Abby Howells
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Abby Howells
Abigail Mai Howells is a New Zealand comedian, actor, and writer. She was the winner of the Billy T Award in 2023. Early life and education Howells was born in and grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand. She attended an all-girls high school, where she acted in school productions of ''The Wizard of Oz'' as the Cowardly Lion and in '' Seussical'' as Horton the Elephant. She received a bachelor of arts in film and media studies from the University of Otago, and a masters in creative writing (specifically screenwriting) from Victoria University of Wellington's International Institute of Modern Letters in 2014. At Victoria, she wrote the screenplay ''Standing Up'', which won the Brad McGann Award. Howells completed a PhD in theatre studies from the University of Otago; her thesis, titled "Performing Prison: How Is Life on the Inside Portrayed to the Outside World?", explored how incarcerated women are portrayed in film and television. Career Howells was a founding member of Discharge, a ...
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Brackets
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their names, that vary between British English, British and American English. "Brackets", without further qualification, are in British English the ... marks and in American English the ... marks. Other symbols are repurposed as brackets in specialist contexts, such as International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters, those used by linguists. Brackets are typically deployed in symmetric pairs, and an individual bracket may be identified as a "left" or "right" bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the Writing system#Directionality, directionality of the context. In casual writing and in technical fields such as computing or linguistic analysis of grammar, brackets ne ...
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Newshub
''Newshub'' (stylised as Newshub.) was a New Zealand news service that operated from 1989 to 2024 and served as the local news division of Warner Bros. Discovery New Zealand until its closure. The division, known as ''3 News'' until 2016, had produced news bulletins and current affairs programming for the television channel Three (TV channel), Three from its inception. It also operated a news website and on radio stations run by MediaWorks Radio, MediaWorks between 2016 and 2021. The Newshub brand was launched in February 2016 as part of the division's transition to digital journalism. MediaWorks sold Three and Newshub to US multimedia company Discovery, Inc., with the acquisition completed in December 2020. On 28 February 2024, it was announced that Newshub would shut down on 5 July 2024. On 10 April 2024, the closure was confirmed by Warner Bros. Discovery, with Newshub winding down on 5 July 2024. Media company Stuff (company), Stuff was commissioned to produced a new nigh ...
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The Royal Treatment (film)
''The Royal Treatment'' is a 2022 American romance film directed by Rick Jacobson and written by Holly Hester. It stars Laura Marano as Manhattan hairdresser Izzy, who is given an opportunity to work at the wedding of Prince Thomas, played by Mena Massoud. After its release on January 20, 2022, on Netflix, ''The Royal Treatment'' became the week's most-watched film on the streaming service. However, it received negative reviews from critics. With the exception of Massoud, Marano, Jay Simon and Paul Norell, the majority of the cast is from New Zealand which is where the movie was filmed. Plot Isabella, who goes by Izzy, is a hairdresser. One day, the microwave in her salon causes a fire. The assistant of the salon's landlord, Doug, asks Izzy to pay for the damage caused, so she gives the money she had saved for traveling the world. The prince of Lavania, Prince Thomas, asks his assistant Walter to schedule a haircut. Walter mistakenly calls up Izzy's salon, telling her that she ...
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Netflix
Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages. Launched in 2007, nearly a decade after Netflix, Inc. began its pioneering DVD-by-mail movie rental service, Netflix is the most-subscribed video on demand streaming media service, with 301.6 million paid memberships in more than 190 countries as of 2025. By 2022, "Netflix Original" productions accounted for half of its library in the United States and the namesake company had ventured into other categories, such as video game publishing of mobile games through its flagship service. As of 2025, Netflix is the 18th most-visited website in the world, with 21.18% of its traffic coming from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 6.01%, Canada at 4.94%, and Brazil at 4.24%. History Launch as a mail-based renta ...
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The Spinoff
''The Spinoff'' is a New Zealand online magazine and news website that was founded in 2014. It is known for current affairs coverage, political and social analysis, and cultural commentary. It earns money through commercial sponsorship and subscriptions. The business is owned by its founder and former editor Duncan Grieve and his wife Nicola. Business model and content ''The Spinoff'' began as a TV blog sponsored by the streaming platform Lightbox: it has expanded to a multi-platform news site that also publishes current affairs newsletters, podcasts and online video series. 'Spinoff Members', offering a range of benefits to subscribers, was launched in 2019. ''The Spinoff'' and the '' New Zealand Herald'' started sharing journalism and content in July 2020. "Our business model is partnership and sponsorship and we make it clear when our content is funded in that way. When our journalists are not writing for a partner, they are writing whatever they want. We give them impl ...
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Taskmaster New Zealand
''Taskmaster New Zealand'' (also known as ''Taskmaster'' or ''Taskmaster NZ'' especially prior to season 4) is a New Zealand comedy panel game show, first broadcast in 2020 on TVNZ 2. The format for the show was created by British comedian Alex Horne during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010 and was subsequently developed into a successful UK television show in 2015. Following the format of the original British version, the show consists of five contestants who compete in a series of strange and unusual tasks to gain points from the Taskmaster, Jeremy Wells, administered by his assistant, comedian Paul Williams. ''Taskmaster New Zealand'' is produced for TVNZ with support from NZ On Air. The first series was broadcast in the spring of 2020, while the second series was broadcast in the winter of 2021, the third in winter 2022, the fourth in winter 2023, and the fifth in winter 2024. Funding for a sixth season was announced in November 2024. Cast In the studio, other than w ...
