Every morning this week we’ve been counting down the top 100 New Zealand TV shows of the 21st century so far. Today, the one you’ve all been waiting for: numbers 20-1.
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Welcome to The Top 100, a week-long celebration of the most significant local television of the last quarter century. Every day, we will count down 20 iconic shows, and explain why they deserve a place in our history books. Our criteria included everything from popularity to polarisation, critical acclaim to cultural impact, innovation to influence, longevity and legacy (more about that here).
While not everything could make this list, and we have undoubtedly forgotten things despite our best efforts (the comments are open for your feedback), we hope this serves as a reminder to champion the unique stories that only we can tell, and celebrate all the people trying to tell them. Feel free to check off the shows you have seen as you read to create a cool custom watchlist to continue your New Zealand education into the future.
Let’s crack into it.
Monday: 100-81 | Tuesday: 80-61 | Wednesday: 60-41 | Thursday: 40-21
20. Fair Go (1977-2024)
[Eds note: While we ruled out current affairs in our criteria, we decided to give Fair Go a fair go as it sits within its own consumer affairs multiverse. Mad about it? Email Fair Go.]
Fair Go, as former presenter Haydn Jones put it, was “the show nobody wanted to appear on”. You were either ripped off or ripping someone off to end up on the long-running consumer rights series, and in its 47 years, Fair Go never suffered from a shortage of issues. Whether it was chasing down dodgy tradies, changing insurance laws or finding missing cows, Fair Go battled for the underdog, righting wrongs for everyday New Zealanders when nobody else would.
And boy, did we need their help. We complained about identity theft and used car dealers and the diabolical state of marshmallow easter eggs. We whinged about faulty appliances and fitted sheets, and Fair Go investigated the ratio of hokey pokey to ice cream not once, not twice, but three times. The show’s reporters (including 27-year veteran Kevin Milne) tackled big and small complaints with the same weight and respect. They also made us laugh, with creative skits and musical numbers and the highly anticipated annual ad awards.
Fair Go made a difference, every single week. TVNZ cancelled the top-rating series in May as part of cost-cutting measures, and while the Fair Go inbox remains open, the half-hour TV series is no more. Its legacy is powerful and tangible, one that changed lives and defended victims and taught us how to stand up for ourselves. Fair Go was simple, compelling storytelling that resonated with viewers for five astonishing decades, mostly because it represented everything we believe in: that everyone in Aotearoa deserves a bloody fair go. / Tara Ward
19. Creamerie (2021-)
You can read through the top 100 list and see the many ways that New Zealand television has been building towards a series like Creamerie. There’s the post-apocalyptic reimagining of New Zealand as seen in The Tribe, the black political comedy of Funny Girls, and the pioneering representations of Flat3 and Friday Night Bites, the latter of which were quite literal training grounds for the creative team behind Creamerie’s dark dystopian universe.
Created by Roseanne Liang with Ally Xue, JJ Fong and Perlina Lau, Creamerie is set in a world where a deadly virus has killed every man on the planet and sperm is now liquid gold. When they discover Bobby (Jay Ryan) on their dairy farm, they are forced to become insurgents, moving through their world with a huge and valuable secret. Season one ends with the most shocking moment on local screens, and season two expands upon the world of corruption.
As I wrote in 2021: “Is there anything like Creamerie on local television? No. Is there anything like Creamerie on television anywhere? Probably not.” The third season is somewhere on the horizon, but you can excuse the delay. Roseanne Liang went on to direct Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as Maude vs Maude starring Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry. Creamerie was sold to Hulu and became a huge hit overseas, landing a glowing review in the New York Times.
Creamerie is a singular vision, proud local genre storytelling which broadened representations and won the world over. Raise a glass of milk (at least I think it’s milk) to that. / Alex Casey
18. New Zealand Today (2019-)
New Zealand Today is yet more gold spun from the Jono and Ben writers’ room – a satirical, tongue-in-cheek news and entertainment show, hosted by comedian Guy Williams in a trademark brown suit, telling the untold stories of everyday New Zealanders. Williams’ boorish, shouty persona belies a deep intelligence and curiosity about people. He straddles the high-status / low-status divide and is a genius at getting people across the country to talk to him candidly (sometimes too candidly).
