Tara Ward watches TVNZ’s sleek and scenic new murder-mystery series.

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It’s a beautiful day in Central Otago for a car to plummet off a cliff. Somewhere deep inside Skipper’s Canyon, a car leaves the road and tumbles down the hillside, rolling and twisting and bouncing off rocks as it crashes to the valley floor below. Nearby, a plane has a much safer landing in Queenstown, as a woman wearing a wooly hat and scarf disembarks and sighs a sigh that can be heard from Glenorchy to Glendhu Bay.

It’s the opening moments of TVNZ’s new series A Remarkable Place to Die, and we’ve just met Detective Anais Mallory (Chelsie Preston-Crayford). Anais hasn’t a moment to lose on her return to her hometown of Queenstown, because the body in the car has no identification, other than a snazzy pair of red sneakers. Suicide, or murder? Either way, it’s the third recent fatality in Skippers, another “idiot gone over the edge,” as Anais’ grumpy colleague Simon Delaney (Matt Whelan) puts it. Anais’ sister Lynne (After The Party’s Tara Canton) was one of those “idiots” two years earlier, a young woman known for her careful driving but who inexplicably drove off the road.

Something is wrong in paradise, and nothing will stop Detective Mallory from finding out what it is.

In its first scenes, A Remarkable Place to Die feels a lot like fellow New Zealand cosy crime drama The Brokenwood Mysteries, from the twang of the country music theme song to the team of small-town officers who have to unravel the tangled strands of this unusual murder mystery. But where Brokenwood has a quirky, rural charm, Remarkable leans more into swanky aesthetics: it’s a ridiculously beautiful show to watch. All the murder suspects live in expensive, architecturally designed homes with lake views and huge windows, and Central Otago is a vision, all golden hills and jagged mountains and gravel roads that lead only to heartache.

Each 90-minute episode features a self-contained murder case, with the mystery around Lynne’s accident running through the four-episode series. Anais returns to a changed Queenstown: her friend and colleague Sharon (Lynette Forday) is now her boss, her best friend is now involved with Anais’ shady ex-fiance, and her relationship with her mother Veronica (Rebecca Gibney) has also fallen off a metaphorical cliff. Veronica hates it when Anais is late home for tea, and doesn’t care that her daughter is a clever detective who carries a red folder everywhere and says things like “speaking of sneakers, anything back from traffic on that moped?”

It’s no wonder Anais is late for tea, given how much talking there is in this show. Chelsie Preston-Crayford is brilliant here, appearing in nearly every scene and making every line feel believable. She brings a convincing depth to Anais, who at one point has to break into fluent Spanish while interrogating a suspect in front of a pie cart about a pair of stolen shoes. Inevitably, she’s going to hook up with sensitive pathologist Ihaka (Alex Tarrant), who definitely wouldn’t get all passive aggressive if Anais was late for tea after a hard day of solving crime. “Let me hold your red folder for you,” Ihaka would probably say, “and you can tell me about your day – in Spanish, por favor”.

A Remarkable Place to Die is sleek and glossy, and clearly a vehicle to take New Zealand to the world. It’s an international co-production between Screentime NZ and Real Film Berlin, and as well as screening in New Zealand, will air across Germany and the US on ZDF and Acorn TV. The show has to appeal to a broad, global audience, which explains why it embraces an all-too-familiar storyline: troubled detective returns home, finds secrets at every turn, and by uncovering the truth, risks destroying the only family she’s ever known.

It’s also a well-made, quality drama that’s safe and easy to watch, with some unique New Zealand aspects, like the conversation between two Māori police officers about a tangi, or when Ihaka talks about caring with manaaki for a murder victim. The stunning scenery will no doubt have overseas tourists itching to jump on a plane immediately but, beyond that, it doesn’t push any boundaries. It feels a lot like shows we’ve seen before, like Brokenwood or One Lane Bridge, the latter also a crime drama set in picturesque Queenstown.

But as linear TV dies away and the struggle for funding continues, perhaps we can expect to see more shows like A Remarkable Place to Die – New Zealand-made co-productions by international funders who want stories that pull in international audiences. Does this mean we’re less likely to put our more unique and unconventional stories on screen? Are we moving into an era of low-risk storytelling? And does that even matter, if Remarkable finds the same level of international success and keeps the industry working as with Brokenwood?

There’s more to unpack here than just a pair of red sneakers at the bottom of a cliff. Better get Detective Mallory on the case.

A Remarkable Place to Die streams on TVNZ+ and screens on TVNZ1 on Sundays at 8.30pm

On Wednesday, kiwi legends Elemeno P dropped a new song. ‘Shiver’ either marks a huge change in direction, unfettered use of AI, copyright infringement or an upload error. Gabi Lardies investigates.

