I don’t know what inspired me to re-watch The Nanny but before long I found myself curled up in the mildly cold Auckland winter watching episode after episode of this sitcom from the 90s.
I hadn’t considered it as a piece of entertainment, or something that you would watch consciously, more something you watched because it happened to be on. My main memory of The Nanny was of it airing in that strange deadzone between afternoon programming for children and the news – a zone where you might have also found Food in a Minute or 5:30 with Jude. This is something I often wondered as I made my way through all the show’s six seasons last year. “Did The Nanny ever actually play in primetime in New Zealand?”
Six seasons later, this is what he learned. One day last year Sam Brooks started re-watching The Nanny and didn’t stop.