The result is some gaspingly funny and genuinely jaw-dropping television as he investigates small town crimes, internet dramas, foul-mouthed local characters, racist politicians, feuding restaurateurs, and the inability of people who live in Oamaru to pronounce the town’s name correctly. Some of it is absurd. Some is profoundly affecting and unexpectedly heartwarming, such as his buddy movie-adjacent road trip with career criminal Arthur William Taylor to apologise to a woman Taylor had frightened in the middle of a botched burglary.
Perhaps the show’s most subversive, satirical element is the way it exposes a cosy, nostalgic bias in much of our national lifestyle programming – one that’s very good at sanding down the rough edges of New Zealand. Despite being a “volunteer journalist”, Williams is telling the weird, random, grubby, and frequently compelling stories of the people who aren’t reflected in the chilled whites and dahlias on Waiheke via Country Calendar. Instead, they can be found at an impromptu living room rave in suburban Timaru, with nangs, Cody’s, and a thoughtful conversation about men’s mental health. / Erin Harrington
17. Harry (2013)
The subtext of Harry, TV3’s hugely underrated crime drama, is trauma. Oscar Kightley’s South Auckland detective joins the ranks of gifted, flawed, flayed television cops – Cracker’s Fitz, John Luther, Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison – who drag their personal baggage behind them like a ball and chain.
Is Harry Anglesea, just back from bereavement leave in Samoa after the suicide of his wife, ready to go back to work? If the answer was yes there would be no show. Kightley’s melancholic resting face is the focal point for a performance of sustained intensity. Harry is a man of few words, many of them ‘f***‘, as he fends off grief, guilt, cultural obligations and the pain of his 13-year-old daughter, Mele, with the help of anger, whiskey and a crushing addiction to work.
Is there a better representation of the inevitable hypocrisies of parenthood than Harry’s lecture to Mele – “Don’t assault any students. Don’t get pissed. Try to learn something.” – delivered through a thumping hangover?
Sam Neill and his bristly moustache feature in the role of Harry’s beleaguered boss. When the script demands the delivery of a line like, “Right then, I’ll pull a rabbit out of my arse, shall I?” he’s the man for the job. The series is bleakly urban, bloody and confronting in the nuance it brings to the character of a young addict. The sheer human waste of it all. The story is based on real life. The Samoan dialogue goes untranslated because life doesn’t come with subtitles. The pairing of Neill and Kightley is pure gold.
There should have been another series. It’s not too late. / Diana Wichtel
16. What Now? (1981-)
For generations of New Zealanders, What Now is remembered fondly as a pivotal part of their childhood. Every Sunday morning since 1981, the children’s TV series was a friendly face on the other side of the screen, a jubilant escape into a high-energy world of colour and creativity. To an adult, What Now was chaotic and messy and full of noise, but to a kid? It was heaven.
What Now began 1981 as a half-hour show that aimed to “create healthy leisure attitudes” in children. By the 2000s, it had blossomed into a kids TV extravaganza bursting with jokes, competitions, comedy sketches and more gunge and foam than you could ever dream. The new millennium welcomed in a variety of energetic and warm-hearted hosts, including Anthony Samuels, Jason Fa’afoi, Shavaughn Ruakere, Carolyn Taylor and Props Boy, and later, Gem Knight, Adam Percival and Ronnie Taulafo – and let’s not forget Camilla the Gorilla, the only What Now figure to ever prompt a Fair Go investigation into whether she was indeed a gorilla.
A show needs to evolve and innovate to survive for 40 years, which is exactly what What Now has done repeatedly since 1981. It toured the country, visiting rural communities across the motu and giving every kid the chance to be on the telly. It broadcast from a car during a level four Covid-19 lockdown, and this year, made its most significant shift by going “digital first” in response to the changing habits of young audiences (aka YouTube). For all that change, one thing is constant: What Now remains a rip-roaring celebration of New Zealand childhood in all its vibrant, chaotic, gungey glory. A true national treasure. / Tara Ward
15. Mataku (2002-2005)
Supernatural anthology Mataku, aka “Māori Twilight Zone”, was the first television drama of its kind to be written, directed and produced entirely by Māori – a genuine success worth celebrating, but one that also highlights the historic scarcity of Indigenous and bilingual programming on our screens. The award-winning show ran across three seasons – two on TV3, and one on TVNZ. Each half-hour tale of the unexpected was introduced with gravitas by Temuera Morrison, with an honour roll of Māori screen and stage royalty in the credits.
