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Just a few of the cops that have been seen on New Zealand TV from the years. (Image Design: Archi Banal)
Just a few of the cops that have been seen on New Zealand TV from the years. (Image Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureMay 12, 2023

A definitive and long list of every New Zealand cop show ever made

Just a few of the cops that have been seen on New Zealand TV from the years. (Image Design: Archi Banal)
Just a few of the cops that have been seen on New Zealand TV from the years. (Image Design: Archi Banal)

If there’s one genre of TV drama we love to make – and watch – more than any other, it’s cop shows. Sam Brooks attempts to round up all of them.

It’s hard to go past a cop show for entertainment. The genre pretty much guarantees all the main things you want from a TV drama – namely some drama, enough intrigue to keep you wondering what’s going on for at least some amount of time (unless you’re one of those people like my mother who could predict the ending to every script within the first five minutes) and some kind of satisfying resolution at the end. Also, all the main characters seem to shame the same unfortunate first name: “Detective”.

New Zealand television makers have been taking this formula to the bank for decades now. We must produce more cop dramas per capita than any other country in the world. Every year we get some variation of the same poster – two impeccably made-up actors wearing suits and showcasing their best glower, the bottom halves of their body showing off the landscape of wherever their show is set, the title illuminated somewhere around them.

The promo images for The Gone, The Gulf, One Lane Bridge and The Brokenwood Mysteries. (Image Design: Archi Banal)

That’s to say nothing of the individual quality of these shows – many of which have won a lot of awards, and are remembered fondly – but we do make a lot of them, don’t we? Here’s as many of them as I could find, and you may see a common theme emerging.

(My definition of “cop show” here is that it had to have a police officer or detective at the centre of the story, and could not be a docu-series – so no Police 10-7 or Motorway Patrol.)

Top of the Lake

The first series of this critically acclaimed show was set in the South Island, and starred Elisabeth Moss as a detective investigating the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl.

Ngaio Marsh Theatre

Screening way back in 1978, Ngaio Marsh Theatre was based on four murder mysteries by the titular dame herself – Vintage Murder, Died in the Wool, Colour Scheme and Opening Night. It followed inspector Roderick Alleyn (George Baker) as a pleasant Englishman solving crimes in a green and picturesque New Zealand. An early predecessor to Brokenwood Mysteries.

Kevin Smith in Lawless: Dead Evidence.

Lawless

The first in a trilogy of telemovies starring Kevin Smith as cop-turned-private investigator John Lawless, caught between his divided loyalties and the law. These films aren’t just named after the main character, but also his morals!

Lawless: Dead Evidence

The second Lawless movie finds John Lawless working as a bouncer in a bar when former partner Jodie Keane (who is presumably as “keane” as Lawless is “lawless”) enlists him to investigate a case of an incarcerated American who might’ve been framed.

Lawless: Beyond Justice

The third and final Lawless movie finds Lawless and Keane teaming up to seek the truth behind an apparent suicide. Frankie Stevens plays a “shady nightclub/porn operator”, which is a sentence you don’t get to type very often.

My Life is Murder

Not just Lawless, but Lucy. The series, the second season which was produced here, sees the actress playing Alexa Crowe, who solves the most baffling crimes while trying to live her life, which is presumably, murder.

Mortimer’s Patch

Detective sergeant Doug Mortimer (Terence Cooper) returns to work in the small town of Copham. Airing back in 1980, this was called our “first” police drama.

The cast of Interrogation: Luanne Gordon, Peter Elliot, Miriama McDowell, Jay Ryan, John Leigh.

Interrogation

An interrogation of the high stakes drama of the police interrogation room, led by detective sergeant Angela Darley (Luanne Gordon) and detective constable Terry Skinner (Scott Wills).

Tiger Country

Tony ‘Horse’ Radiscich (Sean Duffy) and Stephanie Wilson (Laurie Foel) investigate a murder in Wellington’s northern suburbs. They encounter false leads, personal demons, and pressure from the top brass. Patterns are beginning to emerge here.

Plainclothes

Plainclothes was revolutionary at the time for the fact that detective sergeant ‘George’ Samuels was a woman, played by Rhondda Findleton! While getting on with the job she faces leadership threats, sexism, and I presume actual cop stuff.

Temuera Morrison and Rebecca Gibney in Ihaka: Blunt Instrument.

Ihaka: Blunt Instrument

Tito Ihaka (Temuera Morrison) teams up with PR-savvy police media officer Kristy Finn (Rebecca Gibney) to solve the murder of a supermodel. But, you guessed it, they come up against the barriers of procedure and personality clashes!

