Some opinions are worth paying for

I do believe there is a lot of great writing about entertainment out there in the world, but I am having great difficulty finding it sometimes - so much of it is buried in slop or behind too many paywalls to follow.

But as this year winds down, I do want to shout out two writers whose work I've followed all through 2025, who have been killing it on a consistent basis, and who are more than worth paying money for. 

One is my mate Chris Schulz, one of the few proper music writers left in this country. His Boiler Room newsletter is great, talking about the big picture and the small details of going to gigs in New Zealand (and sometimes Australia) in the year 2025. 

Schulz has been an entertainment journalist for a couple of decades now, and occasionally he breaks some real stories about rip-offs and scams and outright injustices, but my favourite part of his newsletter is when he talks about the vibe of the audience, and how it actually feels to go to a big show. So many gig reviews are full of fannish glee and little else, and it's genuinely nice to read ones that have a bit if substance to them. 

The other writer whose work this year has been unmissable has been Sean T Collins' series for Pop Heist on classic TV -  he's already covered the Prisoner and I, Claudius, and managed to find many things to say about shows that have had millions of words written about them (although I did think the Fall Out coverage was just a little thin, but that's because if I had to do a 365 days of essays about a single topic - like Collins did with Roadhouse - I could do it on that final episode).

Collins is currently getting stuck into Twin Peaks, and is remarkably finding new things to say about that show too, and each episode recap is an absolute joy, especially when most deep dives into Twin Peaks get stuck in the 'look at how weird it is', while Collins focuses on the sheer humanity of the characters, and it's still a rich vein of thought after 30 years.

It ain't easy being an entertainment writer in this day and age, but there are some still doing the good work out there, and it's work that is worth paying for.