Co-creators Bradford Haami and Carey Carter looked to American and British supernatural media like Tales from the Crypt and Vincent Price films. They combined these styles of gothic storytelling with Māori elements of oral traditions, mythology, spirituality, and pūrakau, all created with tikanga-informed production practices. The show’s framing as a “Māori Twilight Zone”, or a “Māori X-Files”, was pretty useful: the show was a domestic success that was also created (and funded) with the global market in mind. Its application of a Māori lens to a broadly accessible style of postcolonial gothic storytelling proved popular in territories including Canada, Finland, Israel and Russia.
Some standalone episodes engage directly or obliquely with contemporary political issues, such as the use of 1080 poison. Some look to Māori identity and politics, and many engage with the impact of language and culture loss, land theft, and relationships of contemporary Māori with tūpuna and Māoritanga. The stories are complex, uneasy. Visually, the episodes now look a little dated, but the storytelling is compelling and the show’s point of view is still distinctive. Like other genre offerings on this list, Mataku highlights the power of ghost stories to entertain and challenge audiences, while offering deep insight into the way the present and the past are inextricably connected. It’s well-worth revisiting. / Erin Harrington
14. Neighbours at War (2005-2015)
Beginning in 2005, Neighbours at War spent a decade at the borders of low-scale conflict in Aotearoa, documenting the type of disagreement or raru this isn’t quite actionable by law but definitely is upsetting to communal peace. On issues of driveways, noise pollution, perceived insult or implied perversion, the show placed itself in the gap abandoned by Big Authority, where everyday New Zealanders live in friction.
Neighbours at War picked its battles very carefully: we don’t want anything too serious, but we do want something interesting. This fine balancing act flowed through the series’ narration from veteran voiceover artist and director Bill Kerton, the mind behind the anarchic comedy of Havoc and Newsboy and the voice behind straight-laced reality shows Highway Patrol and Dog Squad. Kerton’s work on the show always rode the line between policeman and student radio jock with a brilliant comic tension.
Alleged petty vandals, alleged undie thieves, alleged bogans and alleged communists could make up either side of an issue, and people in a state of disgreement can act out in some very odd ways. When you hear someone accusing a septugenarian lady as the first in line at an adult bookstore opening, or a rural neighbour cast in suspicion as the secret identity of Lord Lucan, there’s a natural limit to how seriously a situation can be taken.
A simple piss-take wouldn’t make the Top 100 shows list though, and certainly not the Top 20. The magic in this mid-millennium treasure comes from the fact that it often resolved the trouble between neighbours, settled with a cup of tea and a handshake and even a little compromise. At the fine edges of our country, where fencelines are sometimes battlelines, Neighbours at War won us all a little peace. / Daniel Taipua
13. Funny Girls (2015-2018)
It was a weird experience to be sitting on your couch at 10 on a Friday night, howling with laughter over an upbeat musical sketch about trying to not to get raped on your tipsy walk home from town, but it’s something I really miss. Funny Girls found the sweet spot between incisive satire and big goofball energy, poking at specifically female-centric concerns. I read this sentence back and it is such a trash descriptor for a show that did a particularly good job of highlighting the frequently dude-centric nature of comedy – specifically sketch comedy – and how much we’re missing when we don’t look beyond those lived experiences.
Across three seasons, Rose Matafeo, Laura Daniel and Kimberley Crossman play dirtbag versions of themselves, trying to get their show made in a manly network full of patronising dudebros, butting up against the incompetence of producer Pauline (Jackie van Beek) and the perennial notion that girls just aren’t that funny. They lead a cast of 20-somethings made up largely of performers associated with the long-running improv show Snort, such as Brynley Stent, Chris Parker and Rhiannon McCall, many of whom have gone on to impressive national and international comedy and television careers.