“Woah, this build up is crazy.” I’m watching my colleague listen to a song I’ve been replaying all morning. She frowns and looks bewildered. I giggle. After about 30 seconds, she whips the headphones off. “I’ve heard enough.”

Mostly, she’s been hearing a male voice sing “my shiver comes to you” accompanied by dramatic electronic strings, keys and drums. According to their artist pages on Apple and YouTube, this is Elemeno P’s first new song in 13 years.

But to my ears, there’s not a wisp of the fun-loving power-pop anthems Elemeno P became known and loved for in the early 2000s (‘Fast times in Tahoe’, ‘Verona’, ‘11:57’). Instead it’s a strange electronic gloomy vaporwave crossed with Muse-like space rock. Whoever is singing doesn’t have Dave Gibson’s screamy, bouncy quality, but something talky and faux dramatic. The band’s signature group backing vocals are gone, and so too are instruments, apart from digital renditions. The track sounds like an ad for a fantasy video game.

‘Shiver’ is on YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify. On Spotify, it’s separated from the rest of the band’s discography by a pesky full stop. It’s under “Elemeno P.” rather than “Elemeno P”. Strangely, there’s nay a mention of the song on any of the band’s social media accounts. Under the YouTube video a fan has commented, “This doesn’t sound like gibbo at all.. someone buggared up and put this song against the wrong band?!”

The track is so tinny, electronic and flat, the lyrics so cliched (“ignoring rules and instructions”, “the writing is on the wall”, “ash into ash”) and barely sensical that one may wonder if it’s an AI creation. Identifying music made by AI is more complicated than counting demented fingers, or knowing that newborn babies simply can’t sit up or crouch to go fishing in puddles. I listened over and over again, hoping to catch a strange glitch, or unnatural voice modulation, but my ears are not musically trained. I turned to the experts. An online tool called Ircam Amplify claims to be able to detect music made by AI with 98.5% accuracy. When I ran ‘Shiver’ through it, it was 91% confident that AI did not write it. But does that mean that precious national treasures Elemeno P did?

On Spotify the credits state that it’s performed by Elemeno P, but written by Dmytro Honcharov and Oles Stepanov – up till now, neither of these names have been associated with the band. Yet they do appear to be real people. According to a portfolio website, Honcharov is a Ukranian photographer and cinematographer based in London. When I emailed him to ask about the song, he replied simply, “No I didn’t create any music tracks.”

Oles Stepanov is Ukranian too, or at least based in Kyiv, according to his Facebook page. He is a full service record producer and sound engineer, with fewer than 300 followers. His website gives a “402 Please renew your subscription” error message, but he regularly posts “how to make music” video tutorials and his own music on his Facebook. The most recent one teaches people how to make “cinematic orchestral track with Japanese ethnic instruments”.

He posts instrumental music under his own name, and has seven monthly listeners on Spotify. These tracks sound much more like ‘Shiver’ than anything Elemeno P has made, though none have vocals.

Back on the Elemeno P YouTube channel, there appears to be more clues. The caption states “Provided to YouTube by TuneCore”. TuneCore’s website sells itself to musicians as a platform from which to distribute music across Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, while retaining ownership and copyright.

An internet search for “TuneCore sue” reveals a series of headlines from the past couple of days about Universal Music Group, ABKCO and Concord Music Group suing TuneCore and Believe (its parent company) for copyright infringement. The accusation is that TuneCore and Believe are “overrun with fraudulent ‘artists’ and pirate record labels” that are distributing copies of fraudulent recordings to streaming services and social media sites. In particular, they’ve distributed music by “Kendrik Laamar,” “Arriana Gramde,” “Jutin Biber” and “Llady Gaga.” Universal say that tracks are sped up or remixed versions of popular songs, and that the “rampant piracy” exists to collect royalties. Not only does Believe allow these nefarious activities, but their business is “built on industrial-scale copyright infringement,” said a spokesperson for Universal in a statement. They’re suing for $500 million.

Perhaps the decades-old Elemeno P fanbase (2.33 thousand YouTube subscribers and over 52,000 monthly listeners on Spotify) is being leveraged for royalties. At the moment, ‘Shiver’ is tracking at 47 views, about half of them attributable to me.

I go straight to the top, because Elemeno P are rockstars who don’t reply to Facebook messages (fair). Universal Music New Zealand is quick to reply. “This is not an Elemeno P song. It is an incorrect upload that has been put to their profile, and will be removed from all platforms shortly.” When I press further, asking if the upload was an attempt at copyright infringement or someone trying to leverage the Elemeno P fanbase to make more royalties, they replied, “Occasionally this happens when artists have similar names, and in the backend their music can be mistakenly assigned to the wrong profile.” But who has a name similar to Elemeno P? Oles Stepanov has some of the same letters, I suppose.

“I will get back to you as soon as possible,” was his Facebook auto-reply.