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50 years of TVNZ

Pop CultureNovember 5, 2019

50 iconic looks from 50 years of TVNZ network news

50 years of TVNZ

When TVNZ celebrated 50 years of network news, Alex Casey celebrated 50 of the most iconic looks that otherwise might be left forgotten. 

This post was published in November 2019.

This week, as TVNZ celebrates 50 years of network news, there will be much time devoted to the stories that stopped the nation. Plumes of smoke billowing out of Mt Ruapehu. Dame Whina Kupa on an unsealed road. John Walker running very fast. These are the images that united us, the ones etched in our collective memory forever. 

But I’m not going to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the funny newsroom looks. I’m talking weird desk setups, I’m talking shoulder pads for the gods, I’m talking a walk-in wardrobe of novelty ties. In an attempt to preserve the art of News Fashion, I watched every available clip on Youtube (big shout out to Dan News) and have assembled this list.

50) The scorched Earth: who wore it better? 

Okay, so this is not an outfit per se. But in a way, isn’t the Earth just a giant, shared shoe for all of us? These weather maps were made just three decades apart – a very bad look everyone!!!!!!!!! 

49) (Sherlock) Holmes trench

Yes it was a big deal for Paul Holmes to go and interview Margaret Thatcher in 1993. But look me in the eye and tell me that’s not the same trench that three raccoons wear when they stack themselves on top of each other and pretend to read a newspaper on the train.

48) Jim Hickey, 80s car salesman

Sorry Matilda’s dad in Matilda

47) Baby Prince William eating a buzzy bee in 1983

It’s a metaphor for colonisation. 

46) This Kate Hawkesby ensemble

Look, it was a different time. 

45) Cray Hickey

Very “Lady Gaga”. 

44) This bad logo 1985-1994

Big insurance energy

43) Mutch to talk about

You gotta watch this clip where Jessica Mutch leaves her colleague Nadine Higgins hanging during a live cross in 2013. Mutch’s steely gaze, glam location and immaculate makeup feels straight off a Killing Eve mood board. 

42) Another weird logo

Anyone else see a swan making out with a star making out with a swan making out with a star? I gotta stop watching The Human Centipede.

41) Forecast looks blue

I have a blue house with a blue window /
Blue is the colour of all that I wear /
Blue are the streets and all the trees are too /
I’ll do the weather, as long as it’s blue

40) Unlucky Brendan Horan

Tfw you get belted with bird shit during high winds in the mid-2000s. 

39) Jesus walks

Melissa Stokes LOOK OUT HE’S BEHIND YOOOOU

38) Big suit

The truth is out there. 

37) These burn book graphics from 1971

Extremely brutal and shady of way of showing that Taiwan was out of the UN.

36) Peter Williams gets Punk*d

Every newsreader knows that the perfect fashion accessory is a man doing a rambunctious jig.  

35) Holmes vs. Thatcher title card, 1993

Why is this my primary school science fair presentation?

34) Putting the ew in news. 

Okay so this was the late news but still, how funny to sit next to a huge sign that says “EW NEWS.” Chuck it on me tombstone. 

33) Dougal Stevenson avoiding my gaze

In 1971, Dougal Stevenson was doing a LOT of reading from endless pieces of paper, flitting his eyes up only every 10 seconds or so. Very relatable delivery and was “don’t look at me” over 30 years before Damien in Mean Girls said “don’t look at me.”

Also: don’t look at me. 

32) Mafioso Sam Wallace 

Sorry Alfredo Pacino

31) Wendy in the trenches

#SaveWendy

30) I am D’Batman

This is clearly a subliminal message for vigilante justice. Change my mind. 

29) Hickey’s bacon tie

I would like to eat that tie very much.

28) Lads

The boys are on (the TV) 

27) This lady in the control room

The year is 1971 and The Matrix is real. 

26) Bowden at the Oscars

If there’s anything better than man in a tux, it’s a man in a tux having an absolute bloody mare on his telephone during a live cross

25) Dallow in space, 2019

Dalloooww frroooom the ooooooother siiiiiiiiiiide

24)  Aquaman Bailey blazer

At first it’s just a good blazer, but at the end of this 90s broadcast Bailey reveals that the SLEEVES HAVE WEIRD BLACK GILLS UNDERNEATH. Deep sea chic. 

