Summer reissue: In October, we counted down the top 100 New Zealand TV shows of the 21st century so far (read more about the process here). Here’s the list in full, for your holiday reading pleasure.
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100. Reservoir Hill (2009)
I’m guessing you don’t know what this is. I didn’t either, until I watched the opening credits and was transported right back to being a teenager at the tail end of the 2000s. Twilight had just come out, the side fringes could not have been any deeper, the phones could not have flipped any harder, and the most important relationship in the world was your Bebo “other half”.
Enter Reservoir Hill, TVNZ’s world-leading “online drama” which integrated texting, social media and streaming in an ambitious early attempt to embrace the looming digital content age.
When Beth moves to a creepy new subdivision, everyone keeps mistaking her for Tara, a local girl who went missing five months ago. With a clear mystery to unravel, audiences were invited to send Beth texts and messages on Bebo after each episode, which would influence the plot and appear on screen (in what co-creator David Stubbs called a “frightening logistical effort”, they shot each episode just 48 hours before it aired).
Beth also made LonelyGirl15 style vlogs, in which she would respond to audiences (“you are right Jenny, he is bad news”). This all now serves as an incredible relic from a time before soul-destroying algorithms and smartphone addictions, where everyone was positively greening out about the creative possibilities of the internet. “Prepare for a web phenomena your kids think you’re too uncool to understand,” Stoppress wrote. Also, it won an Emmy! / Alex Casey
99. Game of Bros (2016-2018)
Game of Bros is what happens when you make fun of a reality show so much that you end up imitating it. Released as an antidote to the decidedly vanilla The Bachelor NZ, which was about to enter its second season with Jordan Mauger, Game of Bros promised to flip the script, with 12 oiled-up island men performing arbitrary challenges without shirts on to crown a winner.
The premise stemmed from the show Mr Lavalava, where a series of men tried to woo comedy duo Pani & Pani to be crowned, well, Mr Lavalava. Game of Bros took that idea and ran with it, asking toned brown men to put on a show. The show even played on The Bachelor in its advertising, so much so that Māori Television received a cease and desist from Warner Bros for using brand material.
That sort of cheeky energy permeated the show, which survived off the genuine charisma of the contestants, rather than a legacy format or primetime slot. It reminded us that entertainment does not have a price attached. And on a personal note, it was lovely to have a reality show to watch with my aunty that was competitive, brown, funny and somehow aromantic. A rare combo. / Madeleine Chapman
98. Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby (2005-2006)
Seven Periods with Mr. Gormsby is a classic sleeper hit: well-remembered and easily-forgotten by equal measure, divisive in its content, and kept alive by the internet. The show is set in a struggling Lower Hutt boys’ college that is deeply afflicted by 2000s-era woke, the students unruly and the staff ineffectual. Hope arrives in David McPhail’s titular Gormsby, an aged and anti-PC school teacher who is somehow both a renegade and a colonial-era conservative.
Gormsby’s refusal to mollycoddle his teenage students, or refrain from calling them “coconuts” or outing them as homosexual, wins schoolwide respect over two seasons. It sounds bristling in the modern era (and it was bristling at the time too,) but Seven Periods holds a million YouTube views in total and a huge legacy in Reddit mentions for underrated TV series. Digging a little deeper into the Gormsphere dark web, we see that the show is best remembered by viewers (mainly men) who were in high school when the show played – and that’s the key data point.
I don’t expect that the teenaged audience particularly cared about the workplace politics presented in the show, but nor do I think they found any exact thrill in the slurs and racial epithets. The more general takeaway is that school is mostly made up of bullshit: not because of wokeness or whatever, but the odd structures of authority and conformity that drop away as soon as you leave. In that framework, any kind of rebellion is attractive and memorable – so Mr Gormsby wins his place in 2000s TV nostalgia. / Daniel Taipua
97. The GC (2012-2015)
While we are getting our problematic faves out of the way early, we simply must acknowledge another one of the most controversial reality shows in New Zealand television history.
The GC was New Zealand’s answer to Jersey Shore, a reality series following a group of young Māori chasing “the dream of money, sex, and fame” on the Gold Coast. Pitched to New Zealand on Air as an eight part observational documentary originally called Golden Mozzies (Mozzies = Māori Aussies), the series received $420,000 in funding.
Audiences made their opinions on that funding decision known when the flashy, boozy, sex-fuelled show first debuted in TV3 in May 2012. Viewers called it “fake” and “pathetic” and a Facebook page called ‘Cancel The GC TV Show’ had thousands of fans within the first 24 hours. “About as exciting as watching tattoo ink dry,” one review said at the time.
Still, The GC rated well with Māori audiences in particular, and the series would run until 2015. Love it or loathe it, The GC was the first series to explore the experience the 130,000 odd Māori living in Australia at the time, and introduced us to a lexicon of words such “neff” (nephew) and “mumsie” (girlfriend), as well as the importance of oiling one’s skin to look “shiny and fresh”.
It’s worth noting that 2012 also saw us attempt another aspirational, glitzy reality series: The Ridges similarly enraged and amused, with it’s scene-stealing stage mouse and SPQR lunches. Was it “good”? No. Does everyone still roll their eyes when you mention either of these shows over a decade later? Yes. Are we mentioning them for that reason alone? Yes. / Alex Casey
96. Spin Doctors (2001-2003)
The burgeoning role of the communications industrial complex in the world of politics gets the floodlight applied in Spin Doctors. It’s the early years of MMP in New Zealand, and our titular PR experts are preoccupied with burnishing the public images of Helen Clark’s Labour Party and the National Party of Bill English (the first time around).
It boasted a big writing team that included Roger Hall, Tom Scott, Dave Armstrong and, providing an eye from inside the Beehive, Jane Clifton, and it needed the numbers to serve its most remarkable ambition: Spin Doctors was freshly scripted week by week in response to news events, so that storylines and asides could echo reports from parliament, whether that be the unpredictability of Winston Peters (already by then a veteran), the earnest Greens or the debate Worm. / Toby Manhire
95. Lets Get Inventin’ (2006-2013)
Let’s Get Inventin’ was the most hectic kids TV show of all time, and I was obsessed. The concept was simple: Stuntman Chris Stapp, radio guy Clinton Randell and some scientists helped kids to bring their most unhinged ideas to life. I wanted to be on it sooooo bad. The show felt core to our national identity; a celebration of Kiwi ingenuity by two unhinged larrikins.
Some inventions were practical (a sticker that measures sun exposure), other were outright dangerous (a La-Z-Boy with a jet engine), and most involved some kind of Rube Goldberg nonsense to get kids out of chores. There are two inventions that stuck with me for all these years. The first was the brilliantly named Watergate; neither a hotel in Washington DC nor a conspiracy plot, but a bucket-and-pulley system that could open a farm gate automatically. The second was a pioneer in low-carbon technology: an espresso machine powered by a V8 engine.
The inventions were ridiculous, the hosts were chaotic, and it perfectly blended the two elements of great kids’ TV: fun and a vaguely educational element. Every kid watching that show had an idea for their own invention and got excited about it. Today, some of them will be engineers and innovators, and no doubt Let’s Get Inventin’ played some small part in that. / Joel McManus
94. The Cult (2009)
The end of the 00s saw an abundance of big budget, big concept, big conversation-starter prestige shows like Lost, Breaking Bad and Mad Men, and The Cult was the first big budget prime time drama series made by Great Southern Television (who would go on to make One Lane Bridge and Hillary). It was funded for $6.4 million and was the first local series to be shot on Red Cameras (which, to give you an idea of flashness level, were also used on the Tom Hanks movie Angels and Demons and Michael Jackson’s concert film This is It the same year).
Centred around a Northland commune called Two Gardens, The Cult follows a group of people trying to extricate their loved ones. Just like Lost, there’s ensemble cast of characters, with a stacked line-up including Renato Bartolomei, Lisa Chappell, Danielle Cormack and Kate Elliot. “Most pleasing about the show is it’s believable acting, and professional production,” wrote this no-nonsense ODT review, “The money shows. It looks really good. Watch it.” Returning to the extremely slick and intriguing first episode 15 years on, I have to agree. / Alex Casey
93. The Bad Seed (2019)
Most of the spate of (comparatively) big budget crime drama through the 2010s came from one of two sources: either the imaginations of TV writers or recreations of lurid historic cases. Too few explored the large body of well-regarded fiction we’ve produced. One prominent exception was The Bad Seed, an adaptation of a pair of novels by Charlotte Grimshaw. She wrote about her view into its creation for The Spinoff, including the striking reveal of “a draft episode so riddled with cliché, schmaltz and outdated idioms, I had to restrain myself from setting fire to it.”
It’s interesting to ponder what might have happened there without her intervention, and to wish more shows had an author on hand to turn a critical eye on the script. Aired over five consecutive nights, The Bad Seed felt like a breakthrough after a low period, with restrained dialogue, steely performances and a high stakes political backdrop which occasionally got a little over-egged, but was taut and thrilling at its best. / Duncan Greive
92. Street Legal (2000-2005)
It’s no wonder Street Legal ran for four seasons and won several New Zealand TV awards, given the early 2000s drama was directed by Chris Bailey, its writers included Greg McGee and James Griffin, Don McGlashan composed the music and the guest cast included Alison Bruce, Sarah Wiseman and Anthony Starr. The show is probably best remembered for the rich performance of Jay Laga’aia as the unorthodox but formidable lawyer David Silesi.
As a Samoan lawyer working in Ponsonby, Street Legal followed the clash of cultures and attitudes as Silesi pushed every boundary to fight for his underdog clients, all while trying to keep his struggling law firm afloat. With a talented supporting cast of Cal Wilson, Charles Mesure, Daniel Gillies, Katherine Kennard and Kate Elliott, Street Legal pulsed with energy and pace, and in a TV landscape filled with American shows like The Practice and Ally McBeal, proved that we could make slick legal dramas with the best of them. / Tara Ward
91. Police Ten 7 (2002-2023)
Following a spate of short-lived frontline policing shows – Police 5, Crimewatch and Crimescene – Police Ten 7 arrived on TV2 in 2002 with a true point of difference: its host, Graham Bell. The retired detective inspector was a straight-talking, no bullshit officer whose slew of quoteables – “scruffy little thugs”, “despicable little germ” and “lunatic scumbag with a steak knife”, to name a few – quickly cemented him, and the show, into our culture for over two decades.
The situations the officers found themselves in somehow perfectly matched Bell’s give-no-shits attitude. Among the many personalities on the show, they met a bee sting survivor, a man who got his head stuck through a fence mid-arrest, this high-heeled hero and Marko from Palmy who needed help rolling his cigarette. And who can forget the lesson in thermo-nuclear science that would take centre stage on novelty T-shirts in the early 2010s?
But at some point, the laughter stopped. In 2021, then-Auckland Councillor Efeso Collins called for the show’s cancellation for using racial stereotypes of Māori and Pasifika to make “low-level chewing gum TV”, and a subsequent review found that it perpetrated harmful stereotypes against these communities. It’s a bias Bell himself admitted to having: “It’s very difficult not to develop a slight attitude to a group of people that are constantly offending,” he said in 2022.
A rebrand to Ten 7 Aotearoa barely shook off any criticism, and it was cancelled in 2023. But for all of its faults, Police Ten 7 was still responsible for solving nearly 1,000 crimes in its time on air. Is that, plus the cultural phenomenon of “blow on the pie” worth it for years of racial bias? Perhaps two conflicting truths can coexist, that the show both entertained TV audiences and victimised those the police swear to protect: the most vulnerable. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
90. Brown Eye (2015)
Brown Eye represents one of the great “what ifs” of New Zealand television. Hosted by Nathan Rarere, with a stupendous lineup of talent wrapped around him, including Taika Waititi, Paul Casserly, Jess Hansell, Pax Assadi and Jamaine Ross, all produced by Bailey Mackey’s Pango Productions. The set and colour scheme was pure 70s, presaging Guy Mont Spelling Bee, and it had the worthy aim of bringing a Māori lens to the Eating Media Lunch/Moon TV/Back of the Y axis of the previous decade.
