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Explosive stuff (Image: YouTube/Supplied)
Explosive stuff (Image: YouTube/Supplied)

Pop CultureJanuary 30, 2025

‘Fiery deaths ahead’: The car crash that changed Shortland Street forever

Explosive stuff (Image: YouTube/Supplied)
Explosive stuff (Image: YouTube/Supplied)

With every episode of Shortland Street from 1994 now on YouTube, Tara Ward returns to the shocking car crash that took the soap to a new level. 

In 1994, Jim Bolger was prime minister, a two litre bottle of milk cost $2.37, and Heavenly Creatures and Once Were Warriors ruled the box office. And across Aotearoa, local media were whipped up into a frenzy by rumours that Shortland Street was about to wave goodbye to two main characters, doomed to die in explosive scenes never seen before on the plucky young soap. 

Those deathly rumours sparked weeks of intense media speculation and sensational headlines. No Shortland Street storyline had garnered so much public attention before – not even Marj appearing on the Holmes show. In the lead-up to the March 25 episode, local media dined on every delicious detail. “A Flaming Mystery!” shouted the Sunday News, who snapped some sneaky photos of the crash scenes being filmed at a “secret location”. A Truth reporter described how they were “caught hiding in a bush with a long lens” in a clandestine effort to discover the identity of the victims. Moved on by the show’s producer, the “young news sleuth” still found a nearby property to take his photos from. 

Shortland Street publicists and producers stayed tight lipped, but the media chatter continued. The NZ Woman’s Weekly, Truth, TV Guide and Sunday News all covered the storyline, each trying to predict who would cark it. New Truth dedicated the entire front page (“Shortland St Shocker!”) to the storyline, as well as a full page article (“Street shock!”) announcing that Martin Henderson and Angela Dotchin’s characters (Stuart Neilson and Kirsty Knight) would be the unlucky victims. 

Those particular rumours became so persistent that the cast themselves made the rare move of getting involved. In February, a month before the episodes aired, The Sunday Star printed a photo of Dotchin wearing a white T-shirt with “NOT” printed on the back, confirming she and Henderson weren’t leaving the show. “Angela Dotchin and Martin Henderson have had it!” the accompanying item read. “We’re here to stay, and we’ve even got the T-Shirts to prove it.” 

The good old days of journalism, before clickbait and fake news (Images: SPP)

It’s hard to imagine a similar level of interest in a TV death happening in 2025, but in 1994, Shortland Street dominated our local popular culture. An estimated 619,000 viewers watched the soap every night that year, nearly 20% of the population of Aotearoa at the time. The cast was a who’s who of New Zealand acting talent, including Henderson, Robyn Malcolm, Temuera Morrison, Tim Balme, Martin Czokas, Theresa Healey, Craig Parker and Elizabeth McRae.

Parker recently told The Spinoff that this era of Shortland Street launched the cast into a level of local stardom they couldn’t escape. “​​We were as famous as Tom Cruise, comparatively,” he said. “There was nowhere that you weren’t known.” We’d never known a New Zealand show like it, and clearly, we couldn’t get enough.

Pissed off Steve (Andrew Binns) and shitfaced Chris (Michael Galvin) moments before The Crash (YouTube)

Rewatching the pivotal episode now – all of Shortland Street’s 1994 episodes were recently uploaded to YouTube  – the scenes remain as shocking as ever. The hospital staff had gathered at an Auckland beach to farewell Gina and Leonard Rossi-Dodds. Hospital CEO Michael McKenna inexplicably arrived in a tiny two-door Toyota Starlet, semi-topless waiters from Kennedy’s bar kept the alcohol flowing freely, and Dr Chris Warner, recently anointed the successful sperm donor daddy to nurse Carrie Burton’s triplets, got quietly sozzled.

Everyone was happy, except for one man: Steve Mills. For the past few weeks, the nurse had come down with a severe case of jealousy after discovering that Chris Warner’s sperm had been more successful than his own. Having to drive a drunk Chris home after the farewell party was the final straw. 

Steve’s yellow car hooned along that winding gravel road back to Ferndale, an angry man at the wheel and a drunk one in the back. Kirsty and TP were in the car too, but it was Chris who was the passenger from hell. He goaded Steve about not being the father of Carrie’s triplets, shouting in Steve’s face until the nurse lashed out and pushed Chris away. The car swerved out of control, hurtled off the road and over a bank, as Kirsty and TP’s terrified screams echoed through the air.  

Don’t worry Kirsty, Chris will recover and have many, many wives (YouTube)

Thirty years later, those scenes remain as powerful and evocative as they were in 1994. There’s Kirsty’s panicked tears as Steve resuscitates an unconscious Chris, Steve’s desperate attempts to free a trapped TP from the car, and the grim sight of the flames that begin to lick the engine. Ambulance officer Sam Aleni arrives on the scene, only to watch on helplessly as the car suddenly explodes in an enormous fireball, his wife and best friend still inside. 