It’s done on the smell of an oily rag, but takes great advantage of a safety-in-numbers writers room approach. A variety of banal and everyday settings mock the soft look of much women’s lifestyle programming. Men look after babies on the strippers’ stage at a hen’s night while women scream; a woman calls up a hotline, getting off as she’s told how much she’s respected; workplace discrimination is a source of hilarity; ads for household products go horribly wrong; bitchy retail assistants with pronounced vocal fry revel in being toxic assholes.
Like much successful TV comedy of this era, there’s clear links to TVNZ U (RIP) and Jono and Ben as training grounds. The big question today is what pipeline will support the next generation of comedians and writers. / Erin Harrington
12. Ahikāroa (2018-)
The longest-running bilingual scripted series in the country’s history, Ahikāroa has cemented itself as a cultural platform that gives voice to Māori stories with authenticity. Now six seasons deep, the show follows the trials and tribulations of a group of urban-based rangatahi Māori, as they navigate life as “kura kids” in the big smoke, delivering mākutu, murder and mayhem.
Led by writer Annette Morehu, and starring talents like Turia Schmidt-Peke and Nepia Takuira-Mita, Ahikāroa showcases the power of te reo Māori by embracing a strong digital presence, streaming across multiple platforms and engaging audiences with interactive features like its “phrase of the day” on the show’s website. This innovative approach allows fans to connect with the series in real-time, blending entertainment with cultural education.
With high-end production and gripping, relatable storylines, Ahikāroa has amassed a solid following among rangatahi Māori and beyond. Bold in its storytelling, Ahikāroa doesn’t shy away from hard-hitting topics, with storylines like Geo’s battle with sexual abuse and Hemi’s exploration of political activism showing the depth and diversity of its characters. In addressing these issues, Ahikāroa has allowed viewers to work towards overcoming their trauma.
“Growing up I never saw Māori accurately portrayed because of a lack of Māori writers, producers and directors telling our stories,” Morehu told The Spinoff. “I have had so many people come to me and tell me how much it has helped them to see those stories being told.” Having just released its sixth season and with no signs of slowing down, the enduring and groundbreaking world of Ahikāroa looks set to continue long into the future. / Liam Rātana
11. Eating Media Lunch (2003-2008)
I once ate a media lunch with Jeremy Wells. It was 2004 and he had a limonata to toast the news that the final that year of the show he was hosting, TV2’s Eating Media Lunch, had out-rated makeover juggernaut Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He didn’t seem to know how the show got away with it either, even at that time when you could do blistering satire that owed something to the dark parody of British comedian Chris Morris’s Brass Eye and The Day Today and not only get screened, but win the odd award.
Wells, unleashed from the cuddlier persona of Newsboy, was the implacably po-faced man for the job of host on a show he created with Paul Casserly and Great Southern Television’s Philip Smith. Some of the show’s material remains burnt into your retinas. Take the parody of Target, the lurid consumer advice show that famously secretly filmed laundry-sniffing tradies (“Surely this is inappropriate!”). “Bad language, nudity, toilet humour (minus even the saving grace of a toilet), perverse acts with plastic wrap and floral arrangements…,” I groaned in my first EML review. It became instant appointment viewing.
Many of the show’s more challenging moments could never be made now and one hesitates to even mention things like a parody porn movie in te reo Māori. The show was at its best when satirising the broadcaster’s response to the hail of complaints the show drew: “unfortunately, the TVNZ charter means we have to show this shit” and making genre mashups like “Great Artworks of the Auckland Art Gallery with Darth Vader”. Still, a medium that runs on blithely screening gratuitous violence and all the other nonsense we gawp at can take some freakishly inventive skewering. Those were the days. / Diana Wichtel
10. 7 Days (2009-)
The remarkable longevity of TV3’s topical panel show, along with how it propelled local comedy back into the mainstream, has earned 7 Days the first top 10 slot. The original local format that has been on air since 2009 and, while the show has had some timeslot shifts and made some welcome changes to adjust its poor gender skew, it’s pretty much otherwise stayed the same. You’re still going to laugh at regular segments like My Kid Could Draw That, cringe at politicians in Yes Minister, and enjoy musicians forcing news stories to fit into their songs in Slice of Seven.