Yet the final product was most similar to The Daily Show – explaining contemporary news events with some jokes, along with a panel which didn’t quite take off, all interspersed with interstitial segments from the likes of Waititi and Hansell, sometimes excellent, sometimes aiming for surreal but hitting mystifying. Running on Māori TV during the drift away from linear limited its cut-through, but its greatest constraint might have been that it lacked the monomaniacal focus of its key writers, preventing it from elevating to the giddying level that extraordinary roster was manifestly capable of achieving. / Duncan Greive
89. Border Patrol (2002-present)
Beginning in 2002, Border Patrol was a quiet world-first. Capturing all manner of characters and curiosities arriving on our shores, from a festering horse head to a middle-aged woman with a suitcase lining laced with $800,000 worth of cocaine, it still retains the same audience share locally that it did two decades ago, and is currently airing in over 40 different countries, including Brazil, Holland, Italy, Spain, the UK, the US, and pretty much the entire continent of Africa.
Producer Rachel Antony said that the initial appeal of Border Patrol was about seeing regular New Zealanders on TV. “There weren’t many New Zealand shows back then that featured someone who could be you, or your neighbour,” she told The Spinoff earlier this year. But that representation didn’t always feel positive, with one viewer recounting the way the show made Asian food seem “foreign and disgusting” at a time when that attitude was prevalent.
Like Police 10 7, Border Patrol contains multitudes. Along with charting two decades of biosecurity infringements, it has also captured different important historic moments and social trends in our recent history, from the closing of the border during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, to the increased volume of drugs being seized over time. It also basically invented the unboxing video, which surely counts for something. / Alex Casey
88. Inky Pinky Ponky (2023)
Inky Pinky Ponky is such a television gem that it both holds its own as a one-off episode, but could also easily be produced into five more hit episodes. In its 52-minute run, the television movie for CoconetTV manages to fill a needlessly deep gap in New Zealand entertainment simply by focusing on the real life of its show creator, Amanaki Prescott-Faletau.
Prescott-Faletau plays young fakaleitī Lisa, who is desperately trying to survive high school while also convincing yourself you do not have a crush on the big dork in the First XV (played by new Celebrity Treasure Island winner JP Foliaki). But her controlling Tongan Catholic mother, and the fact that Lisa is the only transgender person she knows, takes this story to a more compelling level than your bog-standard teen drama.
Lisa’s breaking of the fourth wall serves as a constant reminder that all she wants is understanding. But will that understanding be found from the boy she’s crushing on, the one that buys her the biggest burger from the tuck shop (genuine rizz), but also can’t confront his homophobic mates? Inky Pinky Ponky is a reminder that life is bigger than your first crush in high school, especially when you give that same love and compassion to yourself. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
87. Terry Teo (2016)
Tinkering with childhood treasures is a risky business. Terry Teo was born in 1982, with Bob Kerr and Stephen Ballantyne’s books swiftly inspiring some of our greatest comic artists. It was adapted for television a few years later, swiftly inspiring a wider generation of yellow T-shirts, skateboards and people walking around going, “Terry Teo, Terry Teo, uh-oh, uh-oh.” All of which meant that the 2016 TV reboot faced an audience of by-then-adults who were eager, sure, but equally ready to denounce any desecration.
As it was, they nailed it. As one of the Coen brothers once said, direction is mostly about tone management, and Gerard Johnstone (Housebound, M3GAN) is a master at that – just the right blend of drama and action, attitude and comedy, with just a lick of nostalgic affection. “Kinetically energetic, deeply stylised and terrifically entertaining,” gushed The Spinoff. Matt Heath was doing kickflips: “I reckon Terry Teo is not just the best kids’ show made in New Zealand in the last 10 years, it’s the best TV show full stop.”
Teo 2.0 also scored a footnote in New Zealand media history, triggering a small but tasty media kerfuffle after TVNZ released it online-only. They insisted they’d always planned to put it on terrestrial television, too, but not before some good old-fashioned huffing and puffing played out. / Toby Manhire
86. Kura (2018-2023)
The hyper-local TVNZ webseries Kura, created by Vince McMillan and James Watson, was born out of a longing to show the place they grew up in a different light. “I want this to be the new Outrageous Fortune,” McMillan told Stuff at the time, “the South Auckland version.” Following Billy-John and his best mate Hotene through their struggles navigating teenage life in the hood, it is a heartwarming celebration of friendship, family, and what really matters.
The winner of TVNZ’s “New Blood” pilot competition in 2018, Kura took a tiny budget and eventually made a series that became a streaming hit. “It’s not like it’s a slick, sci-fi production with a moving camera and stunts,” said McMillan. “It’s a bit ropey. It’s simple.” Still, Kura features beautiful cinematography led by Tim Flower and there are flourishes of the prestige – for example the opening credits are a shot-for-shot remake of the Sopranos opening.
With uniquely New Zealand humour, Kura is a feel-good comedy-drama, a nostalgic tale of two best mates spending their final days together, and a snapshot of life in Papakura that many young New Zealanders living in similar places will relate to. / Liam Rātana
85. Madam (2024)
It’s rare that a New Zealand television show wins two major international awards before a single episode has appeared on our screens, but that’s the feat Madam pulled off earlier this year. The gongs from the Monte Carlo TV Festival and the Berlin TV Series Festival were a sign that we were in for something special, and international and local viewers alike were impressed by the inspired-by-a-true-story comedy drama about a woman whose husband’s infidelity inspires her open her own “ethical brothel” in a small Northland town.
This bold, confident series features some of Aotearoa’s finest acting talent, including Rima Te Wiata, Martin Henderson and Danielle Cormack, as well as Academy Award-nominee Rachel Griffiths in the lead role of Mack. Not only does Madam give a modern perspective on the oldest profession, but it also represented disability in a way rarely seen on screen. As we wrote in our review, Madam is a testament to how much Aotearoa TV audiences have grown. “How good that a show like this can screen on mainstream television, challenging our assumptions about the world around us while also making us laugh.” / Tara Ward
84. Anika Moa Unleashed (2018-2023)
I went through a thrilling patch of interviewing Anika Moa about once a year for three years, and was always struck by how few flying fucks she gave. “When I’m speaking to someone, I’m always trying to take the piss out of everything,” she said to me in 2015. “I want to be who I truly am.” At that point her main piss-take avenue was a rinky-dink interview series called Face to Face with Anika Moa where she would yell “MOOSE” at Tami Nielsen and such things.
By 2016, she had her own talk show on Māori Television. Although she said she was “shitting herself” about the prospect, she was already on track to becoming one of the most charming, disarming and surprising interviewers around. “I’ve learned that you need to ask a question and then let people talk, instead of asking them a question and answering it for them,” she reflected six months later. She finally had all the tools she needed to unleash Anika Moa Unleashed.
Over three seasons of Unleashed on TVNZ+, Anika Moa met some of our most famous (and most guarded) people in their homes for a frank discussion, a vigorous roasting, and a touch of sketch comedy. Launching with “Paula Benefit”, Unleashed included such guests as Sam Neill, Ashley Bloomfield, and Thomasin McKenzie. All the while, Anika Moa sat there with that cheeky grin: still taking the piss out of everything, and still being who she truly is. / Alex Casey
83. Suzy’s World (1999-2002)
There’s so much to love about Suzy’s World, but let’s start with the opening credits: the joyful twinkly keyboard sound, the astonishing computer graphics and the understated lyrics of “Suzy’s World, Suzy’s World, Suzy’s Wo-ho-ho-horld”. With only two words, anyone could sing that banger, just like anyone could be a science genius thanks to Suzy Cato and Suzy’s World. It was the educational kids show that explained science in ways everyone could understand. If you had a question, Suzy Cato already knew the answer.
Following her beloved 90s show You and Me, Suzy’s World ran from late 1999 to 2002 and spanned 260 illuminating episodes. Looking back, some episodes are a little alarming – I look forward to my next nightmare when I’ll relive that dentist ordering Suzy to shut her mouth before all her tooth bacteria falls on the floor. Its most iconic episode was Suzy Cato and the giant bean poo, but the series also covered topics from feelings to feet, slime to supermarkets.
Suzy’s World is an educational masterpiece, and it’s no wonder that nearly two decades later, Cato would burst back onto the floor like the most glorious piece of tooth bacteria in Dancing with the Stars NZ. Thank you, Suzy Cato: your giant bean poo is forever in our hearts. / Tara Ward
82. Miles from Nowhere (2024)
When award-winning poet, journalist and writer Mohamed Hassan became frustrated at not seeing an authentic portrayal of Muslim New Zealand life on TV, he took matters into his own hands and Miles From Nowhere was born.
Inspired by his own experiences as a Muslim man in Aotearoa, Hassan created and wrote the comedy drama about an amateur songwriter who must choose between his Muslim community and the dark intrigues of government surveillance. The series tackles themes of cultural identity, family and belonging and challenges Western stereotypes about what it is to be Muslim, all with humour, heart and plenty of what he calls “beautiful chaos”.
”When I met director, producer and proud Wellington boy Ahmed Osman on a shoot in London, we talked for hours about our favourite comedies – Atlanta, Ramy, Kim’s Convenience – and wondered when we’d get to see a Kiwi comedy about the community we loved,” Hassan wrote for The Spinoff. “We’d both waited a lifetime to see someone tell that story, and if no one was going to tell it, maybe we should.” / Tara Ward
81. Freaky (2003-2005)
It’s the spooky season, so we thought there was no better way to close out the first countdown than with Freaky, the homegrown tweenage Twilight Zone that single-handedly traumatised an entire generation of New Zealand kids. Made by Thomas Robins, each episode of the anthology series showcased three chilling tales of horror and buzziness, including an evil Lynchian photocopier, a haunted waterslide, and even a murderous janitor played by Taika Waititi.
As Tom Augustine wrote for us back in 2019, it was the distinct New Zealand flavour of this Goosebumps-inspired series that made it so effective. “The Wellington uck-sents were in full swing, and stories were frequently set in and around the mundane regularities of Kiwi life – the mall, or school, or a dairy, or your backyard,” he wrote. “For a Kiwi kid, there was little to separate yourself from the ill-fated tykes facing certain doom from story to story.”
Because that’s the other thing… Freaky had a no-holds barred approach to the way it would end its stories, which often implied the straight-up death of a kid (worth mentioning that this aired, for a time, smack bang in the middle of What Now). Robins would go on to make The Killian Curse, which leaned ever harder into Jackson-lite body horror, demonology and, you guessed it, kids in mortal peril. And you wonder why all us millennials have anxiety. / Alex Casey
80. National Treasures (2020-present)
Hosted by Stacey and Scotty Morrison, along with a team of experts from inside and outside the museum world, National Treasures takes a kind of supercharged Antiques Roadshow approach to telling the stories behind the objects in Aotearoa’s museums. Each episode spotlights a dozen or so items and uncovers their significance through kōrero with people who have a personal connection to that specific chapter of history.
From the early days of commercial aviation to the Rātana church, the dawn raids to the Hero Parade, each episode covers a variety of chapters from this country’s not-too-distant past. While it never stays in one place for long, it’s a marvel how much there is to be learnt, and how much feeling there is to be wrung from each short segment – there are more tears in each episode than most history shows have in a full season.
This is a series that understands history isn’t just about what happened where, when and why – it’s a catalogue of pain, joy, grief, pride and every other human emotion. / Calum Henderson
79. Get It To Te Papa (2018)
[Editor’s note: To maintain objectivity we avoided including series associated with The Spinoff – but we simply couldn’t resist this opportunity to summon our own haunted op shop version of National Treasures that, spookily, preceded it by a full two years.]
The genesis of Get It to Te Papa can be traced back to the moment a squeaky dog toy designed to look like a human penis struck National MP Steven Joyce in the face at Waitangi in 2016. At The Spinoff’s editorial meeting the following Monday, staff writer Hayden Donnell made what most believed to be an off-hand joke: we should try and get the “Waitangi dildo” into Te Papa as an item of national significance. People laughed, and this positive feedback started a butterfly effect that culminated in a six-part Lightbox Original documentary series (now available on YouTube).