The Bad Seed

Detective Marie Da Silva (Madeleine Sami) investigates a group of rich people who loosely resemble the characters depicted in Charlotte Grimshaw’s novels, The Night Book and Soon.

Section 7

This 1972 series focussed on a probation service office, and the low-level criminals they had to engage with. There’s probably a reason why we haven’t had many shows based around probation officers since?

The cast of The Brokenwood Mysteries

The Brokenwood Mysteries

Detective senior sergeant Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea) and detective Kristin Sims (Fern Sutherland) investigate the murders that take place in the idyllic town of Brokenwood, which has to have an extremely high murders-per-capita ratio, eight seasons in. Millions of French people love this show.

Undercover

Inspired by the real life case of Wayne Haussman, young undercover cop Tony (William Brandt) gets in too deep while infiltrating a heroin ring in the underbelly of Wellington’s music and pub scene. 

Percy The Policeman

Bruno Lawrence and Bill Stalker star in this series of short comedies for children. It actually never aired on TV, due to fears it cast the police in a bad light, unlike the rest of these shows which portrays the force as being full to the brim with functional individuals well-suited to their career path.

Oscar Kightley in Harry.

Harry

Following his wife’s suicide, troubled Auckland cop Harry (Oscar Kightley) is thrown into a murder investigation and the criminal underworld. 

Alibi

In the rural community of Awatahi, a 17-year-old girl has been murdered, and the six subjects share their whereabouts on the night of their death. Tandi Wright plays Detective Robin Carter, assigned to find out who did it.

Shark in the Park

Inspector Brian ‘Sharkie’ Finn heads up a unit policing inner city Wellington in the late 80s. There are no actual sharks and surprisingly few parks.

Mike Minogue and Karen O’Leary in Wellington Paranormal.

Wellington Paranormal

This What We Do In The Shadows spinoff follows officers Minogue and O’Leary as they hunt down strange creatures in Wellington.

Duggan

Detective inspector Duggan (John Bach) attempts to solve murders amid the tranquillity of the Marlborough Sounds. It’s presumably easier than solving murders amid the tranquillity of inner city Wellington, given the other entries on this list.

Jackson’s Wharf

The sibling rivalry between Frank (cop!) and Ben (“big smoke lawyer”) comes to a simmer when Ben inherits the local pub from their father. 

Orange Roughies

Four police and customs officer, detective sergeant Danny Wilder (Ncholas Coghlan), senior customs officer Jane Durant (Zoe Naylor), detective constable Zach Wiki (Mark Ruka) and Noel Bullerton (Nick Kemplan) deal with the specific crimes that police and customs officers have to deal with.

The cast of Secret Agent Men – arguably not police officers per se.

Secret Agent Men

Fifteen-year-old secret agent Jack West (Nicko Vella) and his friends must battle the forces of evil to save the world, while finishing their homework and dealing with being teenagers at the same time. Does secret agent = cop? Was Jack West under the jurisdiction of the NZ Police? We’ll never know, as this show has been off the air for almost two decades.

The Hothouse

The Hothouse explores “good times, bad decisions, and the line between right and wrong”. The… thin blue line, perhaps? Yep, the cast of five includes three cops, a lawyer and a cocky drug dealer.

The Gulf

Troubled investigator DSS Jess Savage (Kate Elliott) solves cases on Waiheke Island while also trying to piece together the death of her husband in a suspect car crash.

Mark Mitchinson in Bloodlines.

Bloodlines

This telemovie is based on the real-life case of Dr. Colin Bouwer (Mark Mitchinson) who poisoned his wife Annette over the course of three months. His colleague, Andrew Bowers (Craig Hall) stumbled upon the murder. No cop so far, right?

Enter Detective Brett Roberts (Wll Hall) heads up the case in dogged pursuit (is there any other way) of the truth.

Siege

This one is also based on a true story – of Napier man Jan Molenaar (Mark Mitchinson, again) shooting at police executing a search warrant, and the 50-hour siege that ensued.

Rage

Technically a Springbok tour telemovie, but also very much one with a focus on a cop (Maria Walker), an undercover cop who infiltrated the anti-tour movement and who – shock – is dating a protestor (Ryan O’Kane).

Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Another true story! This one, from way back in the 80s, tells the story of Arthur Allan Thomas, jailed for six years for a murder he didn’t commit. Inspector Bruce Hutton (David Hemmings) is on the case, which lasted for several years.

Some members of the farming family at the centre of One Lane Bridge’s mystery, played by Jared Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Peter McCauley and Sara Wiseman.