23) Cyber thing

“The ultimate bargaining tool, a gadget that compares shop prices on the internet.” 

22) Jimbo Polo

I’m lovin’ cloud nine [weather], my head’s in the sky [thinking about the weather] /
I’m solo, I’m wearin’ polo /
I’m wearin’ polo, I’m wearin’ solo polo

21) Santa Dan

You’ve heard of Santa, but have you met his enthusiastic cousin Dan-ta? “You know where he’s coming first,” Dan Corbett frothed in 2015. “To New Zealand. He’s coming here, we’ve got the air of high pressure, he’s going to zoom his way in, he’s going to visit all the spots.” 

20) Bill Ralston in pastels

Is the suit pink and white or mint and grey? 

19) Classic Simon and Ali 

Mom and Dad. 

18) Classic Richard and Judy

Also Mom and Dad. 

17) Hickey ghost sunnies

This clip celebrates Jim Hickey’s mime artistry, surely inspired by Tom Bradley’s many ties with many eyes. If you thought that was surreal, then how about this closing advice – “buy a tourist a pizza.” Indeed. 

16) Angela D’Audney street style

Imagine looking this glam and composed as you get out of your cool TVNZ car to go to your first TVNZ news broadcast in 1973????? 

15) Wendy Petrie’s fist pump look

Purple blazer, OJ black glove – Judd Nelson is smiling. 

14) Red alert

The Sunmaid Raisin Lady could never. 

13) This moving eclipse

Look, I’ve read two more essays about haiku this week than I’ve ever read in my life, and D’Audney’s headline read here felt poetic – “the moon does a slow waltz across the sun”

12) Black and yellow black and yellow

“You can call me Queen B”

11) Jim Hickey demonstrates how much 16mm is 

At first I was going to talk about the luxe mustard and purple tapestry tie, but then Hickey did this. “16 mm over four days – how much is that?” he turns and throws his arms out like weather Jesus, revealing a satanic spine of masking tape. “That much.” 

10) Jandals May Coffin

You may remember the controversy following a truly hectic letter published in the TV Guide, where pregnant Jenny May Coffin was labelled an “eyesore” by a confused grump in Lower Hutt. But even more memorable was her final broadcast, done in jandals. “The day I had to wear jandals on air was the day I was going to stand down – so today is that day.” 

9) Tom Bradley’s 1994 sunnies tie

Now that’s what I call… fifty shades

8) The original Hot Priest

Holy. 

7) Dan Corbett’s fingers

Salad Fingers walked so Dan Corbett could run. Don’t @ me.

6) Grahame Thorne’s perm

It was as true in 1983 as it is now: Get. A. Perm. From NZ On Screen: “Thorne’s hottest 15 minutes came after he dared to present the sports news one day in 1983… with a perm. The ensuing national trauma inspired headlines, irate phonecalls, and ‘curls are for girls’ banners at rugby games. Sadly the perm’s freshest incarnation is lost to the archives, and this slightly grown-out version is the only extant evidence of a key moment in Kiwi fashion history.”

5) Customs sport blazer

Rare. If someone would like to donate one of these to The Real Pod museum, please get in touch. 

4) Legolas Coffey

Weather tomorrow? A red sun rises… blood has been spilled on this night

3) Tina Carline, 1980s legend

Obsessed with every part of this relaxed weather look. The silver eyeshadow. The delicate necklace. The pastel pink t-shirt that seems like staff uniform from a day spa. And if that wasn’t enough, how good is the pass agg East Coast forecast that seems like it’s fighting with itself. “Fine?” “Fine.” 

2) Richard Long’s moustache

Mo mo, less problems. But still not as good as the number one news look…

1) D’Audney? More like D’Greatest

End of list. 

Keep going!
Lyra and Pan in happier times (shown here played by Dafne Keen and an unidentified but appropriately magnificent ermine in the HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials).
Lyra and Pan in happier times (shown here played by Dafne Keen and an unidentified but appropriately magnificent ermine in the HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials).

