Tara Ward: Madam, Brats, and Sprint

Madam  

Mack Leigh, faced with a philandering husband and a mountain of debt starts up an ethical brothel in small town New Zealand to provide for her family and put a new spin on sex and work (Three and ThreeNow). 

 

Brats  

Actor and director Andrew McCarthy reunites with Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy in this documentary to explore what it was really like to be one of the so-called "Brat Pack” during the 1980s (Disney+).  

 

Sprint  

With the Olympics only a few weeks away, Netflix’s new behind the scenes documentary series takes us into the world of international athletics and follows sprinters from around the world as they compete to be the best (Netflix). 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
He said, a screen time time on your Saturday morning.
This is the time every week where we catch up
with Tara Ward. She's our screen time expert. It's her
job to bring us three shows every weekend, and I'm
really excited at least about a couple of these. Tara,
Good morning, Good morning. Let's start off with the latest
Kiwi comedy drama. A lot of hype around this one.
Tell us about Madam.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, a lot of hype around Madam, partly because it's
already won two major international TV awards, one in Monte
Carlo and one in Berlin, even before it had screened
in New Zealand, so it's already been recognized as a
as a pretty special show. It's inspired by true story.
It's about a woman who opened what she called an
ethical brothel in Northland a few years ago, So a

(00:56):
brothel that puts the safety and well being of the
female sex workers first, and so this show runs with
that idea. It's a mix of comedy and drama, and
it's about an American woman named Mac who's played by
Rachel Griffiths, who decides to set up her own ethical
brothel in her small country town. She doesn't really know
what she's doing, and she has to deal with complaining
neighbors and staffing issues and the council and raising her

(01:19):
family at the same time. So it's quite an unusual
idea for a comedy drama, but as a TV show
it works. It's a very well made, very confident, very
funny piece of television and it has the most amazing cast.
I mean, Rachel Griffiths is the lead Academy Award nominee
from Muriel's Wedding and Six Feet Under, as well as
Martin Henderson, Danielle Cormack, Remediata, Robbie Makeaceiva. Just such a

(01:42):
strong ensemble cast and you know, it's something different for
a local show, which is exciting in itself. It started
on three this week, but you can also catch that
streaming on three now as well.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Cool Okay, yeah really yeah. It's great to see like
a couple of big New Zealand shows doing so well
after the Party series which was just amazing. Yeah, awesome
to see Madam doing so well. Right next up on
Disney Plus tell Us about Brats.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
If You Grew Up watching iconic eighties movies like The
Breakfast Club or Saint Elmo's Fire, then this is the
documentary for you. This is made by Andrew McCarthy, who
was one of the Brat Pack of actors. And the
Brat Pack was this group of up and coming young stars,
people like Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Rob Low, Molly Ringwold,
who all seemed to star in the same movies at

(02:27):
the same time and who were incredibly famous. And when
the term brat Pack was made, it immediately gave these
actors a really bad reputation and a label that some
of them just couldn't shake through their career. And Andrew
McCarthy has struggled with that for forty years and decides
to meet up with some of his fellow Brat packers,
many of whom that he hasn't seen since the eighties,

(02:48):
to look back on that time in their lives, and
the whole documentary is sort of a therapy session for him.
He's obviously had quite a chip on her shoulder about it.
But what I loved about this is that it dives
back into the eighties pop culture scene when Hollywood had
just started to make movies for young people like back
to Uture and Risky Business, and movies were just so

(03:09):
important and pop culture at that time. Everyone went to
the movies. Everyone kind of shared in that same that
same moment. So this is really nostalgic and thoughtful and
a great trip down memory lane and kind of you know,
you meet those movie stars that you sort of grew
up with in a completely different context, which is great,
very good.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Okay, that's Bratts. That's on Disney Plus. And a series
that my wife and I have watched this week Sprint
on Netflix.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, this is the latest in Netflix's sport documentary series
Boom and I know we talked about these kind of
shows a couple of weeks ago. Jack shows like Drive
to Survive or Tour de France Unchained. They take us
behind the scenes of a particular sport and they are
full of full of energy and fast paced with big personalities,
and Sprint is the latest of these series. This is
about the world of athletics, specifically one hundred and two

(03:56):
hundred meter runners, and it looks at what it takes
to be the fastest people in the world, the intensity
of their training, the psychology of it all, the mind
games talks to people like you, say Bolton Michael Johnson
about what you need to be so good over such
a short distance, and profiles a few of the athletes
as they train to be the very best and to
get to the Olympics. So it really immerses you in

(04:18):
that world. And I know with athletics some of us
might only watch it every four years or so at
the Olympics, and with the Olympics only a few weeks away,
this is perfectly timed. You will become a sprinting arm
chi expert in no time with this one.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Do you know that there is one of the funny
things about these series, like you watch you know, you
watch six hours worth of television and all of a
sudden you just believe that you become qualified for you know,
he's just too slow out of the blocks there and
needs to keep his head down to at least the
forty in these and the other thing my word of
caution when when watching these series is think very carefully

(04:54):
about what stage of the evening you're watching them, because
my wife and I will curl up on the couch
the other night and I was onto my second bowl
of ice cream for the weekend, and you had these
you had these elite sprinters ripping off their shirts, and
my wife, I can sort of I can sort of
see her sitting up straight in the couch all of
a sudden, intensely focused on the television as I was

(05:14):
licking the hokey pokey, thinking oh, okay, yeah right. You know,
some of the physical specimens are a little bit intimidating
for us me immortals, but never mind.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
My aspirational Yes it is.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's aspirational TV. Exactly nice that we can, yes, share
in a little bit of a well a bit of
a fantasy life. I suppose Sprint is on Netflix, Sprats
is on Disney Plus, Madam is on three and three now,
and all of those shows are on the News talks
'B website. Thank you so much to our screen time expert, Tara.
We will see you next week.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News talks 'B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.