Get It to Te Papa saw Donnell team up with long-suffering producer Jose Barbosa to travel the country collecting cultural artefacts to present to the national museum. It’s no spoiler to say they largely failed to achieve this objective: the Waitangi dildo is now buried in landfill and was unable to be located, for example, while other artefacts – the winking Queen Street Santa, the Huntly DEKA sign, Suzanne Paul – presented insurmountable logistical challenges.
But Get It to Te Papa wasn’t a complete failure. It succeeded in unearthing a bunch of uniquely New Zealand characters and discovering the stories behind a handful of underappreciated cultural icons. Some of which probably could have actually made it to Te Papa if Donnell had just filled out the form. / Calum Henderson
78. The Pretender (2005-2008)
Throughout this process, I have been gingerly clicking on clips from local mid-2000s comedies and anticipating nothing more than extremely unfunny “un-PC” jokes. What I wasn’t prepared for when I watched The Pretender, was that I would actually… laugh? Quite a bit?
The mockumentary series follows hapless property developer turned politician Dennis Plant as he flounders about campaigning for seats that don’t exist, and launching political parties that stand for nothing (his party Future New Zealand’s sole policy is simply “gondolas”).
The second season of The Pretender coincided with the 2008 election, which saw the fictitious Dennis Plant pen his own blog on The NZ Herald. In one entry, he explains how his gondola would “put New Zealand on the fast track to success”, before signing off with this: “Tomorrow I will be travelling to South Auckland to discuss my passion for the things I will be seeing in South Auckland.”
As Michele Hewitson wrote in her review of The Pretender at the time: “losers who think they’re winners make for the best satire. And this is up there.” / Alex Casey
77. Brain Busters (2020-2024)
It’s New Zealand’s longest-running kids quiz show (495 episodes!), and I was truly awed by the enormous futuristic set and crazy ambition of Brain Busters just last year. Airing weekdays on TVNZ2 from 2020 until its final season earlier this year, the series put our country’s brightest young minds through a series of mental and physical challenges to win cash. Think part Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, part Mastermind and part Ninja Warrior, but way more wholesome.
“This is not The Weakest Link,” explained producer Reuben Davidson (now Labour MP for Christchurch East). “The kaupapa is that every player has to leave a little taller than when they arrived.” I personally bombed on the show, but thankfully I’m not the only adult to be humbled by the Brain Busters-verse. Special seasons have included Simon Bridges, Anita Wigl’it and David Seymour, and they even did a clutch of episodes entirely in te reo Māori. / Alex Casey
76. Sis (2020-2022)
Sis, the female-led Polynesian sketch comedy pilot that took the internet by storm in 2021, may end up being most remembered for what it could have been. The 44-minute pilot, which combined the narrative of a Pacific writers room trying to put a show together, with sketches on topics from sex to identity to debt collection, served up viral clips and a cast of future stars.
After years of island women cracking audiences up on smaller channels (Pani and Pani on Fresh TV, for one), Sis felt like a break into the mainstream for funny teine, and NZ On Air put all their brown eggs into one comedy basket in funding a full second season for $2m. But after many delays and minimal marketing, the show’s creators leaked the series themselves before the official release date, and started a protest against both platform partner Sky and NZ On Air.
As a result, the much-anticipated second season was overshadowed by the dispute and very few people will have seen it, let alone talked about it. Some of the stars from the show (Gaby Solomona and Bubbah) have gone on to do exciting things, but others have seemingly steered clear of the industry ever since. A real shame and a reminder of what can happen when you put too many eggs in one basket.
Regardless of all that, the pilot remains an impressive and popular undertaking that showcased the range of talent so often untapped in New Zealand. / Madeleine Chapman
75. The Luminaries (2020)
Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize-winning crime novel, set during the gold rush in 1866 Hokitika, and beguilingly structured around the Zodiac, was ambitiously adapted into a six-part TV series by Catton herself in 2020. This was the first correct step in this ultimately successful adaptation: the intricacies of the novel version are so complex that only Catton could have known it intimately enough to wrestle it into a new beast, made for watching rather than reading.
As Linda Burgess wrote in her review on The Spinoff, “what’s not to like?” The casting was pitch perfect: the role of unlucky British immigrant to the West Coast, Anna Wetherell is played by Eve Hewson whose star has now well and truly risen thanks to Sharon Hogan’s Sisters, and Netflix’s (very average) hit, The Perfect Couple. Eva Green as Lydia Wells is mesmerising; and Himesh Patel as the poetic Emery Staines steals every scene he’s in.
It’s also just so beautifully made: the production values are obviously high, and director Claire McCarthy keeps the pace cracking. The Luminaries rode off the back of the novel’s success and did it the exact right way: by being its own TV self and not attempting to emulate the structure or nuances of the novel (impossible). / Claire Mabey
74. Hope and Wire (2014)
If you waited until a story was told perfectly, most stories would never get told. Gaylene Preston’s six-part miniseries, set in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, demonstrated that there aren’t enough trigger warnings in the world for some stories.
Hope and Wire screened in 2014. Too soon, too painful, some thought. Fair enough, especially when were so many real stories to be told. Along with the endless battle to get the resources to rebuild, a valiant, defiant creativity sprang up immediately. I remember walking around Christchurch when the red zone was still fenced off, seeing the Gap Filler installations, a fridge repurposed for a library, a washing machine providing music to be danced to. Art and remembrance everywhere. How could fiction compete?
Hope and Wire’s added drama – skinheads, a range of characters from an old school activist played by the late Bernard Hill to crass property developers and unethical lawyers – didn’t all play well to those who had lived through the disaster. But there were some great performances – you can’t go wrong with Rachel House – and one of the aims was to give those who were not there a glimpse of the unimaginable. There were many moments that did that, including the mix of recreated and real footage of the quakes.
At the time, I wrote in a Listener review: “Hope and Wire leaves plenty of scope for other voices but for now Preston has stepped up.” / Diana Wichtel
73. James Must-a-pic his Mum a Man (2024)
Comedian James Mustapic is a man for the people. There was only one way to ride off the success of winning Celebrity Treasure Island, and Mustapic did it perfectly: by releasing one of the funniest local shows in ages.
James Must-a-pic his Mum a Man (you couldn’t even in your wildest dreams hope your last name would make a title as good as that) is a mother-son odyssey through the complexities of dating, as told (and made worse) by a child who just wants his mum to find a bloke worthy of her affection. In all honesty, no man in New Zealand, or in the entire world, is a good enough match for Janet, but the final outcome is near perfect.
Through dating the likes of David Seymour, Ray O’Leary and Colin Mathura-Jeffree, Janet learns many love lessons, which are more like forced education for her at the expense of entertainment for the audience. Mustapic’s dry and sardonic sense of humour never lets up, even when he forces his mother and O’Leary to do a dramatic re-enactment of his father leaving. It is a perfectly uncomfortable comedy that makes for perfectly awkward viewing.
The series feels like a more grown-up and realised version of Mustapic’s other projects, Repressed Memories and Abandonment Issues, and somehow even snarkier and funnier. Will there ever be a season two of James Must-a-pic His Mum a Man? His Dad was pretty mad about it, and Janet seems pretty happy these days, but I can’t be the only one who still wants to see her date Paul Williams and Chris Bishop. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
72. The Strip (2002-2004)
Set in a male strip club, The Strip follows a strip club and their strip club as they strip club. Oily male nipples aside, the show marked a leap in local television style that dragged NZ adult drama into the millennium: divorce, nightlife, fast-paced editing, fantasy sequences, historically mishandled approaches to homosexuality. All the hallmarks of Y2K, and big moves away from the domestic sphere that had bound TV drama in the decades before.
More importantly, The Strip kept the ball rolling for a community of deeply collaborative Wellington filmmakers. An arts scene is only as strong as the jobs beneath it, and over an impressive stretch of 40 episodes, The Strip gave opportunities and development to a generation of talent who would go on to their own successes. Highlights include Robbie Magasiva and Oscar-winning writer/director Taika Waititi.
The Strip arrived at just the right time, from just the right place. It won’t grip modern audiences the way it did two decades ago, but its influence can be seen in every television drama since. / Daniel Taipua
71. Homebound 3.0 (2023-)
We’re a sad sack country who don’t make a lot of rom-coms, so Homebound 3.0 truly felt like a breath of fresh air when it arrived in a blaze of Cher karaoke last year. The series follows Henry Li (played by creator and writer Sam Wang), an aspiring 30-something novelist who still lives at home with his parents. Sadly, the only thing less successful than his writing career is his dating record, forcing him to succumb to the powers of his Aunty Linda, the “number one matchmaker” in the Chinese community.
Also sucked into “family Tinder” is Melissa (Michelle Ang), a loose unit who has previously been banned from the service. Both facing pressure from their families to couple up and move out of home, the pair decide to fake a relationship to get everyone off their backs – until feelings get involved. A classic rom-com premise, but elevated by a genuinely hilarious script – be it a pornographic bluetooth bungle or Melissa’s ‘Shakira’ approach to dating (“wherever, whenever”).
As Naomii Seah wrote in her review, Homebound 3.0 is so much more than just a charming rom-com. Picking up the bilingual torch first lit in 2021 by Inked, the Homebound 3.0 script fluidly moved between Mandarin, Cantonese and English in primetime. “There’s something touching about seeing our diverse linguistic heritage and community represented,” Seah said. “It wasn’t too long ago that my own family was being told to ‘speak English’ at the supermarket.” / Alex Casey
70. One Lane Bridge (2020-2024)
Spanning three seasons – with every episode scripted by the formidable Pip Hall, with a spellbinding visual tone set by director Peter Burger – One Lane Bridge is a crime drama that explores the rich and the rugged sides of Queenstown as a new cop in town encounters an unexplained murder. Rich in character and busy of plot, it draws us inexorably towards the bridge of the title. Just what happened there, and why? In a killer cast, Joel Tobeck is an especially taut, mesmeric presence.
Page-turning and tense, this was watercooler television in a time without the watercooler, screening as the first series did during the Covid lockdown. In keeping with the vogue of the time, large parts of the plot were left unresolved at the end of the first season finale. That prompted waves of protest, but what it confirmed as much as anything was just how many of us the show had drawn right to the edges of our seats. / Toby Manhire
69. House of Drag (2018-2020)
Across its two seasons, House of Drag – hosted by Auckland icons Anita Wigl’it and Kita Mean – looks like it’s all held together with spit, paperclips and tit tape, and that’s honestly a compliment. In each episode drag performers attempt awkward, funny and low rent challenges, before lip syncing on a very cramped stage in the “observatory” of the drag mansion to find out who stays in the competition. There’s huge charm in the show’s combination of high camp and dirt poor ingenuity, especially in the context of the super glossy RuPaul’s Drag Race Industrial Complex (which some performers, and both the hosts, would go on to join).
As with all good reality television, it’s the talent and stories that matter. The show gives fascinating insight into the intersections of drag culture with our own unique contexts. Everyone kinda knows each other, and small town rivalries and personal enmities fuel the drama as much as contestants’ abilities (or not) to death drop, devise skits, fabricate costumes, and appeal to the hosts’ egos.
We also hear from a much greater diversity of performers than you see on some overseas shows. There’s Māori, Pasifika, immigrant and refugee performers navigating their sexualities and cultural identities. There’s genderfluid and trans artists (including season one winner Hugo Grrl). Season two winner Spankie Jackzon talks, poignantly, about he’s been forced to return home to homophobic small-town New Zealand from big, less homophobic cities with better opportunities. Season two intruder, Lilly Loca, seriously ruffles feathers as a cis-female hyper drag performer, sparking arguments about who or what drag is for, and allowed to be. Fabulous, yes, but also insightful and revealing. / Erin Harrington
68. Kid Sister (2022-)
2022 brought the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and something else that doesn’t come along every day: a Jewish sitcom set in Aotearoa. As television events, both navigated the complexities of heritage, continuity, tradition. Simone Nathan’s Kid Sister features 20-something Lulu, back in Auckland after travels, living with her family. How to find herself in a country where, as the blurb reminds us, more people identify as Jedis than Jewish?