It’s also proved a regular testing ground for new comedy talent, much like the British panel shows that 7 Days owes a lot to (e.g Mock the Week). As 7 Days veteran Josh Thomson reflected in a recent My Life in TV, comedians were surprisingly few and far between on the telly in the late 2000s, especially on panel shows. “There was a long time where we just settled for having sports stars being our comedians on TV. It was fine for sportspeople to tell a joke, but for a comedian to tell a joke it was like ‘don’t tell me what’s funny’,” he said.
Now, with its rotating cast of local (and, sometimes even international) comics and its enduring beloved format, 7 Days remains a fixture on our screens. “It’s become a place for young comics to aspire to be on,” said Thomson. “It really is an iconic comedy institution, and hopefully it keeps going a little bit longer.” / Stewart Sowman-Lund
9. The Brokenwood Mysteries (2014-)
You may think that The Brokenwood Mysteries is a little corny or cliched for your peak TV tastes, but the rest of the country, and the world, absolutely does not. Let me throw some facts and figures at you: beginning in 2014, The Brokenwood Mysteries has become an entirely self-funded entity; it is now filming its 11th season; it airs in a whopping 150 countries; and filming locations have become tourist attractions for fans. When international audiences are taken into account, this may very well be our most-watched show ever.
That means what Tim Balme and co have done, taking a classic BBC murder mystery blueprint then giving it an Aotearoa makeover, is something very special and incredibly rare. “It’s like a self-saucing pudding. We make it, it sells, so we get to make more,” Balme told The Detail recently. In that interview, Balme revealed the show’s popularity is yet to peak. “This is the nuts thing, the crazy thing – season 10 has just aired … and the numbers were through the roof, numbers like we have never seen before,” he said.
Like it or not, detective inspector Mike Shepherd and detective Kristin Sims are going to be stuck solving grisly murders in Brokenwood for a long, long time to come. / Chris Schulz
8. Country Calendar (1966-)
What began in 1966 as a 14-minute rural news bulletin for farmers has now become our longest running series and a national taonga alongside pavlova and the dildo that hit Steven Joyce in the face. It’s our beloved Country Calendar. The iconic theme song alone has burnt itself into the brains of generations of New Zealanders. The show is so popular it has even built a strong following in the New Zealand canine world.
The format of Country Calendar is basic, yet effective. Travelling all over the country, the show provides insights into the lives of hard working New Zealanders making a go of… whatever it is they do. One week we’re watching someone wrangle wild horses on 90 Mile Beach and the next, we’re diving for pāua with a fisherman from Rakiura. It’s a source of inspiration, information, and connection for New Zealanders here and around the world.
“I think it helps to provide a little window into rural life that people want, but don’t have an easy way to achieve,” Julian O’Brien, the show’s former producer, told The Spinoff in 2022. “We want it to look as though we were just driving past a farm and went, ‘I wonder what goes on there’.” Over the years, there have been iconic spoofs, episodes that felt like a piss-take but were real, and a constant insight into innovative land-use practices as they have evolved over time.
“We try to pitch the show in a way that farmers won’t feel like we’re teaching them to suck eggs, but at the same time, city people won’t go ‘I don’t understand this’,” O’Brien said. “That’s always a bit of a delicate balance, but I think the numbers show we get it pretty right.” She’s right. To this day, nothing comes close to the audience Country Calendar continues to pull in. Just last month, the show averaged approximately 222,000 viewers in the 5+ audience. / Liam Rātana
7. bro’Town (2004-2009)
If bro’Town aired in 2024, there would be hundreds of complaints, threats to advertisers and it would probably be pulled mid-season with a bland apology. So aren’t we all lucky it aired in 2004 instead. Yes, it still got complaints and yes, the complaints weren’t without merit (the racial stereotypes and often lazy one-liners earned them) but the show’s themes and characters are just as relevant today. Often, jokes we find offensive are offensive, but they’re also offensively unfunny. Bro’Town was offensive, but it was really, really funny. Turns out that counts for a lot.
As New Zealand’s first ever primetime animated show, bro’Town delivered on being a cartoon for adults that – accidentally or not – became a cultural and linguistic pillar for a generation of New Zealand kids. Has any show’s dialogue entered the New Zealand lexicon more comprehensively than bro’Town? Unlikely. Here’s just a handful of lines pulled from just the first few episodes that are instantly recognisable 20 years later.