One Lane Bridge

New Zealand’s first drama based on a rural infrastructure project. Kidding! It’s about Ariki Davis (Dominic Ona-Ariki) and Stephen Tremaine (Joel Tobeck) investigating a mysterious chain of deaths which have occured on the titular bridge near Queenstown.

The Gone

In the most recent cop drama to debut on our screens, a young Irish couple vanishes from a small town, and Irish detective Theo Richter (Richard Flood) teams up with local detective Diana Huia (Acushla Tara-Kupe) to find them.

Missed any? sam@thespinoff.co.nz

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So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?
So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?

Pop CultureMay 11, 2023

Who is she: A quest to find the women behind some of NZ’s most famous song titles

So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?
So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?

Many of the great New Zealand songs have one thing in common: a woman’s first name as their title. Alex Casey went on a mission to find the real women who inspired them.

She keeps me waiting in the morning by tying ribbons in her hair. She’s just so sweet, so fine, so polite too. She’s oh so nice and easier to love than I.

She’s one of the many women who have been forever immortalised through the majesty of New Zealand song, her name sung off key during many a drunken night out.

She’s Lydia. She’s Sophie. She’s Cheryl Moana Marie. She’s Victoria.

But who is she, really?

‘Cheryl Moana Marie’ by John Rowles (1970)

Is she real? She’s bloody real!

Despite multiple attempts to contact the Rowles empire, I was unable to get anyone to talk about this song for my investigation. Luckily, better journalists in the past have managed to unearth the truth. Get ready: she’s real but… she’s also his sister. Talking to the Dominion Post in 2014, Rowles said that he came up with the song from his hotel bed in London. “I just thought for a while and my sister’s name came to me, Cheryl Moana.”

He already conjured up the lyric “there on the shore she waits so patiently,” the story goes, but needed to add something to her name to make it rhyme. Stealing another one of his sister’s middle names, Marie, he created the hybrid name for a slam dunk 1970s Kiwi classic. “For many people it’s a song they love and they connect with special memories,” Cheryl told Stuff in 2014, “it’s lovely he wrote something like that and I’m connected with it.”

Let’s ignore the Lannister vibey lyrics and crash onto the next song.

‘Maxine’ by Sharon O’Neill (1983)

Is she real? Real person – but not her real name.

Speaking to me over the phone from Australia, Sharon O’Neill was more than happy to reminisce about the enigmatic woman who inspired ‘Maxine’. “I was based in Kings Cross with my band in 1980 and we were doing a lot of touring that took us out of town. We would be getting back quite late at night and that’s when I noticed her – pretty much every night we would get in and she’d be there.”

Despite never talking to her, O’Neill found herself scribbling down an imagined version of “Maxine’s” life. “She was working small hours of the morning and in those days it was very rugged for street girls – every conceivable scenario unfolded up there, a lot of underworld crime, so I really felt for her.” Keen to take her time with writing it, she sat on the song for a few years. “It was one of those things that I really didn’t want to rush.”

Not the real Maxine

The name Maxine came from a woman O’Neill met through one of her male castmates during a pantomime production in her hometown of Nelson, many years prior. “I always thought it was a really cool name – as soon as I met her I thought that.” Returning home after the single was released, her former castmate came to the gig to tell her that he had since married and had kids with Maxine. “I still tell him to give my love to Maxine,” she laughs.

As for the woman who inspired the story in the song, O’Neill has no idea what happened to her. When the video for the single was filmed in Kings Cross in 1983, the real Maxine was nowhere to be seen. “Everyone knows that song and everyone still sings along to it, so I have a lot to thank her for,” says O’Neill. “All I can hope is that she’s still alive and she got out of there. Maybe she found her own Richard Gere, that would be nice.”

‘Victoria’ by The Dance Exponents (1983)

Is she real? Real person AND real name!

Due to the rich vein of ‘Victoria’-based content out there already, I don’t even really care that Jordan Luck didn’t respond to any of my requests for comment – it’s fine actually, I don’t think about it at all. Ever. Not even now. Anyway… VICTORIA IS REAL!!!!!! “I recall lots of stuff but I don’t recall paying rent,” Luck told lucky old Stuff in reference to his flat in 1980s Christchurch. “Our landlady, Vicky, did not seem to mind us.”

Part escort worker, part landlord, that same Vicky became the central character in what is largely considered one of the greatest New Zealand songs of all time. Although Luck reflected in the same Stuff interview that the domestic violence theme in the song could have been made stronger – he feels weird singing it at weddings – Vicky herself was happy with the song after it was released. She even put large promotional poster for the single on her wall. Iconic.

