The Frog & Cheetah The Frog & Cheetah

Welcome to S03E02: the poetry, fake your own death, embezzlement, Cluedo, Persian rug, DNA test, boating reprise episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, featuring homosexualism, St Judas church and Amelia and Rebecca's friend's brother as a grave digger.

If you knew you were going to die, would you pre-record yourself reading a poem to play at your funeral, or would you get the local florist to do it for you?

If you ran a funeral home, would you let a coffin slide out of a hearse onto the road?

If someone came from San Francisco to play a role-play version of Cluedo with you and they disappeared, would you assume they just went back to San Francisco again?

If you got a tattoo of your own name, would you choose the font Lucida Italic?

Things have got complicated. Jared's an orphan. Everyone who's ever died in a Shortland Street Christmas cliffhanger is here. And in Logs On, we find out what was in Fern Sutherland's beauty bag in 2016.

Follow us on Instagram: @frogandcheetah

It's been a rough week for Amelia and Razz, with sickness, technological issues, failing to acquire 'very legal DVDs' of Brokenwood Season 3 and being negged in the New Zealand books media, but the gals are back and focussed on the only thing that really matters: S03E01 The Black Widower.

Ray Nielson is more than just the proprietor of the Frog & Cheetah, he's also the owner-operator of Ray's Tours: a knock-off Lord of the Rings tour company that swindles non-English speaking tourists into paying outrageous prices for a close up look at Rivendella and Helmet's Deep. But what really brings them in is the special lunch. What doesn't bring in the tourists? Ray's wife Debbie being found dead wrapped up in cobweb suit as part of a recreation of Biblo Baggins' famous battle with Shelob the giant spider. In other news, Jared's a horse guy now. And Kristin won't stop asking Mike about his drowned wife.

All of this and more! Amelia's been on Shelob the spider's Wikipedia. Rebecca thinks that Brokenwood needs a German consultant. We also hear the backstory of how the podcast came to be but more importantly, a fascinating anecdote about when Amelia got bullied after seeing Revenge of the Sith in 2005. Karawhiua.

Howdy y'all, it's the country music episode and Amelia. . . is having an existential crisis about being a podcaster during humanity's downfall. Luckily Razz is here to move her swiftly along into what really matters: the Season 2 finale 'Blood Pink'. 

Mike Shepherd's favourite country music star Holly Collins has been found dead in a motel bathtub holding an electric guitar. Her boyfriend Waylon Strings has gone missing. The bassist Slim Fingers has gone missing. The tour manager Keith has gone missing. The roadies have gone missing. A child called Choosie Choo has gone missing. The only people left behind are a superfan called Celia who left her husband behind in San Francisco because he was too into brass band music, and the band's drummer Jesse James who'd just gone to get some Twisties. Will Mike and Kristin ever get to the bottom of this? And can they do it without holding problematic views on drug rehabilitation and men wearing pink t-shirts? (No)

Stay tuned for all this and more, which here means Amelia's triumphant return to being dryballs with some info about guitar electricity, a trip down memory lane with colour free iceblocks, fictional hospital Shortland Street's transition between private and public healthcare, New Zealand's plastic money, which breakfast radio DJs would be willing to expose a plagiarism scandal, and the DVD that taught the gals about the struggles of interracial marriage. And you'll never guess which historical figure Amelia calls a pissy little bitch. Yeehaw!

Is The Frog & Cheetah your favourite aspirational podcast, but you wish it had more detailed information about the duties of New Zealand fisheries officers ?

Well, well, well!

In S2E3 'Catch of the Day', Jared's gone out for a surf at Brokenwood Beach and found a severed hand in a crayfish pot. It's pointing at him like Des the Devil used to point at him before his fishing boat blew up five years ago. Could these incidents be. . .related? The cray pot does have a 66 on it, which we all know is an abbreviated version of 666 the devil's number. It looks like Mike and Kristin will have to pull a few late nights to get to the bottom of this one, looking at old timey nautical maps and trying to remember which page of The Gold Bullion  was marked before Mike yanked the bookmark out for no reason. And avoiding threesomes with the victim's wife, of course. Just another day in Brokenwood.

In Logs On, Amelia and Rebecca are using artificial intelligence to come up with new Brokenwood plot ideas and relaying anecdotes about their dads. Amelia worries she's dry.

** Note: the Australian programme about sex workers is called Satisfaction (2007 - 2010) and the boring game Rebecca describes is called Captain's Coming. The rapper Scribe is Samoan.

Follow the podcast on Instagram: @frogandcheetah

Guess who's back in the house, it's Amelia and Rebecca, here to bathe in the soft wisdom of the English language's greatest poet – Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Shepherd.

All the world's a stage and all the men, women, asthmatics and asexual people of Brokenwood are merely players. But what, ho! Did someone say the name of the Scottish play in the theatre? In S02E02, To Die or Not to Die, a 21-year-old orphan has died all over the stage during an amateur production of Hamlet. And not from an arrow of outrageous fortune, nor from tripping over a hardback copy of Infinite Jest either. So, what happened? A plague on both their houses would get the show cancelled, surely. Was it a happy dagger or something else? Mike and Kristin are on the case. Now that Kristin's decided the victim has actually died and wasn't just. . . milking it on stage.

This episode is incredibly gay and contains discussion of The Matrix, review culture, queer and trans representation, the amyl nitrate ban and the Ellen sitcom. In Brokenwood Logs On, a reporter at the Manawatū Standard thinks Brokenwood is on too late and also has some reckons about 'high speed porn'. 

Follow us on Instagram!: @frogandcheetah

CW: brief mentions of sexual violence and self-harm

Ho ho ho it's Christmas! And don't you want to have Christmas on Brokenwood Island? 

In today's Very Special Episode, Amelia and Rebecca read out some Brokenwood-based holiday fanfiction for your listening pleasure. Why is it snowing in Brokenwood? Will Kristin and Breen kiss in a cloud of weed smoke on New Year's Eve 2005, or will the lavender deodorant be too off-putting?

Also, Rebecca relays a tragic story about a high school performance of Titus Andronicus and Amelia thinks that it's normal to cook a chicken on Christmas morning. Plus special bonus content: an extended discussion on when The Killers first made it big in New Zealand. 

Happy holidays!