- Not even ow
- That’s racial
- I’m going to the pub… I may be some time
- Peow peow
- You sssslut
- Up your arse… hole
- [John Campbell voice] Maaarvellous
There have been shows since that have covered the same topics or used similar formats, many of them excellent, but thanks to its place in time (right before the internet truly took over), bro’Town stands alone for its immediate and lasting cultural impact. / Madeleine Chapman
6. Wellington Paranormal (2018-2022)
It’s been true love since Officer Karen O’Leary found herself hanging by her pants from a fence in episode one of Wellington Paranormal, spouting off bland procedural bullshit that could have come straight from Police Ten 7, having failed to catch a demon on the run. The show is an inspired spinoff of 2014’s What We Do in the Shadows, building on O’Leary and Mike Minogue’s scene-stealing cameos as cops so dimwitted we couldn’t tell if they had been hypnotised by vampires, or were just utterly inept.
The show explores the pair’s world through a combination of reality mockumentary aesthetics, improvisation, droll workplace comedy and monster of the week shenanigans. A who’s who of New Zealand comedians and actors have appeared across show’s the four excellent seasons as the team investigate vampires who are treating frozen blood bags like Juicies, horny taniwha, pissed off werewolves, haunted Nissans, and swinging 70s ghosts. The comedy leans on a combination of bathos and absurdity, in which monstrous happenings are undercut by serious Kiwi “ah yep” understatement. The show’s cheap-as-chips aesthetic belies some very smart creature effects, and its deadpan humour is so dry it sucks all the moisture from the air.
It’s remarkable how quickly dim-witted Officers Minogue and O’Leary have become bona fide national treasures, appearing frequently on screen and on air in character. The characters have truly taken on a life of their own, the fake cops appearing in recruitment videos and road safety ads for the actual New Zealand Police (sample message: “don’t be a speed demon”), and even Covid health advisories during 2020’s lockdown. It’s pretty interesting to see the New Zealand Police embrace comic characters who do such a good job at mocking them. This is internationally unique, and perhaps the next mystery to be solved / Erin Harrington
5. Celebrity Treasure Island (2001-)
Get in here you lot! And when I say you lot, I of course mean every single sports star, television presenter, actor and comedian worth their beans and rice over the last nearly 20 years. When Celebrity Treasure Island first started in 2001, it was a show chiefly concerned with “documenting the tedium of being on a desert island with nothing to eat”, showcasing the many ways to fashion a bandana, and decoding clues written in Y2K txt speak thanks to show sponsor Telecom (“fnd hgst wtr @ tp o ths pl = ‘find highest water at top of the place”).
Still, all the ingredients were there – hunger, isolation, odd personality combos – for the franchise to eventually evolve into the raw, moving, revealing, funny, family-friendly series it is today. While there’s always been dramatic accidents and tearful personal revelations, the CTI needle shifted most markedly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Comedian Chris Parker’s underdog win, arriving while the country’s biggest city was in its 75th day of lockdown, felt like a near-unparalleled moment of triumph and much-needed good news.
Winning $100,000 for charity is great, but the beauty of CTI has always come in the little moments around camp, where surprising friendships are forged and our most high profile personalities are revealed to be complete and utter freaks or mysterious smooth guys. An increasingly wide casting net has meant that we’ve seen activist Tāme Iti nailing a catapult, former deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni being sung a Samoan song by Gaby Solomona while trying to hold up a box with her feet, and Spankie Jackzon arriving in full drag.
There is simply nowhere else on local television where you get those kinds those kinds of people all sharing the same screen. But don’t just take my word for it: last week JP Foliaki became the first Pasifika person to win CTI, and spoke beautifully about the power of CTI’s in representation: “When you can see it, it feels like it’s within arm’s reach, right? I’ve got young nephews and nieces, and for them to see me on a show with the likes of an All Blacks legend or Suzanne Paul… it puts things in perspective, especially if you have big dreams.” / Alex Casey
4. The Casketeers (2018-)
A funeral home is probably the last place you’d expect to find joy, but when Francis and Kaiora Tipene opened the doors of their business to camera crews in The Casketeers, that’s exactly what we got. Documenting the day-to-day operations of Tipene Funerals, from uplifting the bodies of the deceased, through embalming and preservation, to service and burial or cremation, the series explores how they adapt and adjust to the needs their culturally diverse client base. Most often we see the elders of communities at their passing but sometimes, painfully, the passing of younger members and even children.