‘Glorafilia’ by Zed (1999)

Is she real? Not in the slightest :(

“I’m sorry to tell you this but Glorafilia is fictitious,” says Ben Campbell from Zed. “She’s inspired by different people and frustrations, but the name itself doesn’t specifically reference an existing human.” As a punter who rocked out hard to this song at the Masterton Summer Hummer in 2001, this one stung. Campbell penned the lyrics at the tender age of 17 after staring at his parents’ bookshelf for inspiration. “I randomly grabbed one called The Glorafilia Needlepoint Collection.”

He was instantly charmed by the name. “It had an interesting roll to it phonetically, it created a hook instantly as soon as I sung it. That whole chorus just came out in one go, and then the verse came out. It was one of those songs, just like most best poppy songs, that comes really quickly.” Fellow bandmate Nathan King came over later that afternoon and helped him finish the last verse. “We never even questioned the name Glorafilia. It was just a girl’s name to us. Except it absolutely wasn’t.” 

According to my professional Facebook stalking and a fruitless, confusing call to Births, Deaths and Marriages, there is nobody in New Zealand who has been named Glorafilia since the song was released. Nonetheless, her blonde-dreadlocked legacy lives on. “It’s part of my history and I’m proud of it,” says Campbell. “I love it for what it is – a very sweet and innocent and naive love song written by a 17-year-old. Plus, she got us a record deal and a career in music.”

I asked if he could imagine what Glorafilia, our national manic pixie dream girl, would be doing now. It really felt like he had already been thinking about it for a long time. She’d have to be a milliner or a curtain maker now. I think she’d be like Josie from the Giant’s House in Akaroa – Glorafilia has definitely spent most of her life making mosaics.” 

‘Lydia’ by Fur Patrol (2000)

Is she real? Yeah, nah, not really.

“Lydia is an amalgamation of a couple of situations,” Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans tells me. “I’d say she’s like a dream character, like someone who is a little bit of yourself and a little bit of someone you know and a little bit of someone you’ve never actually met before.” Deans wrote the song in her early 20s, while she was trying figure out the intricacies of relationships and rejection. What I was trying to get at was – even though that shit hurts, there’s no point in holding onto bitterness.”

She remembers the song coming to her incredibly quickly one afternoon. “It really felt like the song just fell out of the ether and straight into into my guitar and mouth. I literally wrote it in about five minutes, it was one of those moments as a writer that you just live for. I still have no idea where it came from, so it’s incredibly humbling that it’s still around.” As for the name? “I just plucked it out of the air. There’s something about it that allows you do that kind of ‘ugh’ schoolgirl emphasis on it, which I love.”

To this day, people come to Deans and tell her that they were named after the song. “I think that’s really sweet but then a part of me is like… is that a nice idea?”

‘Sophie’ by Goodshirt (2001)

Is she real? YES YES YES YES 100% YES!!!!

Skin my knees and throw me to Fiji, baby, because Sophie from ‘Sophie’ is about as real as bloody climate change. “I was a teenager and there was this girl in my drama class that I liked, so I thought it would be quite edgy to write a song about her,” says Gareth Thomas from Goodshirt. “I managed to sound out the alliteration early on – she was sweet and fine and polite so that quickly became the chorus.” He liked the song, but he didn’t tell anyone about it for years.

What he didn’t manage to keep secret were his feelings for Sophie. After writing the song, he finally built up the courage to ask her on a date. It was a special date too – a romantic dinner for two at a posh restaurant that he had won through a radio competition. “I was so shy,” he remembers, “she was the first girl I ever took out to dinner.” He walked her home, but there was no kiss and no second date. They both went off to university and never saw each other again.

It was years later when Goodshirt formed that the song resurfaced again. “We had just got together and we needed some songs to play, so I brought out ‘Sophie’.” The rest of the band liked it, the record company liked it, and it was set to be their first single. “It was a real shock at first,” says Thomas, “but then it became a really good feeling because I was finally able to let go of this song.” By 2001, the song was out in the wild and everyone was singing about Sophie.

The question remains: what does the real Sophie think about the song? Thomas recalls one instance where a radio station tracked her down, but she denied it was about her. “She was so modest,” he remembers, “it definitely was.” The Spinoff made several attempts to find Sophie, but she clearly got the same memo as John Rowles and Jordan Luck and did not respond. Although Thomas has since moved on with his romantic pursuits, he’d still love to talk to her again.

“I just hope she’s doing well. She’s helped me pay off my student loan, so I’d really like to thank her for that.”

This story was originally published in 2019.


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