Nathan, whose CV includes writing for Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death, semaphores the vibe of her show in an opening sequence in which she gnaws on a traditional braided loaf in K’Road’s St Kevins Arcade. Lulu is pretending not to be dating Ollie, who is not Jewish. Not yet. Semi-autobiographical? Ollie is played by Nathan’s real-life partner, Paul Williams, and Lulu’s brother is played by Nathan’s real-life brother.
Lulu’s dad wants her to marry inside the community, to which she snaps “you’re about to guilt me with the H-bomb.” Her Dad responds: “firstly, ‘H-bomb’ is an inappropriate term for the Holocaust. And if I’ve done my job right you should be old enough to guilt yourself.” Amanda Billing, as Lulu’s scary, oblivious mother, tries to set her up with Mikey, who sadly already has a girlfriend who he runs a vegan meal prep TikTok together with.
The show can be exasperating. I can vouch that yelling “Don’t do it, Lulu!” at the screen has no effect on her ill-advised life choices. But the world it creates is warm, weird and funny. When it comes to cultures, Aotearoa contains multitudes. Nathan’s comedy is steeped in one we haven’t seen much of on our screens. Kid Sister is also absurd, sometimes heavy, human business as usual. More, please, thank you. / Diana Wichtel
67. This is Not My Life (2010)
This is Not My Life begins with a deeply buzzy premise: a man wakes up and he has no idea who he is or how he got there.
On the surface, it’s an idyllic family life in the squeaky clean town of Waimoana, but there is something sinister bubbling just under the surface. We’re propelled into an enthralling, twist-replete, thoroughly moreish thriller across 13 episodes. The writing of Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan is assured and idea-rich, and lent an ethereally intense energy by directors Rob Sarkies and Peter Salmon. Charles Mesure gives the performance of his life in the lead alongside the invariably brilliant Tandi Wright.
Here was a rare high-concept, sorta-sci-fi, genuinely ambitious bit of New Zealand TV. It was sufficiently absorbing and impressive that the rights to the idea ended up getting sold to the US, but – alas – it was passed over for a second series in New Zealand. Maybe it’s not too late? / Toby Manhire
66. Teine Sā – The Ancient Ones (2021)
Teina Sā is a contemporary horror television anthology, a web series, and a short feature all wrapped up in one, and it’s highly recommended. The terrific series, named for Samoa’s ancient spirit women features five short standalone tales of the unexpected that can be watched together or alone. The stories are prickly, shocking, and satisfying – a celebration of female strength, and a warning not to ignore the spirit world.
It’s a slickly produced collection, story edited by Victor Rodger, and written and directed by a group of established and emerging Moana creatives. The stories plumb female identity, desire, and anger, as well as the relationship between contemporary cultural concerns and traditions. The Sāmoan legend of Sina and Tuna is told through the lens of a Tinder date gone very wrong. A vengeful cannibal night star, Tapuitea, comes to avenge a woman who’s been illicitly filmed by her skeevy boyfriend. A non-binary teen in need is visited by a goddess of fire and protector of the whenua.
The series is particularly notable for the episode ‘Hiama’, in which a Solomon Islands teen, Vani, turns the tables on her bullies at her all-white school by calling in her family guardian and spirit teacher – a rare example of Melanesian storytelling in New Zealand media.
Like Beyond the Veil and Mataku [more on those later], Teine Sā demonstrates the creative power of collective, anthologised storytelling, from the perspective of funders and broadcasters as well as creatives. It’s an impactful way to build capacity. While initially available on Prime and Neon, the series’ online delivery now sidesteps some barriers in distribution; the internationally recognised award-winning shorts are available for all to see on The Coconet. / Erin Harrington
65. Raised by Refugees (2022-2023)
“I’m often asked what it’s like to be a refugee and to be honest, I’ve never had a clear answer,” Abbas Nazari wrote for The Spinoff in 2022. “Raised by Refugees, written and created by comedian Pax Assadi, answers this question brilliantly.”
The semi-biographical sitcom is set in the early 2000s on Auckland’s North Shore, and follows the Assadi family – Iranian dad Afnan (Assadi), Pakistani mum Safia (Kalyani Nagarajan), and their sons Pax (Kenus Binu) and Mahan (Adam Lobo) who were born in New Zealand. Reminiscent of shows like My Wife and Kids and Fresh Prince, which Assadi cited as influences in his My Life in TV interview, it’s full of both hilarious and heart-wrenching family moments.
It’s hilarious when Pax experiences his first wet dream, and his own father, played by the real Pax, tries to talk about it while dishing up loose yoghurt. It’s heart-wrenching when you see the family change their Guy Fawkes plans in the wake of 9/11, made all the more poignant when the episode closes on home video of the real Pax waving a sparkler around blissfully. Raised by Refugees feels as authentic as TV can get, all the way down to the Y2K No Fear T-shirts. / Alex Casey
64. INSiDE (2020)
The terrific Morgana O’Reilly (Mean Mums, Friends Like Her) is Rose in INSiDE, the eight-part series was notably filmed entirely during Level 2 Covid-19 restrictions in the Auckland house of O’Reilly and her husband and INSiDE’s director, Peter Salmon. When she’s not taking her own temperature and desanitising her flatmate from a safe social distance, tech expert Rose is quietly – very quietly – working remotely – very remotely – for a video chat app called Bunny. But a massive introvert can still get lonely during Covid-19 lockdown when just venturing outside, even in full hazmat gear, brings on panic attacks.
Driven to the edge by one compulsory company Zoom singalong of ‘Oma Rāpeti’ too many, Rose takes to hacking into the chats of Bunny clients because she can and, well, lockdown. Will a chance encounter with the guy who picked on her in high school change her self-isolating ways? Is her flatmate filming her? Is there a racoon in the attic? It seems lockdown will summon your demons and even germ phobic paranoids have enemies.
Co-starring Josh Thomson as the long-suffering flatmate and a stellar cast Zooming in including Fasitua Amosa, Antonia Prebble and Dan Musgrove, INSiDE is a strange, claustrophobic ride. It’s also a social document from the throes of the pandemic, charting the anxieties, superstitious thinking, rituals and rogue creativity of a time that is still not safely consigned to the past. INSiDE won a 2021 International Emmy for Best Short-Form Series. Bravo. / Diana Wichtel
63. Hounds (2012)
Hounds had been in development hell for three years. Production house The Downlow Concept, the team behind comedy success story 7 Days, were trying to make an awkward BBC-style comedy like The Office, updated for Aotearoa audiences. After a drunk night out betting at the dog races, they came up with their concept: an arrogant lawyer inherits a home, a greyhound, and a half-sister, and hilarity ensues. Six episodes were commissioned, then made, with TV3 screening them on Friday nights at 10pm (a tough time slot, as The Spinoff well knows).
What emerged was something even better than what that pitch promised, a concise, consistently funny show that proved we really could write a Brit-com if we put our minds to it. More than a decade later, scenes from Hounds still flash into my mind at random moments – often the opening to episode five, as Mick Innes, as Marty, appears in front of a judge to face a drunk-driving charge. He reads a prepared statement: “‘B’ is for brown, the colour of bourbon. ‘O’ is for outrageously tasty. ‘U’ is for utterly delicious …” At the time, I used another acronym of the moment to describe Hounds: “ROTFLMAO“.
Despite solid ratings, Hounds only lasted one season, and only episode five exists on streaming. The Downlow Concept continues to make incredible things – documentary series like NZ Hip Hop Stand Up, and Scribe: Return of the Crusader, the Josh Thomson vehicle Gary of the Pacific – but it’s Hounds that continues to get quoted in our household. “Oh my god: a ranch slider!” is repeated with glee anytime anyone encounters a sliding door. We have two of them. / Chris Schulz
62. Far North (2023)
Based on the $500 million meth mixup that made headlines in 2016, crime caper Far North was cracking event TV that had you Googling things after each episode to see if they really did happen (they did). Using needle drops and text overlays, the show told intertwining stories: Chinese drug lords, inept Tongan-Australian gangsters, a marooned delivery boat, and the drug-busting exploits of Heather and her husband Ed, a partnership that reunited Shortland Street alums Robyn Malcolm and Temuera Morrison on screen after three decades apart.
It’s a great pairing, the kind of small-town cosy couple you’ve almost certainly met IRL, and it’s Malcolm who gives Far North its heart and soul. Landing just a few months before her stunning turn in After the Party, Malcolm oozes jaded world-weary charm. A tick over a year on from this, I still marvel at episode four: set entirely on Ninety Mile Beach, almost all of it is spent with Heather and Ed as they coach angry, impatient gangsters on the finer points of launching a boat on a surf beach. Like the rest of their haphazard meth mission, nothing went to plan. (Google it.) / Chris Schulz
61. Marae DIY (2004-present)
The advent of Māori Television in 2004 brought a lot of innovative programmes to life in some areas, and in others bent existing genres into a local shape. Marae DIY was one of those ideas just waiting to be taken up, applying the generic and international renovation format to the specific and indigenous environment of Te ao Māori.
Over two decades and 15 seasons, Marae DIY has renovated over one hundred marae across the land with the help of contractors, sponsors, and tangata whenua themselves. There’s lots to recommend the series as a whole, but to me the pride of Marae DIY has always been kotahitanga – the essence and practice of unity and working together – writ large on screen.
Marae are communal by nature, relying pretty much exclusively on communal upkeep. Larger projects and renos can be difficult as they involve lining up what is basically the free time of hundreds of different whanau. Marae DIY has the magical property of drawing a big red circle around four calendar dates and calling all hands and heads together in one place.
Every single episode, we see tangata whenua visit their familiar place with a new context at hand. Everyone searches for a job to do, and by god do they find one over those four days. Many bring their own considerable skills and we see them work directly alongside contractors, others do as much as they can wherever they can, from sweeping to the tea-making. By the end, every individual has worked to restore their collective home.
Home renovation shows continue to be popular in NZ, spurred both by a genuine house-proud culture but also by a neurotic obsession with house prices and market value. Marae DIY has a different value to show us: the value of kotahitanga. / Daniel Taipua
60. Sticky TV (2002-2017)
Spot On, What Now, The Son of a Gunn Show, Pūkana… we may have taken a while to produce a decent sitcom, but there have been decades of homegrown kids TV destined to become a source of deep nostalgia for generations of young viewers and for parents grateful to have had them occupied until tablets and smartphones were invented. Pickled Possum Productions’ Sticky TV kicked off on TV3 in 2002. Disclaimer: my daughter Mon spent some formative time on the show for a couple of years alongside Kanoa Lloyd. Aotearoa is a small world, and we are all but a few degrees of separation from the late, great Teddy, the Sticky TV farm dog.
Sticky TV started in a studio on Ponsonby Road. As it morphed, there was the Sticky TV house and later the show settled down on the farm. The homey locations gave the show a bit of a Friends ambiance. Along with the cartoons, talent shows and cooking segments, the presenters hung out with the chooks and faced life’s tribulations as Walter loses something in the veggie garden or whatever. The show ran for a whopping 16 years and was a training ground for so much young talent. Good, high velocity fun. / Diana Wichtel
59. Go Girls (2009-2013)
Set on Auckland’s North Shore and running for five seasons, Go Girls was light, upbeat, and incredibly urban. Writer Rachel Lang says the show was born of many musings, including “What would Sex and the City be like if it was set in New Zealand, not New York?” Like Sex and the City, Go Girls didn’t land to critical acclaim initially. Jane Bowron, writing for The Dominion Post, called it “painfully embarrassing to watch”, prompting TVNZ exec Andy Shaw to hit back by calling the Dom “just a waste of good s*** paper“.
By 2011, Bowron had walked her criticism back, calling it “unmissable”.