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Shortland Street
''Shortland Street'' is a New Zealand Prime time, prime-time soap opera centring on the fictitious Shortland Street Hospital. The show was first broadcast on TVNZ 2 on 25 May 1992 and is New Zealand's longest-running drama and soap opera, being broadcast continuously for over 8,000 episodes and 32 years (as of December 2024). It is one of the most watched television programmes in New Zealand. The show was originally screened as five half-hour episodes each week, and received mixed reviews on its premiere. After its launch, the show suffered a drop in ratings and would have been cancelled if TVNZ had not ordered a year's worth of episodes in advance. TVNZ renewed the production in early 1993 after the show's ratings picked up, and the show has since garnered "long-term public enthusiasm". Today, it is one of New Zealand's highest-rated shows, frequently making AGB Nielsen Media Research's top 5 programmes of the week, achieving an average linear daily reach of 345,000 viewers ...
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Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee
''Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee'' is a New Zealand television comedy panel show on Three, created and presented by Guy Montgomery and co-hosted by Sanjay Patel. The show is loosely based on a spelling bee: each episode, four comedians participate in a series of rounds, where the goal is almost always to spell words or names in rounds that are "designed to be infuriating to take part in and entertaining to watch". The winner of each episode competes again the following week, and the loser of each episode (the one who got last place) must wear a dunce cap in the Dunce's Corner. The first series of ''Guy Mont-Spelling Bee'' aired in 2023, and the second series aired in late 2024. An Australian version of the show was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 2024. ''Guy Mont-Spelling Bee'' was renewed for a third series in 2025. Background and production Guy Montgomery, inspired by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, began hosting spelling bee ...
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7 Days (New Zealand Game Show)
''7 Days'' is a New Zealand comedy game show focused on current events, hosted by Jeremy Corbett and created by thedownlowconcept. It has aired on Three since its premiere in 2009. Two teams, consisting of a team captain until 2022, nearly always Paul Ego and Dai Henwood and other comedians, answer questions about stories from the last week; since 2022, the team captains have changed each week. , ''7 Days'' has aired for 16 seasons, with a 17th planned for 2025. Show format At the start of each show, Jeremy Corbett announces a content warning, saying "the following show is for adults only and contains bad language that may offend some people". This is often followed by an opening joke based on an event in the past seven days. On some occasions, the content warning became the joke – including being said in a parody of ''Downfall'' (following several Auckland schoolboys saluting the Nazi flag), being missed out completely (while the Prime Minister was out of the country), ...
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Angella Dravid
Angella Dravid (born C. 1985/1986) is a New Zealand stand-up comedian, writer and actress. Biography Dravid was born c. 1985/1986 in Oman to a Samoan Christian mother and Indian Hindu father. She stated that being of mixed race, there were many arguments at the family dinner table, like whether to eat meat. She emigrated with her family when they settled into the rural town of Naracoorte, South Australia. Dravid played the violin in high school and met a classical musician in a music chat room. He told her that he had been in the studio where The Spice Girls recorded. She moved to the UK to start a relationship with the man, who was older than her. They married the following year. Their relationship became abusive; aged 19, Dravid was arrested and convicted of assaulting her husband with a picture frame. There was nobody Dravid knew who could bail her out in the UK; she spent two months in prison and three years in a bail hostel, whilst pursuing work at the Royal Ascot racecou ...
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New Zealand Herald
''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand, peaking at over 200,000 copies in 2006, although circulation of the daily ''Herald'' had declined to 100,073 copies on average by September 2019. The ''Herald''s publications include a daily paper; the ''Weekend Herald'', a weekly Saturday paper; and the ''Herald on Sunday'', which has 365,000 readers nationwide. The ''Herald on Sunday'' is the most widely read Sunday paper in New Zealand. The paper's website, nzherald.co.nz, is viewed 2.2 million times a week and was named Voyager Media Awards' News Website of the Year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. In 2023, the ''Weekend Herald'' was awarded Weekly Newspaper of the Year and the publication's mobile application was the News App of the Year. Its main circulation area is the Auckland ...
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The New Zealand Herald
''The New Zealand Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Auckland, New Zealand, owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, and considered a newspaper of record for New Zealand. It has the largest newspaper circulation in New Zealand, peaking at over 200,000 copies in 2006, although circulation of the daily ''Herald'' had declined to 100,073 copies on average by September 2019. The ''Herald''s publications include a daily paper; the ''Weekend Herald'', a weekly Saturday paper; and the ''Herald on Sunday'', which has 365,000 readers nationwide. The ''Herald on Sunday'' is the most widely read Sunday paper in New Zealand. The paper's website, nzherald.co.nz, is viewed 2.2 million times a week and was named Voyager Media Awards' News Website of the Year in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. In 2023, the ''Weekend Herald'' was awarded Weekly Newspaper of the Year and the publication's mobile application was the News App of the Year. Its main circulation area is the Auckland R ...
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