Somehow, miraculously, the show delivers all this with a calm cheer. The husband-and-wife couple bring the whole of their personality to their on-camera and at-work roles: Francis a fastidious eye for small details but tiring eye for larger ones, Kaiora a levelling influence with indefatigable energy. You’ve never seen a couple work tirelessly to bury a stranger’s loved one with dignity and kindness and compassion, then argue over the strength of a leaf blower, or the location of a stolen biscuit – and you never will in any other show.
The staff of Tipene Funerals also bring the whole of their culture to their work. Francis and Kaiora both are proud in their Reo Māori and Māoritanga generally, and it clearly shapes and strengthens their approach to death and life. Right now we live in a political environment where Reo Māori is being characterised as alienating and exclusionary, and yet this bilingual series about a Māori business has triumphed as one of our most successful television exports of the decade – a global Netflix deal, an avid international audience, six seasons and a new spinoff series looking at funeral cultures around the world.
The Casketeers has succeeded globally by valuing what is local. The Māori approach to grieving has some very distinct features; it is sacred but also open and inviting, a time for departure but also togetherness, a process where joy and living accompany the pain and sadness of loss. The Casketeers perfectly captures how this indigenous outlook can help in the universal experience of death, how loss and laughter can work side-by-side, and how eager the wider world is to learn from our at-home lessons. / Daniel Taipua
3. After the Party (2023)
Two of the most-read pieces on The Spinoff in 2023 were reviews of After the Party. The six-part drama starring Robyn Malcolm in arguably the best performance of her career managed to break through the local drama malaise and become appointment viewing throughout its brief run.
While the premise was universal (a woman, Penny, grapples with the crime she’s convinced her ex-husband committed, alienating herself from her community the more she doubles down on that conviction) the show was distinctly local. Wellington is showcased as an actual city, rugged and dangerous if you stop paying attention. Malcolm and the suite of supporting actors are, for the most part, understated and not shooting for Hollywood delivery.
But where the show really sets itself apart is in the grey areas. The protagonist is unlikable, the villain vile and the innocent bystanders wilfully ignorant. There’s no tidy ending or big redemption. And, somehow, they pull it all off.
When After the Party aired, Duncan Greive’s initial review labelled it “NZ’s best TV drama in years”. After the final episode, Madeleine Holden and I deemed it “the best TV drama we’ve ever made”. It was a bold call, and one certainly coloured by recency bias, but a year later I remain convinced. As far as story, execution and performance, After the Party is the best TV drama New Zealand has ever produced. As a single limited series, it is nearly perfect. And if Malcolm is to be believed, it will remain a single, nearly perfect limited series forever.
What stops it from taking the top spot are its limitations as a cultural product. After the Party may be the most well-executed drama New Zealand has ever made, and has been garnering rave reviews in Australia, but its strength (regular people as characters, an ordinary and almost mundane grittiness) is also its weakness. In short, no one will be dressing up as Penny for Halloween this year. But they also won’t forget her anytime soon. / Madeleine Chapman
2. Outrageous Fortune (2005-2010)
Cheryl West. There aren’t many local television characters with her enduring brand recognition. When her largely useless jailbird husband goes down for a longer-than-expected lag, Cheryl breaks out her signature fish pie and sets about putting her bent family on the straight and narrow. Good luck with that.
From its start in 2005, Outrageous Fortune was audacious. It ransacked Shakespeare for the show’s name and epic episode titles –‘The Fat Weed that Roots Itself’ – and confounded critics by being really good. We didn’t all see it at first. Too bogan, not bogan enough; the characters talked like TV writers (in this case creators Rachel Lang and James Griffin). After my first review, an email arrived from one the show’s creative team. Not the inventive invective a reviewer can get. Just a request to keep watching.