Go Girls was a “quest” series. Four best friends — Kevin (Jay Ryan), Cody (Bronwyn Turei), Britta (Alix Bushnell) and Amy (Anna Hutchison) — set out to turn their lives around in a year. It wasn’t perfect, but as with so much television of the 21st century, an era defined by another noble quest; that of portraying women as more than one-dimension creatures, it stood on the shoulders of its local and global predecessors and carved out its place in the evolving canon of female characters that have sex, aspirations, jobs and most importantly, flaws. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell
58. Not Even (2022-)
There is one true guide book to being in your 20s in Aotearoa, and it’s Not Even. Focused on a motley crew of Māori and Pasifika living in Wellington, the series follows their never-ending break ups (whether platonic or romantic), hook ups and fuck ups, though the characters don’t always make peace with it all. Sometimes, some people just do stupid shit.
Some viewers find imperfect characters hard to follow on-screen, but they tend to be the most interesting and complex. Not Even’s cast of characters are incredibly alive and genuinely reflective of the realities young New Zealanders are facing, from identity disconnection to working bullshit jobs to forcing yourself through therapy, because this cycle of generational trauma isn’t going to break itself.
The series has only just released its second season, but it’s already filled a massive gap of coming-of-age stories for New Zealanders who are in their 20s, and are wondering why they haven’t come of age yet. Being Māori and Pasifika-led, it’s tonally perfect and refuses to skip a beat, a gag or an opportunity for the characters to learn something. I don’t think I’m overstating by saying that it can only get better from here. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
57. Intrepid Journeys (2003-2012)
New Zealand’s most successful homegrown travel show started in 2003 and spanned nine seasons, featuring various New Zealand celebrities travelling to far flung corners of the world. Whether it was Dave Dobbyn holding a lizard in Morocco, Kim Hill undergoing a Hoodoo ceremony in Cuba, or John Banks meeting a lemur in Madagascar, the variety of high profile hosts would always venture off the beaten path, visiting real families and unique places.
“We started everyday with no interviews booked, or even a run sheet of what we would aim to film,” Jane Andrews, one of the show’s founders, told NZ Onscreen. “Our brave travellers had to face cameras without the comforts of home, the filters of minders, and the time to prepare and present their best self…. Jenny Shipley summed up this gift in the simplest of terms — ‘here, I am just Jenny’,” said Andrews.
Over the decade there were some jaw-dropping scenes, like Pio Terei spotting a dead body in the Ganges River or Ewen Gilmour visiting an Incan cemetery where ancient mummies are on display in open pits. While Survivor and The Amazing Race had just arrived on television, putting people through overproduced storylines and gruelling challenges, Intrepid Journeys was truly reality television in its purest essence, and it was ours. / Liam Rātana
56. Super City (2011-2013)
I still marvel at the ambition: a satirical skit show about big city life featuring nine entirely made-up characters created, written and played all at once by Madeleine Sami. How did she pull Super City off? Has the glue for Azeem’s beard ever come off her face? Is she OK? Not really. “I was exhausted,” she told The Spinoff recently. “I was so involved at every point in the process which really wears you down quite a bit … [it’s] a whole different level of intensity.”
Super City lasted two seasons on Three, the first directed by Taika Waititi, the second by Oscar Kightley. Of the host of characters, the biggest laughs came from her parodies of rich white women: snooty Parnell art critic Linda and Les Mills personal trainer Jo. Ofa, an unsympathetic Winz staffer introduced in season two, proved to be the most controversial (in 2016, The Spinoff ranked her as Super City’s best character).
But it’s Pasha who stands out the most in my mind, an aggressive, little-too-old-to-be-doing-this cheerleader who predicates the rise of influencers, and offers a perfect prelude for Demi Moore’s recent body-horror The Substance. “I can’t remember if I had a threesome or a foursome,” Pasha boasts to her much younger cheerleading colleagues in the show’s opening scene, setting the tone perfectly. / Chris Schulz
55. Kōrero Mai (2004-2012)
I can vaguely remember arriving home from school early enough some days and watching Ākina, the overly cheesy, yet highly educational soap opera that taught viewers conversational te reo Māori within Kōrero Mai. It sort of felt like a cheap New Zealand version of Days of Our Lives, broken up with reo Māori lessons from the booming voice of Piripi Taylor (“‘Āhahā’ equals blimmin heck!”) between car crashes, proposals and many tears.
“People build a rapport with the characters and they get so hooked into the drama that they don’t realise they are learning,” said Matai Smith, who would take over hosting in 2010. Even if it was corny, Kōrero Mai was groundbreaking in its specific intent to help people learn te reo Māori at home, while also fostering talent on-camera talent such as Matai Smith, Calvin Tutaeo, and Ben Mitchell, as well as directors Rawiri Paratene and Rachel House.
The fact it would pause and review the phrases used, while still providing the dramatic highs and lows in the daily lives of the soap characters, made it stand out from other programmes at the time. While I can’t recall any specific episodes, I know that watching this series would have undoubtedly planted a few precious reo Māori gems deep in my memory banks. / Liam Rātana
54. Friends Like Her (2024)
After a long run of local crime dramas (The Gulf, The Gone, One Lane Bridge, Far North), the arrival of psychological thriller Friends Like Her this year was a welcome breath of TV air. Set in Kaikoura after the devastating 2015 earthquake, this compelling, unpredictable drama tells the story of two best friends and a broken surrogacy agreement that divides an already traumatised community. “The aftershocks keep coming,” we said in our review, calling it a “confident local drama full of dynamic characters, smart writing and clever twists”.
I hoovered up every delicious episode of Friends Like Her. It was a treat to see a New Zealand series that centred the complicated relationship between two dynamic women: Nicole (the always brilliant Morgana O’Reilly) and Tessa (Tess Haubrich). There’s shades of a New Zealand Big Little Lies here, of women who dedicate their lives to their families only for their families to then destroy them, and whose secrets from lives lived long ago still rumble below the surface. Chuck in a stellar cast (Vinnie Bennett, Jarod Rawiri, Vanessa Rare and Elizabeth Hawthorne, to name a few), a rich sense of time and place and a vibrant script from series creator Sarah Kate Lynch, and Friends Like Her reminds us that there’s big drama to be found in small town Aotearoa. Season two (and more), please. / Tara Ward
53. The Almighty Johnsons (2011-2013)
It was still dark out. I rose early, yawned, then went out to the lounge and lifted the blinds. Sitting in our driveway, in a chair under our carport, was a familiar face, a famous face: a whale rider. Yep, as I cooked the kids’ porridge up that day, Keisha Castle-Hughes sat there watching us watching her as her make-up was applied for her guest role on The Almighty Johnsons. Shot in and around West Auckland, the cast and crew of this God-fearing show were regular sights on the streets of Te Atatū. For an entire week, our carport was used as a kitchen, office, coffee break and touch-up space as the show was filmed in the house in front.
James Griffin and Rachel Lang’s follow-up to Outrageous Fortune contained an outrageous premise, focusing on a family of Norse gods trying to keep their identities under wraps while regaining their full powers. It had a fantastic lead in Emmett Skilton and solid ratings, and reviews were good, with one NZ Herald critic calling it “the strangest local show to sustain more than one season on prime time”. Yet it never quite recreated the magic of Outrageous and was axed after three seasons. What sticks most in my mind was what happened next: outraged fans protested, launching petitions and posting sticks to TV3 – a reference to the “tree of life” referenced in the show. Griffin attempted to pitch a shortened fourth season or a tele-movie to wrap things up, but it wasn’t to be. The gods truly had their say with this one. / Chris Schulz
52. Wayne Anderson: Singer of Songs (2006-2009)
In show business, they say you should “fake it until you make it.” That’s bad advice for Wayne Anderson, a man who is incapable of being anything but himself. Wayne is a real-life singer who really lives in Manurewa, and he really shoots for the stars. His musical style and dress sense are decades out of place, but he wears both with a pure conviction, an artist’s mana. Wayne sings Tom Jones like he is Tom Jones, an embodiment rather than an imitation, a character to the full.
Singer of Songs isn’t quite so real as its subject. It’s a fly-on-the-wall mockumentary series massaged into life by Orlando Stewart, playing a fictional version of himself as Wayne’s manager. The first season introduces Wayne and his career touring rest homes and sleepy lounges, with Orlando offering a shot at the big time. The big time turns out to be the lobby area of Auckland’s only casino, but it oddly feels like a real win.
The second season has a warped and self-reflective edge. Singer of Songs had won an actual amount of recognition for Wayne in everyday life: people recognised him from the telly and his bookings genuinely increased, a heartening triumph. Faced with this, the mockumentary needed to transplant to Japan to maintain its underdog feel, so away they went to meet the 5,6,7,8s and perform obscure gigs in Tokyo.
This faux-documentary eventually reveals something everybody in showbiz knows: that reality and performance are exactly the same. The process of arranging gigs for a fake show is exactly the same for a real show, and the fame won from fiction directly equals fame in real life. For his own part, Wayne Anderson has lived his entire life as a performer, and continues to do so. Beyond all the business, he lives the real show. / Daniel Taipua
51. Flat3 (2013–2014)
In 2013 my children gave me a shiny new iPad, the better to watch another relatively novel thing: a local web series. Flat3: I didn’t move for six episodes. Each was only seven minutes long but still. Bingeable is bingeable. Three good, keen 20-something Kiwi-Asian girls go flatting. Weapons grade awkwardness ensues, with excruciating trawls through what passed for modern manners in the 2010s. It felt like Girls meets Flight of the Conchords in Eden Terrace.
Ally Xue, JJ Fong and Perlina Lau, with esteemed filmmaker Roseanne Liang directing, self-funded the first season, crowd sourced the second and, for the third, got NZ On Air funding. That hard scrabble progress is reflected in the lives of Lee, Jessica and Perlina, as they navigate everything from texting culture – ‘Duck! Auto cucumber!’ – to dodgy auditions: “Top off, vulnerability, Lars von Trier”. The stereotyping and aggressions, micro and macro, they navigate are lightly touched upon but forensically targeted.
Flat3 Productions went on to the darker, more surreal comedy of Friday Night Bites. See “The Uber Driver”, a mashup of Taxi Driver and Carrie, with Lee in Travis Bickle mode, intoning, “I have a heavy flow”. Then came the disturbingly bucolic black comedy Creamerie, which played to considerable critical approval here, in Australia on SBS and in the US on Hulu [but more about that later]. Flat3 ladies, you are legends. / Diana Wichtel
50. The Gulf (2019–2021)
A psychological thriller set on a desolate and isolated version of Waiheke Island, The Gulf was part of a new era in New Zealand TV drama, one in which financing started to impact what we saw on screen. That sounds bad, but in fact the co-production era has created a more mature and crafted quality in our drama, thanks to funding from Canada, or Ireland or Australia, or in The Gulf’s case Germany, which supplements our own and brings different forces to bear on our work.
The Gulf’s bigger budget showed, and helped it end up by Acorn TV, rightly sitting alongside the kind of chilling rural mysteries the UK has mastered. It centred on car crash-induced amnesia, with weird outsiders and children victim to maddening kidnappings. In previous eras that might have been played cartoonishly, but The Gulf retained a hard-boiled quality over two seasons, with an unnerving plot and strong script. This allowed for exceptional performances from leads Kate Elliott and Ido Drent, with Waiheke visually transformed into a wild, sinister island, riddled with mystery and danger. / Duncan Greive
49. Sportscafe (1996–2011)
Before Crowd Goes Wild and the Alternative Commentary Collective there was SportsCafe, Sky’s weekly live show that took the concept of covering sports in an unserious way into uncharted territory. It was the brainchild of Ric Salizzo, the former All Blacks media liaison who produced a couple of freewheeling tour documentaries following the team in the early 90s. He was joined in the studio by an unlikely assortment of individuals – the larrikin Marc Ellis, the erudite Graeme Hill, the long-suffering Lana Coc-Kroft and the just-happy-to-be-there Eric Rush – ostensibly to present an irreverent overview of the week in sport.
At its peak, SportsCafe was essential, appointment viewing, at least for its target audience of young men, serving up some of the most wildly unpredictable live television ever broadcast in this country – some of which would probably get it cancelled in an instant today. Where were you the night Marc Ellis turned up so drunk he could hardly talk, or the time a glue sniffer in a tracksuit came on holding a Tupperware container full of what he claimed to be “racing snails”.
