Tara Ward pays tribute to an underappreciated orb.

Say what you will about balls, but TVNZ has an orb like no other. The TVNZ 1 big ball first bounced onto our screens in 2016, when a brand refresh introduced us to a multi-coloured globe taking a solo journey around New Zealand. For six long years, we’ve watched that lonely ball hitch a ride on a farm ute and take a leisurely float down the Avon, bounce down lanes and spin along the pink cycleway in Auckland, the city where big balls go to make their dreams come true.

And in all that time, not once has anyone questioned what the fuck that ball is doing there.

Every day on TVNZ 1, as one show ends and another begins, The Ball travels from north to south and back again. It floats along rivers and climbs over hills, defying gravity as it spins and bounces and dribbles willy-nilly. Nobody knows where The Ball came from, and nobody knows where it will end, not even John Campbell. This lone wolf lives by its own rules.

For years New Zealand bore the myth of Man Alone, but now we have Ball Alone, an existential experience in spherical form. The Ball is strong, silent and seemingly indestructible. If it had arms, it would likely smoke. If there was a power ranking of balls, it would be number one, mostly because it has a big “1” on it. It is better than every other round thing in Aotearoa, including those pissy Waihopai spy bases and any Zorb you care to insert yourself into.

And yet, The Ball unites us. It says, I can take you places, New Zealand. I can take you here and there, I can take you anywhere. Would you, could you, in a car? Would you, could you, Seven Sharp?

One minute you’re enjoying your milkshake outside the Te Anau Dairy, the next a giant sphere rolls past to remind you that the new series of Doc Martin is available. The Ball rumbles down the big slide at the Margaret Mahy Playground because Tipping Point is about to start, and in a sinister twist on The Chase, follows a group of four strangers until they escape by jumping into Lake Wakatipu in the middle of winter. Those were your people today, New Zealand. That’s The Ball, tonight.

But the most remarkable thing about The Ball is that everyone pretends they haven’t seen it. When it hurtles down a Queenstown hill, a pair of trampers barely give it a second glance. You’d think we’d all freak out at seeing a big ball ride a bus, but those kids laugh like it happens every day. The Ball even turns up on a sushi train, for crying out loud, but those diners just carry on chatting and not one of them makes a dirty joke about balls on a plate. There’s a massive globe hooning out of control across the nation, and nobody seems to think it’s weird.

Even when it’s imprisoned inside TVNZ, everyone acts like The Ball is invisible. Lately it’s been lurking in the darkest corner of the Seven Sharp set, silently seething and waiting for Jeremy and Hilary to validate its existence with a cheeky wink or an exposed shoulder, as if to say: we see you, we feel you, we roll with you. It’s not too much for a ball to ask, and yet, nothing. Nobody puts Baby in the corner, but as for Ball-by? That Seven Sharp studio has a lot to answer for.

Perhaps you’re too busy with normal things to think about The Ball. Perhaps I’ve thought about it way too much. All I know is that life is one long revolving sushi train and The Ball is the sticky rice to television’s spicy wasabi. It might be a metaphor for TVNZ’s reach, it might just be a ball. Either way, it’s an interstitial icon, and the best ball in New Zealand. It probably hums both verses of the national anthem when it picks up speed. Long may that stupid orb reign over us.