Over six seasons (and a five season spinoff series) Outrageous invented a chaotic, comic, not unviolent, strangely poignant version of Westie Auckland that was somehow us. The incomparable Robyn Malcolm, Antonia Prebble, Antony Starr, Frank Whitten, Nicole Whippy, David Fane… Everyone brought an antic humanity to characters that might have been just caricatures. Outrageous injected the perfect theme song – Hello Sailor’s ‘Gutter Black’ – and a bit of mongrel into our increasing careful, gluten-free, decaffeinated lives.
Among the West’s many crimes were those against fashion. Two decades on, it’s still impossible try to rock leopard print without thinking, “Cheryl West”. / Diana Wichtel
1. Shortland Street (1992-)
8,000 episodes. 32 years. One Dr Love. No matter how you look at it, there is no more significant New Zealand television show this century than Shortland Street.
Already, I can hear it: “please, tell me that is not your number one TV show”. Rude? We’ll show you rude. People often look down on TV soaps, as if there’s something unsophisticated about watching the same show every night, but Shortland Street is so much more than just a soap. For the past three decades, this plucky little primetime drama set in an Auckland public hospital has held up a mirror to who we are, over and over again, in ways that no other New Zealand show can. It’s filled with our voices, our histories, our jokes. It’s diverse. It’s multicultural. It’s funny and heartbreaking and often completely bonkers.
Shortland Street is also our most progressive TV series, tackling every social issue over the years: mental health, sexuality, addiction, abuse, Big Pharma, sexism, racism, all the isms, private/public ownership, underage sex, assisted dying, teen pregnancy. Its first civil union wedding was in 2006, its first trans character introduced in 2016, its first fat storyline this year. It champions te reo Māori and the drama often reflects real headlines (like the recent storylines about removing bilingual signs and closing down the Māori and Pasifika health clinic). The show has become so influential that the government even teamed up with Shortland Street to help recruit real-life nurses.
But these big issues are nothing without Shortland Street’s authentic characters and compelling, often gloriously over the top, moments. Where were you when the Ferndale Strangler was revealed in 2007, or when Dr Sarah Potts died unexpectedly in 2014 to mass public mourning, or when Mt Ferndale erupted, or when Drew nearly drowned in a poonami? Shortland Street has never stood still, constantly reinventing itself to stay relevant and fresh. Their 2001 musical episode has sadly never been repeated, but they pashed perspex to get through Covid, jumped through time in 2023 and recently delivered the show’s most intense episodes ever.
You don’t have to be a fan of Shortland Street to recognise its value. We can’t overstate the impact Shortland Street has had on our screen industry, named in this report as New Zealand’s most influential production. Since the new millennium, it provided a launchpad to international careers for numerous actors like Thomasin McKenzie, Frankie Adams, Rose McIver, Robbie Magasiva and KJ Apa. It also has a critical influence on those working behind the camera, with the five-nights-a-week, 48-weeks-a-year series providing constant training and employment for hundreds of writers, directors and production crew.
“It is absolutely vital,” former Shortland Street actor Miranda Harcourt told The Big Idea. “We certainly wouldn’t be where we are, joining the party at such a high level and punching above our weight in the global TV and filmmaking market with success at the Oscars and Emmys… without Shortland Street.”
Shortland Street was a game changer for me as a child – finally, here was a juicy new soap that unapologetically featured our accents and our issues. Now, my own children have grown up with Shortland Street woven into their pop culture fabric; they only know a world where it’s a bigger deal for Chris Warner to grow a beard than it is for characters to converse in reo Māori or lesbian nurses to get married. Next year, Shortland Street faces its own game changer when it slims down to three episodes a week, a reflection of the changing habits in television and a tough commercial environment.
But if the past three decades have shown us that if anyone can shift and adapt, it’s Shortland Street.
Unlike other shows on this Top 100 list, Shortland Street will probably never receive an Emmy or a glowing New York Times Review, or even many New Zealand TV awards, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a perfectly imperfect show that takes the everyday lives of everyday people and turns them into emotional and addictive viewing. It is exactly who we are. It is the best of us, and it is the most significant New Zealand television show of the 21st century. / Tara Ward
Monday: 100-81 | Tuesday: 80-61 | Wednesday: 60-41 | Thursday: 40-21