That guy was Leigh Hart, known to New Zealanders solely as “That Guy” for several years. His bizarre snail racing cameo turned into a regular role, and before long he was the show’s breakout star, memorably crashing All Blacks press conferences, introducing the nation to the new sport of Speed Cooking and ultimately paving the way for his Moon TV empire. That whole weird world only exists because of SportsCafe, one of those rare chaotic shows where it really felt like anything could happen. / Calum Henderson
48. Kiri and Lou (2019–present)
Kiri and Lou, a show about little plasticine dinosaurs, is one of the most profound and moving TV experiences you’re likely to have at any age. Made in Christchurch and watched all over the world, even scooping a BAFTA nomination, the show follows a little yellow dinosaur and a slightly bigger purple dinosaur who live in a lush, pre-human version of Aotearoa that is alive with fantastic creatures. Episodes are five minutes long, always include at least one brilliant song, and the stories explore the drama of daily life through the lens of big-feelings Kiri and gentle Lou and how they navigate friendships, furies, fates and feasting.
The show is made for preschoolers but, like all the best art for children, the layers are many and deep and so can be enjoyed by all ages. The music is glorious and star studded, the voice work by Olivia Tennent (Kiri) and Jemaine Clement (Lou) is exceptional. Kiri and Lou is pure class: the comedy is note perfect, the emotional truth rings out in every five-minute increment, and the world is both believable and magical. And at 101 episodes and counting, Kiri & Lou show no signs of slowing down… in fact, there’s a film in the works and we are here for it. / Claire Mabey
47. Late Night Big Breakfast (2014-2020)
Late Night Big Breakfast took the breakfast TV blueprint and ran a bulldozer through it. Running for four stop-start seasons, it was peak Leigh Hart: strange monologues, made-up advertorials, musical interludes, mock cooking segments, an assortment of major and minor players, including Jason Hoyte, Jeremy Wells, Mike Minogue, Josh Thomson, Kimberley Crossman, a Mongolian throat singer, and a small horse, as well as plenty of awkward interviews with guests, some of whom may not have been in on the jokes.
Despite the small budget, Big Breakfast attracted big guests, from political leaders Judith Collins and Jacinda Ardern to Neil Finn and Nadia Lim. It changed sets, from Hart’s home lounge to a penthouse apartment to Target, as often as it changed platforms: first airing on TVNZ+, it then moved to the short-lived NZME streaming platform WatchMe, then, after a five-year break, to Duke (random episodes are also available for viewing on Hart’s streaming service Moonflix).
The store is gone now, and Hart seems more concerned with his Snackachangi chip and beer range and courting online controversy than making TV these days. You couldn’t imagine Chris Luxon fronting for an interview with Hart and Hoyte, but Late Night Big Breakfast remains a beautifully chaotic parody of staid TV traditions. I hope the tiny horse is OK. / Chris Schulz
46. Rūrangi (2020-2023)
Some of the most interesting and authentic contemporary stories have sidestepped conventional distribution, challenging the definition of film or television entirely. The first season of the queer drama Rūrangi, directed by Max Currie, was designed as a web series but edited together as a feature film and presented at international festivals. It had its TV broadcast rights picked up by Hulu – something unusual for a New Zealand work – and can be watched episodically here via streaming.
Rūrangi is notable in other ways, too: it’s a work in which all the trans characters are played by trans actors. It’s also a very rare example of a story focused on a queer Māori experience – let alone one that foregrounds transmasc representation. Newcomer Elz Carrad, who later appeared in After the Party, gives an electric performance as Caz, a trans man who left his home in the remote small town of Rūrangi for Auckland, where he transitioned and became involved in queer activism.
Rūrangi is a homecoming story, but also a very specifically queer account of reconciliation and forgiveness. Caz abandoned his best friend Anahera, who is trying to connect to her whakapapa, and his then-boyfriend Jem, who now doesn’t know what to do with his feelings of attraction. At the centre sits Caz’s relationship to his father, Gerald, played with empathy and depth by Kirk Torrance, who is trying to process Caz’s transition, and his absence from his mother’s funeral.
The dairy-focused town itself is divided; Gerald also finds himself ostracised. Season two pulls out a little to explore a brewing culture war between queer activists, the town’s farmers, and local Māori. Everything is richly shot, properly cinematic, expressing a tangible, detailed sense of place. Rūrangi won an International Emmy for Best Short Form Series in 2022, and is something truly special – a fine example of what can happen when people actually get to tell their own stories. / Erin Harrington
45. The Unauthorised History of New Zealand (2005–2009)
I am proud to be part of the generation of wide-eyed telly-loving teenagers who stayed up way too late to watch things that were beyond their level of media literacy. It is why, to this day, I am still untangling real things that actually happened in our history from parody segments presented in the mid-2000s by Jeremy Wells (for example, the mass delusion about Thingee’s eye pop can largely be attributed to its inclusion in the Eating Media Lunch opening credits – but more about EML later.)
Just as Forgotten Silver trolled the television public in the 90s with its blend of documentary tropes, real archival footage and complete and utter fabrication, The Unauthorised History of New Zealand proudly presented an “alternative” version of our past. Each episode explored a different topic from crime to entertainment, money to marijuana, fronted by Jeremy Wells and bolstered by commentators including David Slack, Ian Fraser and a weird amount of Bob Jones.
It goes without saying that a lot of the content could never happen now. A cruise through the BSA complaints will give you an idea of the audacity of some of the jokes, as will this clip of Wells vox-popping women in Russell. And yet… I’m still laughing! All the episodes are on YouTube, as are iconic clips such as Cookie Bear’s role in Star Wars and the time the Milky Bar Kid did a Joker on Holmes. Still couldn’t tell you if they are real or not, sorry. / Alex Casey
44. Beyond the Veil (2022)
Six-part anthology Beyond the Veil bills itself as six supernatural tales inspired by the Māori, Pasifika, Filipino, and Chinese people of Aotearoa, but really it is a testament to the flexibility and power of genre to tell meaningful, engaging, culturally authentic stories.
The series was created in part to offer opportunities to mid-career practitioners, with funding from NZ On Air to support new voices, and Te Mangai Pāho to encourage more use of te reo Māori in primetime. What better way than ghost stories? The well-produced episodes vary tonally, and range in form from crack up splatstick comedy to unsettling gothic drama. Actor Jayden Daniels introduces each episode in a wink-wink manner, like a modern day Rod Serling (and in clear homage to Temuera Morrison’s role in the supernatural anthology drama Mataku), walking a playful line between deadpan humour and a thoughtful sense of respect.
Anthologies are particularly special as they create significant opportunities for creators whose voices and perspectives have been underrepresented or excluded. ‘Albularyo’, in which a Kiwi-Filipino doctor discovers her dead granny is a monstrous manananggal, is notable as possibly the first sustained use of the Tagalog language in primetime television in New Zealand. Found footage horror ’26:29′ carefully balances crack up goofball humour with a story about intergenerational abuse in Sāmoan communities.
The episode ‘Tappy’ is a particularly remarkable bit of storytelling. A disaffected young Māori man is sent off to “rescue” his dead aunty’s remains from the South Island (in a busted up old ice cream truck no less), and he’s hassled by her disgruntled, foul-mouthed ghost all the way home. It does more in 22 minutes than many films do in two hours, exploring mental illness, sexual assault, queerness, identity, whānau, social hierarchy, shame and reciprocity, all with an incredibly light touch. It’s highly recommended. / Erin Harrington
43. Havoc (1997–2004)
In the late 90s, television was chasing a younger audience by rummaging through personalities from the Auckland student radio station 95bFM, then BfM. Havoc launched on the short-lived MTV New Zealand channel, five nights a week because why not. The first episode kicked off with vintage footage of Selwyn Toogood. The air, and the opening titles, were thick with TV nostalgia. Jeremy “Newsboy” Wells, his peroxided hair gelled into exclamatory spikes, declared himself “the Barry Holland of youth television” and made SodaStream for an erratic array of guests: Angela Bloomfield, Bill Ralston and the late, great Darcy Clay.
In those days “yoof” TV was mainly lad TV. There was an item on Hustler magazine. The student pub style, like the sports bar vibes of SportsCafe, proved to be a bit of a fun evolutionary cul de sac. But the show opened the door – one that should sometimes have remained shut – for a string of Havoc iterations such as 2000, Luxury Suites and Conference Facility, and Havoc and Newsboy’s Sell-out Tour. As Havoc himself said after a news item about some tech invention: “Other people agree it’s a remarkable breakthrough, so it probably is.”
Here was television that could speak television. These guys grew up with it. They had been paying attention. Still a classic. / Diana Wichtel
42. Good Grief (2021-2022)
Set in a funeral home inherited by two sisters, the show’s setup is a riot: one sister’s a stickler for detail, the other’s a laid-back party-starter who says things like, “I don’t want to be around dead people all day. It’s just depressing.” Landing during the pandemic and shot on the lowest of low budgets, Good Grief grabbed the reins from The Casketeers and turned it into comedy gold. Quick aside: can someone count how many of these 100 shows Josh Thomson appears in? Is the answer most of them? Pound-for-pound, he must be the hardest-working actor in Aotearoa: he’s here, too, playing a deadpan, stoney-faced mortician to perfection, just one of many guest stars that help turn this the blackest of local black comedies.
For a while there, it very much looked like Good Grief would only last one brilliantly funny season. That it got a second was thanks to pure graft by the show’s stars, real-life sister Grace and Eve Palmer. “We never thought anyone in America would want to make another fucking season of it,” they told The Spinoff, but that’s exactly what happened when AMC (home of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead) came on board. Season two was even glummer, and funnier than the first, but a third seems unlikely: Grace Palmer now has a lead role in a true American sitcom, Fox’s Animal Control, where she plays a very similar character to her role here. / Chris Schulz
41. Being Eve (2001-2002)
Teen comedy Being Eve burned bright for just two seasons, but made an indelible mark on all those who encountered her. Constantly breaking the fourth-wall in the style of Malcolm in the Middle, Being Eve contained everything that anxious adolescents needed as they paced around waiting for the horrors of high school. It had the confessional nerdiness of Adrian Mole, the social issues of Jacqueline Wilson, and the bumbling humour of Bridget Jones.
Being Eve’s endless fantasy sequences were also stuffed with ambitious pop culture homages and historical references (pretty sure this episode is where I learned the phrase “iambic pentameter”). Another episode attempts to tackle race relations through a parody of… The Piano? “How come you speak English?” a bonnet-wearing Eve asks her Māori boyfriend Sam. “The nice lady at the missionary school,” he replies. “She taught me the love of Jesus… and hit me with a stick every time I spoke the language of my ancestors.”
Pretty bold writing for a show pitched to 9-14 year olds, no? Although Being Eve didn’t always have the most subtle approach – Katie Parker summed it up well as “full of outrageously outmoded good intentions” – it gauged the pulse of the 2000s teen with vox pops covering everything from divorce to beauty standards, to pregnancy. Bold, funny and packed with Y2K fashion that Gen Z would die for now… is it high time we met Eve Baxter again in her late 30s? / Alex Casey
40. Find Me a Māori Bride (2015-2017)
The year is 2015, and the word “metrosexual” is still in wide use. Two “metro” Māori cousins, Tama (Cohen Holloway) and George (Matariki Whatarau), are tasked with finding the Māori wāhine of their late kuia’s dreams in order to inherit her $47m farm. Find Me a Māori Bride felt like a breath of fresh air when it launched on Whaakata Māori, a mockumentary style series that blended reality television – namely, The Bachelor and Survivor – with te ao Māori tradition.
The show was as much of a 101 on Māori language, culture and tikanga as it was an incredibly effective comedy. Tama and George’s struggle to connect with their identity made for a watch that was both entertaining without feeling like a piss-take, and educational without feeling too serious. It is a crime against New Zealand society that the series never made it past two seasons, and now is only available to stream through the University of Auckland (no lie). At least this ranking remembers the importance of this taonga. / Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
39. The Tribe (1999-2003)
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a virus has killed everyone over the age of 18, The Tribe ran for five seasons and is generally considered one of the most internationally successful shows we’ve ever made (at least by the metrics of “has an alarmingly detailed fan wiki“). Shot in Wellington, the series employed over 500 local cast and crew including Antonia Prebble, Michelle Ang and Megan Alatini. Fun fact: The Tribe was the first of six times (and counting) that Antonia Prebble would give birth on screen.
