his estate. I guess it isn’t surprising considering he left Wai to do everything including change his dad’s nappy. Dawn says Wai wouldn’t let anyone near her dad, yet forgets about looking after him whilst Wai was at Shorty. Yeah I know another writing plot hole.

Marty is still too pushy.

I wish Jack had never come back.

Michelle is too good for Chris and I wish she would buy a house just for herself. How dare she might want to live in a home that doesn’t have remnants of Rachel, or Kate or any other bimbo he’s moved in and then dumped.

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NBC has announced the final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine will premiere after the Tokyo Olympics in August.

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The Surrogates

From Tuesday 22 June

Would you get pregnant for someone else and agree to give the baby away without receiving payment?

https://twitter.com/SBSVICELAND/status/1393513992908333057?s=20

Jeopardy started at a later time tonight, starting at 7.20pm, instead of the usual 7.05pm. 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown aired at 7.50pm, instead of 7.35pm. I think be its because the Giro D’Italia (cycling) starting at an earlier time of 8.45pm.

Jeopardy and Countdown starts at t is back at the normal time tomorrow.

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The final season will premiere in the US on Thursday, August 12.

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Qanon: The Search For Q

From Sunday 6 Jun at 10:20 PM; 3 episodes

To understand what Q is and why it has been so enormously popular, hosts Bayan Joonam and Marley Clements get to know the most influential QAnon evangelists.

SBS Viceland seems to be showing Southpark tonight after the cycling. Does anyone know why? Does channel Ten not have full rights?

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While SBS will not be securing any further new episodes of the comedy, repeats from past seasons will continue on SBSViceland for the time being.

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The Tailings

Monday, 7 June at 9.15pm

The Buildings That Fought Hitler

From Sunday 13 June at 08:35 PM, 8 episodes

Rob Bell explores the coastal defence network built to defend Britain’s beaches, including a tower in Essex which controlled mines laid across the estuary.

Taskmaster - Season 8

From Monday 14 June at 08:30 PM, 10 episodes.

Greg Davies hosts this comedy show as the eponymous Taskmaster who, with arbitrary assistance and analysis from Alex Horne, sets five top comedians a series of bizarre, tricky and often ingenious tasks. With their personal possessions up for grabs, they have everything to play for. Especially their dignity.

Dark Side Of The Ring - Season 3

From Sunday 27 June at 10:10 PM

Journey deeper into the dark side of professional wrestling, lifting the veil on the untold stories of Brian Pillman, The Dynamite Kid, The Ultimate Warrior and others who shaped its intoxicating and often tragic history.

This Monday (6 June), The Tailings, an Australian 6 x 10 minutes long series, will air on SBS Viceland on at 9.15pm. All 6 episodes will air consecutively on the night. The show originally aired on SBS On Demand.

Should be worth watching.

Cat Ladies

Thursday 1 July at 10:20 PM

A filmmaker interviews four women whose lives and self-worth are tied together with their cats. What happens to a cat lover that turns her into a cat hoarder?

Black Lives Matter: A Global Reckoning

From Monday 5 July at 10:10 PM; 4 episodes

Following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, people around the world rallied not only to show solidarity in the fight against police brutality in the US, but also to confront their own countries’ unique issues with racism.

Building The Ultimate

Saturday 10 July at 7:35 PM; 6 episodes

This round breaking series uncovers the engineering secrets behind technological wonders, from luxury cruise ships to aircrafts.

Savages

Monday 5 July at 11:00 PM 6 episodes, in French, FTA premiere

Present day France. The first presidential candidate of Algerian descent is on the brink of power. But on the night of the election, he is shot, bringing turmoil to two families and the entire nation. SAVAGES is a thriller and family saga, reflecting on France’s contemporary identity. A political drama, the series stars Roschdy Zem as Idder Chaouch , a politician who is on the verge of becoming the first Maghrebi person to win election as President of France, but whose campaign may be undone by family and racial politics after an assassination attempt is made on his life.