These episodes – and the related media frenzy – set a high bar for Shortland Street, heralding the next three decades of spectacular disasters, serial killers and exploding volcanos. Not only was it the show’s first major tragedy, but it was the first time Shortland Street ended an episode without playing its iconic theme song. In the aftermath of the car crash, the credits roll as Sam sits alone in his flat. That fiery day ended in complete silence, and the rest of the country couldn’t stop talking about it. 

The 1994 season of Shortland Street is available on YouTube

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Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)
Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureJanuary 30, 2025

What I learnt making a documentary about Aotearoa’s queer history

Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)
Harry Wynn and the Topp Twins. (Photo: Supplied)

Harry Wynn, director and writer of TVNZ’s Queer Aotearoa: We’ve Always Been Here, reflects on making the groundbreaking documentary series.

The first seed of the idea for Queer Aotearoa came to me during a regular dog walk. I found myself wondering: “when did it become legal for adult men to have consensual relationships in New Zealand?” To my surprise, it was only in 1986 – six years before I was born. Even more shocking, it was only a year after I was born that it became illegal to deny someone a job or rental property because of their sexuality or gender identity. I had always imagined New Zealand as a progressive little utopia at the bottom of the world but, for queer people, progress came surprisingly late compared to places like the UK.

This moment on the dog walk felt like opening Pandora’s box. As someone who benefits from the hard-won rights of activists who risked everything to challenge a repressive status quo, I was embarrassed by how little I knew about our own history. When I searched for documentaries on key events and change-makers in New Zealand’s LGBTQIA+ history, I found almost nothing – just a few old clips from Queer Nation. This glaring gap in access to our own history made me realise how essential it was to preserve these stories. With time running out, it felt urgent to capture the voices of those who had been part of these movements while we still could.

Working with producer Orlando Stewart was a no-brainer. He had made the TVNZ series When Bob Came, a documentary about the enduring cultural impact of Bob Marley’s one and only visit to Aotearoa in 1979. His experience with utilising TVNZ’s extensive archival database, which spans over a century, proved invaluable. This treasure trove helped us visually support the stories shared in interviews. Among the gems we uncovered were experimental documentaries by Geoff Steven about Auckland’s nightlife in the early 1980s, as well as old interviews with queer icons like the Topp Twins, Hudson & Halls, Carmen Rupe and Georgina Beyer. 

I think audiences will be surprised by how progressive some attitudes were in the past. Georgina Beyer’s Wairarapa campaign, for instance, included interviews with several middle-aged rural male voters who said they couldn’t care less about a politician’s identity, that it was her character that mattered most. Then there are also the interviews where reporters reveal blatant intolerance toward LGBTQIA+ people. Condensing all of these stories into six half-hour episodes was no small feat (shoutout to our brilliant editor, Sacha Campbell.) 

Mike Puru and Harry Wynn (Photo: Supplied)

When we started this project, I saw it as history worth telling. But what I didn’t expect was how deeply it would move me. We sat down with 35 interviewees for the series, and many shared the most difficult experiences of their lives. Mike Puru spoke about his fear of being publicly outed – a fear that became a reality for other entertainers. Joan Bellingham, a lesbian nurse, was sent to a psychiatric ward halfway through her training and committed for 12 years, enduring countless rounds of electroconvulsive therapy to “fix” her. Michelle Lewin, a trans woman, had to leave her dream job in the Air Force because it became unbearable to live as someone she wasn’t.

In 2025, events from 1986 or 1993 can feel distant or even irrelevant. But as recent events here and across the world have shown us, knowledge is power, especially for minorities whose rights can be stripped away with the stroke of a pen. Learning what LGBTQIA+ people have endured in New Zealand underscores how far we’ve come and how fragile progress can be. History shows that it doesn’t take much for the silent majority to shift their views on what rights they think minorities “deserve”. That’s why understanding what’s at stake is so important, while still finding the warmth and fun through our wonderful host, Eli Matthewson.

I know that for some in the LGBTQIA+ community, things like pride parades, rainbow flags, and overtly camp imagery can feel off-putting. Our rights are built upon activism and protest movements, and Pride represents activism on our community’s own terms. We gave a lot of thought to how we could make the show broad enough to resonate with people who are still working through their identities, as well as straight cis-gendered people. I hope this show and its exploration of our queer heritage in Aotearoa can serve as a gateway for people, no matter where they are on their journey.

For me, this is the show I wish I had when I was 21. My hope is that it passes down our queer history to younger generations, reaffirming that we’ve always been here – and ensuring that our stories will be here for those who come after us.

Queer Aotearoa: We’ve Always Been Here comes to TVNZ+ on Feb 1.

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