While telling a gritty Lord of the Flies style story of feuding teen tribes, the series also captured what Patrick Hunn lovingly called “the most enchanting miscalculations” that were happening in Y2K fashion at the time. Whether it was endless glitter, pointless zips, or a proliferation of white dreadlocks, the powerful steampunk aesthetic of The Tribe can still be summoned by many in an instant.
There’s also the enduring images of post-apocalyptic Lambton Quay swarming with baddies on roller blades, kids in facepaint on a stretch of Kāpiti beach, and the haunting fairy lights of the abandoned Phoenix mall. “I have seen the cradle of civilisation after The Fall, and it is a mall in Lower Hutt,” Hunn wrote for us. “It is the best thing that New Zealand has ever produced. It’s also the worst, but that’s OK.” / Alex Casey
38. Good Morning (1996-2015)
There is no other daytime television show that ran for so long, over so many years, and involved so many different New Zealanders as Good Morning. The TVNZ magazine lifestyle series began in 1996, and during its impressive 19 year run, featured a variety of hosts and talent. Presenters like Mary Lambie, Lisa Manning (who met her husband, actor Jon Rhys-Davies on the show), Angela D’Audney, Kerrie Smith, Jeanette Thomas and Matai Smith offered people at home – the retired, parents with young children, hungover students – a familiar, reassuring sense of companionship and connection.
Every morning at 9am, Good Morning beamed out across the nation. The show had to fill 15 hours of live TV every single week, and they made it look easy. Those of us watching were guaranteed a laugh or two, some new local music or a delicious new recipe, and an interview with a visiting celebrity or an everyday New Zealander with a story to tell. You’d also have to sit through numerous advertorials, where infomercial queen Suzanne Paul and friends would drop bowling balls onto bamboo pillows or stand on the latest vibrating fitness plate, but even those ads had a low-budget, low-stakes charm to them.
“As long as they had the advertorials, it felt like Good Morning had a rare amount of freedom to do pretty much whatever it wanted with the rest of the time. That was where the magic of live television happened,” The Spinoff wrote in 2015. That magic was everywhere: when craft expert Astar became a dying swan, or Jeanette Thomas was hypnotised live on air, or the camera close-up on Astar’s fabric stiffener called “Stiffy”. Amid the eclectic mix of bonkers fitness routines and talkback sessions (phone and fax), Mary Lambie would bring her cat Louie in (“I thought he’d fry himself on the lights,” she admitted in the show’s final episode). Falling ratings saw the sun set on Good Morning in 2015; daytime television hasn’t been the same since. / Tara Ward
37. The Panthers (2021)
Six-part miniseries The Panthers arrived on the 50th anniversary of the Polynesian Panther’s founding and formed part of a broader commemoration involving community hui, news media, and educational tours. This expanded historical background allowed for more dramatic movement within the show’s storyline, where parallel plots give a broader context and feeling for the time: Muldoon’s rise to power, parallel movements for women’s liberation, and a well-drawn street-level milieu for the Polynesian youth of 1970s Auckland.
The real juice of the show is its willingness to break from the traditional New Zealand drama style by adopting tropes from classical theatre and postmodern filmmaking. The first episode opens with an operatic prelude from Diggy Dupé and Troy Kingi, with Dupé reappearing throughout the series as a Greek chorus figure reflecting on the plot and times. When Robert Muldoon wins the general election, trap drums roll out as a modern gangster’s victory theme.
There’s something of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in the mix, but a better and more appropriate touchstone is the later works of African-American film director Spike Lee with his revisionist Lysistrata and A Huey P. Newton Story. The willingness of The Panthers to try something different resonates with the energy of the youth it portrays, and if they can pass some of that along to today’s young Pasifika they’ve won something special. / Daniel Taipua
36. The Jaquie Brown Diaries (2008–2009)
In this Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque mockumentary, TV personality and former C4 host Jaquie Brown starred as as a twisted version of herself, with cameos and co-stars (Helen Clark! Rhys Darby! Mike Puru!) from the broadcasting and entertainment world cropping up each and every week. Even by 2008 mockumentary was a well-trodden formula, but The Jaquie Brown Diaries took us to much darker places than you would expect from what starts off as a quirky sitcom.
As I wrote back in 2021, “by the end of its 14-episode run, Brown has taken on terrorists, worked at the Carpet Warehouse and enjoyed a stint on a Survivor-esque reality show.” These subplots are all over-the-top, but they work because The Jaquie Brown Diaries is consistently laugh-out-loud funny. And, despite airing over a decade ago, it still holds up now. Some of that magic can be put down to co-creator and director Gerard Johnstone, who went on to direct cult favourite local horror Housebound and global sensation M3gan.
All we need now is for Jaquie and Gerard to reunite and finally deliver a resolution to that cliffhanger ending, the one that sees Brown and her unhinged nemesis about to face off in the “broadcasting battle of the century”. It’s not too late! / Stewart Sowman-Lund
35. Jono and Ben (2012–2018)
For seven glorious years, New Zealand had something great: a popular late-night comedy talk show. Jono and Ben at Ten first debuted in 2012 and thrived on the low expectations and lax standards of the 10pm slot. It was edgy, weird, a bunch of funny people throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck, and it was brilliant. JABAT was the hot new show that everyone was talking about, and soon became appointment viewing in the common room of my university hall.
The prank segments were an evolution from Boyce’s previous series Pulp Sport and got even more outrageous. Convincing a TV3 HR rep to “fire” Guy Williams was right on the edge of too cruel. The musical parodies were brilliantly written albeit poorly performed (unless Laura Daniel was involved). Hamilton: A Waikato Musical was a standout. Robbie Magasiva’s appearance on The Next Actor was one of the greatest TV comedy skits ever made.
The ambitious shift in season three to a live 7:30pm timeslot was largely successful, but did sand down some of the rough edges of the show. It had to become more family-friendly, more mainstream, safer. Still, it lasted four more seasons and fostered a whole generation of new young comedy talent including Rose Matafeo, Jamaine Ross, Angella Dravid, Chris Parker, Joseph Moore, Laura Daniel, Alice Snedden and of course, Guy Williams and his extremely successful spinoff show New Zealand Today. / Joel McManus
34. Insider’s Guide to Happiness (2004)
The scripts were dense, the cast list long, the screen wide, the budget huge. The questions each episode asked were profound, too: “Will the truth make you happy?” … “Do you deserve to be happy?” For 13 episodes, Insider’s Guide to Happiness followed a group of eight separate 20-somethings whose stories promised to intertwine. How? Get this: the central premise focused on Will Hall’s James, a foppish, happy-go-lucky chap from Whanganui who, for the entire first episode, was stuck in a car wash. Nearby, a car accident caused someone to drop a vase containing the spirit of a Tibetan monk. That spirit entered James, who embarked on a mystical journey to spread happiness and unite all those characters.
I remember watching Insider’s Guide feeling immensely proud. The Sopranos was out and The Wire was catching on, and here was our own big-budget, intricately-plotted, weird, wacky and proudly Aotearoa vision of what TV could be. We could do this! Couldn’t we? Did we ever realise that vision? A shortened second season, called Insider’s Guide to Love, couldn’t match the ambition of season one, and our future attempts at HBO-style TV – from The Cult to This is Not My Life to Burying Brian – never lasted more than a season. But every now and then, we knocked it out of the park. Insider’s Guide remains one of those moments. / Chris Schulz
33. Moon TV (2002–2010)
Leigh Hart might be the most original and idiosyncratic auteur in New Zealand television history, and Moon TV is the most chaotic and comprehensive expression of his vision. It started life as a newspaper created to finance Hart’s time in broadcasting school, and the content and tone of Hart’s gonzo yet somehow loving parody of modern media was established in those pages.
He worked in comparatively normal jobs for Greenstone, before attracting a cult following as “That Guy” on SportsCafe. Still, it was only with the debut of Moon TV in 2002 that the vision of Leigh Hart was revealed. Moon TV functions as a television universe unto itself, with observational documentary (Speedo Cops, the Hamsterman from Amsterdam), drama (Naan Doctors), lifestyle (Speed Cooking) and arts programming (Bookzone).
The conceits were ludicrously simple – Naan Doctors is Shortland Street in a curry house, Speedo Cops is Police 10 7 in speedos – but the jokes, helped by Hart’s hyper-committed performance and nervous eye darts to camera, land every time. From Moon TV sprang an array of spinoffs, including the dazzling Late Night Big Breakfast and Screaming Reels, as repetitive and singular as krautrock.
The most extraordinary thing about it might be how it was made. Hart largely eschewed the NZ on Air system, or even regular production houses. A tiny crew of committed collaborators made the bulk of his oeuvre, much of it funded by comical product placements and sausage ads. Eventually he went direct to consumer to finance his work, creating smash hit products in Wakachangi beer and Snackachangi chips. All of it built on the bizarro Mooniverse. / Duncan Greive
32. The collected works of David Lomas (2009–present)
Who is that solitary man in black? His painstakingly enunciated introduction – “I’m. David Lomas.” – gives little away. His manner falls somewhere between the Lone Ranger or a priest, a man of mystery heading into town to right wrongs and then walk off into the sunset.
Lomas has been helping to put fractured families back together since TV3’s Missing Pieces first screened in 2009. Over many years his schtick has developed a certain ritualized rhythm that must be reassuring to his subjects, about to enter the uncharted territory of secrets and silences. There’s the walk along the beach with his latest subject: “So what is your story?” There’s the research back in his Auckland boatshed office, the thoughtful scanning of the horizon. With the help of experts, DNA testing, a lot of gumshoe work and gentle persuasion Lomas delivers the goods.
After Missing Pieces came Lost and Found and most recently, David Lomas Investigates, which has taken him to Hong Kong, Romania, Vietnam, Tonga, and Brazil. I’ve approached each show with a topped-up glass of wine and a box of tissues. It’s not just that the reunions are so intensely moving. Many of the stories are a reproach to times not entirely past when it was not deemed necessary for children to have the right to their background, their stories, the data they carry in their DNA. Lomas began as a journalist and is still engaged in the increasingly undervalued job that journalists are supposed to do. The pursuit of the truth. / Diana Wichtel
31. Attitude (2005–present)
Since 2005, the quintessential Attitude story has been allowing audiences a window into the life of someone living with disability – anorexia or locked in syndrome or a brain haemorrhage or foetal alcohol or almost anything which can be experienced. And because it has been making these documentaries for so long – just shy of two decades – Attitude’s work collectively amounts to a tapestry of the disability experience that is now made up of hundreds of real New Zealanders and their daily lives.
The show has persistently been given indifferent slots on linear television, but has found a vast global audience on YouTube, where its deeply affecting, and empathetically told stories have been viewed tens of millions of times. As a result, Attitude’s role in increasing knowledge of and changing the political sentiment toward people with disabilities cannot be overstated. The continued growth of disability storytelling, from Attitude’s own reality romance series Down for Love, to Wheel Blacks: Bodies on the Line to The D*List – is hard to envisage without Attitude’s pathbreaking work. / Duncan Greive
30. Head High (2020–2021)
It might seem fanciful that an elite private school could share a boundary with an impoverished state school, but Golf Rd is all that separates Kings from Ōtāhuhu College in South Auckland. That proximity, Auckland’s disparities in miniature, forms the backdrop for Head High. It takes the tensions and relationships which are routine in top grade high school rugby, and lands a visceral, wrenching tragedy square in the middle.
Thanks to powerful yet understated performances from Miriama McDowell, Craig Hall, Jayden Daniels and Te Ao O Hinepehinga Rauna, Head High had a chance to be our Friday Night Lights. It shot for a level of realism which is rare in our drama, starting well and improving with a powerful second season, before being cut down in its prime, victim to Three’s perpetual ownership issues and the game of slots which is NZ on Air’s big leagues funding scrap.
Its cancellation was cruel and too soon, but it still stands as a beautifully crafted story, one which never had a chance to grow old and stale. / Duncan Greive
29. Pulp Comedy (1995-2003)
Before the age of streaming and on-demand, certain TV shows had a quality of always being on – motorsports were always on, some unnameable British drama was always on, and Pulp Comedy was always on. Realistically, there can’t be more than 80 episodes, but it felt like maybe three or four hundred at the time.
The above isn’t a complaint so much as a tally of the show’s impact and breadth – over eight years they must have surveyed the entirety of New Zealand’s stand-up comedy scene. Filmed in a typical comedy stage manner at the Powerstation in Auckland, the show took on a gala format with comics delivering their tightest five-minute sets over an hour runtime. The theatre was always packed with a live audience, proof of the scene’s strength at the time.
Standup comedy has a cyclical popularity with peaks and troughs spread across a decade, hot for some years and cold for others. Pulp Comedy captured the peaks of its period and gave a stage to a generation of talents: Flight of the Conchords, Taika Waititi, Rhys Darby, Cal Wilson, Mike King, and a whole milieu of later-familiar faces.
Exposure was a rare resource in the 90s-00s media age, and Pulp Comedy shared it liberally. When New Zealand stand-up comedy hit another peak period in the 2010s, I was surprised that the gala format didn’t return. But by then the avenues for stage time and screen time had both expanded, and local comedy was, once again, always on. / Daniel Taipua
28. The Dead Lands (2020)
Toa Fraser’s pre-colonial Māori language action film The Dead Lands (2014) featured a young warrior on a quest to avenge the death of his tribe, and his father. It was pretty serious masculine stuff, interspersed with excellent mau rākau fight sequences. The English language TV adaptation points in a different direction tonally. The eight-episode series was the first New Zealand show to be commissioned directly by an American network. AMC distributed the show on their horror platform Shudder, showcasing Māori storytelling and traditions on a global scale.
With a fully Māori and Pasifika cast, and a fully local crew, the show keeps us in the mythic past. It ups the stakes, soups up the female roles, and tilts us into a genre that’s a combination of action, splatter, and tongue-in-cheek comedy. There’s also zombies, which is kinda fitting, given AMC is the home of The Walking Dead.
Te Kohe Tuhaka puts in a blinder of a performance as murdered warrior Waka Nuku Rau, a real piece of work who is flung back into the land of the living. He finds that land ravaged by hordes of (un)dead who are unable to enter the afterlife. He must help young woman Mehe (newcomer Darneed Christian) avenge the death of her father and take on the monsters, and to possibly redeem himself.
The show is an absolute romp. It’s funny, scary, action-packed and bloody, flicking between intense close-quarters combat and sweeping landscapes. Its stylised presentation looks great, like a graphic novel come to life. It also has a distinctly Māori sense of humour; producer Tainui Stephens called it a “fine Māori piss-take”. In an age of increasingly fragmented production and distribution, The Dead Lands’ success highlights the particular global appeal of (and demand for) Indigenous, genre-based storytelling. / Erin Harrington
27. Educators (2019–2022)
In 2022, I visited the set of Educators, our wildest improvised comedy show, to see exactly how the crazed mind of showrunner Jesse Griffin really worked. Like a mad conductor, Griffin writes Educators in real-time, shouting out lines, riffs or directions to his actors on the fly. Like Curb Your Enthusiasm, there’s no script and actors are given just rough notes. “I know what we’re doing about 10 minutes before we start doing it,” actor Rick Donald told me. “There’s a looseness to it. It’s fresh.”
I agree. I love all three seasons of Educators so much I would rank it as the most consistent comedy show we’ve made, the lols coming from Tom Sainsbury’s teacher Rudy Beard stealing his neighbour’s identity to Jackie Van Beek’s stern Robyn Duffy having a love affair with an octogenarian and PE teacher Vinnie hiding his criminal past while bullying his students. Australia rates Griffin and Van Beek so highly they got them to film The Office Australia in a similar way. We can only hope they return home for a fourth season of Educators. / Chris Schulz
26. Westside (2015-2020)
A bona fide prequel to the wildly popular and critically acclaimed Outrageous Fortune, before prequels were the go-to franchise expansion move of the streaming era, Westside took us back to 1974 and opened with Ted West (David de Lautour) getting out of jail. As Russell Baillie noted, by the end of the first episode, it was clear that, like its predecessor, the show would revolve around its matriarch, Rita West (Antonia Prebble). That casting, with Prebble playing Loretta in Outrageous Fortune and, via flashback, her past/future self Rita, felt wickedly clever. That we could sustain 12 seasons of tightly written and well-cast New Zealand television, with one family at its core, felt like a coming of age. It also felt like it could go on forever.
With the benefit of hindsight, Westside was able to reflect our recent history to us, with carless days, the Dawn Raids and the Springbok Tour woven throughout. As Amelia Petrovich wrote in 2016, Westside was “The Outrageous Kiwi history lesson I never knew I needed”. The show also gave us one of the most stylish TV characters to grace our screens in Ngaire Munroe (Esther Stephens), whose wardrobe I still covet. Fortunately for me, and other fans of the Westside fits, costume designer Sarah Aldridge shared her how to be the “best dressed in the West” secrets with us in 2016. / Anna Rawhiti-Connell
25. Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee (2023–present)
It’s hard to find genuine innovation in game shows, but Guy Montgomery’s anarchic take on the wholesome spelling bee is consistently surprising, hilarious, and a little messed up. Montgomery is an impeccable host with lightning reflexes. He uses the established tropes of the spelling bee – a word’s definition, place of origin, and use in a sentence – to construct elaborate metatextual gags. Deadpan comic Sanjay Patel acts as low-status sidekick, offsetting Montgomery’s aggressive cheer, acting out bizarre scenarios, and escorting the loser to the dunce stool.
The format, which started off as an online lockdown boredom buster, has really hit its stride on television, with the benefit of a budget and the momentum of a full season. The show’s lo-fi 70s-inspired brown and pink set, live audience, somewhat demented energy, and bizarre internal logic gets the best (and worst) out of a collection of emerging and established comedians. It’s a show that lets its contestants fail forward, from the straight-laced opening round, where they can pick the difficulty level of words (not that that’s always an indication of their achievability), to segments built on increasingly absurd sketch comedy.
Most notably, the show has a crackling sense of energy and spontaneity that’s been massaged out of a lot of other comedy formats. Contestants can’t prep their way to success, and some of the best moments are rooted in frustration and hostility. In one episode, a decade’s worth of boardgame-related enmity spills out between Rose Matafeo and Eli Matthewson. In another, a frustrated Guy Williams challenges the audience to a fight in the carpark. “I didn’t know you were going to do words that were barely words!” wails Janaye Henry. We did, and the show’s so good even the Australians have swiped it. / Erin Harrington
24. Aroha Bridge (2013–2019)
In my opinion, Aroha Bridge is the best television show our country has ever produced. The animated series, which has gained a cult following and won major awards such as the best web series at the Los Angeles Film Awards, was originally a comic strip called Hook Ups. Drawn by Jessica “Coco Solid” Hansell and appearing in weekly music magazine Volume, it followed twins Kōwhai and Monty Hook, but would soon morph into a 10-part web series named Aroha Bridge.
“When we started Aroha Bridge it was about making a work specific to the Aotearoa that we actually knew. Smart but suffering, broke but ever-optimistic, multicultural and tense,” Hansell wrote for The Spinoff in 2016. “Someone asked who the typical viewer was and I realised: it was for people who didn’t win a KFC giveaway beanie but will never give up the dream.”
Centred around the urban Māori Hook whānau, the series follows their adventures in the bustling, fictional suburb of Aroha Bridge, based on Māngere Bridge in South Auckland. It explores the complexities of racial politics and millennial Māori anxieties, while forcing us to laugh at ourselves, from the “coconut-latte-sipping, waist-trainer-wearing, shakti-mat-using mums in Ponsonby” to the people who buy $20 T-shirts to show their support for social causes.
I once stumbled upon an Aroha Bridge T-shirt in an op-shop and couldn’t believe my eyes. My fiancée (who loves the show maybe just as much as me) quickly claimed it as a prized possession, only wearing it on special occasions. Personally, I aspire to be just like Uncle Noogy, the twins’ activist uncle who exclusively speaks in te reo Māori. / Liam Rātana
23. Back of the Y Masterpiece Television (2001–2008)
In the 2000s, many New Zealand shows were made on the smell of an oily rag – but only one of those shows lit the rag on fire, tied it around their host, then pushed them down a flight of stairs in a shopping trolley. Back of the Y was a late-night half-hour shit-show made up of Jackass-style stunts, ass-rock live bands and whatever would stretch to the 22-minutes required by a TVNZ contract. It was golden.
Essentially a sketch show, Back of the Y was made up of the following segments:
- Bottlestore Galactica, a Battlestar Galactica parody;
- Vaseline Warriors, a Mad Max parody;
- C*ntstables, a Cops parody;
- Artswhole, a fine arts community report;
- and in between, basically any opportunity to hit someone with a moving car.
The brainchild of Matt Heath and Chris Stapp, Back of the Y had a long arc stretching from Otago Uni student projects to a full-length feature film in 2007. My own memories of the show stretch back to its debut on Triangle TV in 1998, where the university-era BOTY showed during the weekly marijuana decriminalisation lobbying programme. Gen X was a weird time.
Pushed into the relative limelight of a very late TVNZ slot, Back of the Y captured the worst excesses and greatest opportunities of the 90s-00s transition. Much like MTV’s Jackass, it revealed a breed of young man whose motivation to get on TV superseded any sense of physical pain. More energetic than grunge, but less reactive than punk, they became the garage rock scene for the media decade that lay ahead of them. Also, they filmed the show in a garage. / Daniel Taipua
22. Top of the Lake (2013–2017)
It’s easy to forget just what a big deal it was that Dame Jane Campion was making television. In 2012, the celebrated director began work on what remains her one and only contribution to the small screen: a small-town detective mystery set in the surrounds of Queenstown, with a second-season set in Sydney. Top of the Lake was co-pro that relied on overseas investment, there was plenty of behind-the-scenes wrangling as a pregnant Anna Paquin dropped out of the lead role, leading to the casting of Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss.
The series received rave reviews as soon as it launched, with words like “sad” and “haunting” used to describe Moss’ hunt for a serial sexual abuser. The mysterious South Island backdrop was used by Campion so often that it became a character itself. “One that will stick with you, for better or worse, for a long time,” said Collider, hinting at a chilling finale that, many years on, still makes me shudder. At 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, this remains among our highest-rated shows of all time. / Chris Schulz
21. Hōmai Te Pakipaki (2007–2015, 2024)
Talent shows saw a massive revival in the 2000s with the global success of the Idol franchise, The Voice, and Got Talent. These were all big-budget affairs with global deals and a promise of stardom, and a bit full-on to be honest. How about just having a sing? Get a waiata going? Giz a turn?
Hōmai Te Pakipaki brought the talent show back home, and back into the home every Friday night with a live studio audience and the chance for anyone to roll up and have a go. The format was a simple karaoke contest with a handful of everyday hopefuls voted upwards by text message, filmed in the same Māori Television studio where everything else was filmed.
The secret sauce for Hōmai Te Pakipaki was the contestants: very high chance of seeing a cousin on here, or at least a hapu connection, maybe a regional connect if you were a lonely guy. In any case, here were people who would be singing on a Friday night whether they were being filmed or not – it felt communal because it was communal.
Things would flash up a bit for the grand finals each year, where a $20,000 prize was available and filming moved to a larger venue. But real talent bears no mind of these trappings, and 2011 contestant Chad Chambers won the night while wearing his white gumboots from his freezing works job, holding his son in one arm while singing Rod Stewart.
Hearty and real, Hōmai Te Pakipaki was less about stardom and more about the stars among us. / Daniel Taipua
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.” He’s right. To this day, nothing comes close to the audience Country Calendar continues to pull in – the average audience for 2024 season so far has raked in an average 532,000 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
First published October 24, 2024.