Pop CultureNovember 5, 2019

The kids’ fantasy that explains the adult world: A tribute to His Dark Materials

Lyra and Pan in happier times (shown here played by Dafne Keen and an unidentified but appropriately magnificent ermine in the HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials).
Lyra and Pan in happier times (shown here played by Dafne Keen and an unidentified but appropriately magnificent ermine in the HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials).

As the HBO TV adaptation arrives on NEON, Sam Brooks looks back on His Dark Materials, the only children’s book series he was allowed to read as a kid.

A little girl and her shapeshifting daemon. A sweet-voiced, evil-faced woman with a glamourous monkey for a companion. A giant polar bear wearing armour. When I watch the trailer for the new HBO adaptation of His Dark Materials, streaming on NEON now, it speaks deeply to two parts of me.

On one hand, it speaks to the prestige-television-loving adult Sam. It’s got a stacked cast (human feline Ruth Wilson, multi-talented Lin-Manuel Miranda, soft Brit James McAvoy) and creative team (Otto Bathurst of Peaky Blinders, Tom Hooper of future hatewatch Cats, legend Philip Pullman himself). It’s the exact right confluence of serious drama and high fantasy that never quite grabbed me with Game of Thrones, which always felt like it was aiming for dramatic weight rather than inventive, imaginative visuals. And finally, maybe most crucially, it’s a show about people rising up against a system that seems to exist for no other reason other than to put them down and impose their own will. Seems quite pertinent in 2019!

On the other hand, it speaks very much to the avid reader that was child Sam. When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to read kids books. My mother forbade them, alongside Disney and Thomas the Tank Engine. In her mind, C.S Lewis was a Christianity propagandist, Doctor Seuss was a wife-abandoning charlatan, and Beatrix Potter had tried and failed to humanise one of our greatest pests: the rabbit. I had to read Harry Potter during lunch at school, just so I wouldn’t get caught out. That was how real the ‘no kids books’ rule was in the Brooks household. The idea was that, rather than introduce me to real-life concepts and situations, kids books would simplify those situations and turn my brain into mush like the rest of humanity. Her words, not mine.

The one exception? Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. 

Yes, it’s that polar bear. And yes, it’s awesome.

This series wasn’t just allowed in the Brooks household, it was assigned reading (alongside Little Women, the adult version of Chinese Cinderella, and the Mists of Avalon). The first book of the series is set in a parallel universe Victorian-ish England, and follows 12-year-old Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon as she stumbles across a lightly Catholic Church-flavoured controversy. This was the kind of nonsense that my mother advocated against, pushing me towards the likes of Margaret Atwood. Please, parents, do not get your child to read The Blind Assassin. They will not appreciate it and it will put them off the rest of Atwood’s material for at least a decade.

In short: I was immersed in Northern Lights from the very first page. It sucked me into the world – enough like a world I’d read about in books or seen in films, but very much its own thing – immediately. Just read this first passage:

“Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. The three great tables that ran the length of the hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catching what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out ready for the guests. Portraits of former Masters hung high up in the gloom along the walls. Lyra reached the dais and looked back at the open kitchen door, and, seeing no one, stepped up beside the high table. The places here were laid with gold, not silver, and the fourteen seats were not oak benches but mahogany chairs with velvet cushions.”

Without going all literary critic on it, it sets up the world, and Lyra’s place in it, perfectly. This is a world of grandeur, with dark places and darker secrets, and she’s a small part of it. There are great tables, there are portraits of Masters, and she is sneaking through them. 

Lyra stopped beside the Master’s chair and flicked the biggest glass gently with a fingernail.  The sound rang clearly through the Hall.

‘You’re not taking this seriously,’ whispered her daemon. ‘Behave yourself.’

Her daemon’s name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show in the darkness of the Hall.

Nine year old me was all, “Holy shit!” (swearing was okay, kids books were not, if you’re keeping track). What the hell is a daemon?! Why is it in the form of a moth?! Why is ‘Hall’ capitalised? I devoured the book in less than a week, and I’m sure I whined until the arrival of the rest of the trilogy, which I more or less inhaled with my eyeballs. It wasn’t that I hadn’t read fantasy, it was that I hadn’t read a fantasy book that spoke to me without simplifying anything. His Dark Materials spoke to me, a child who was learning things every day, and eager not just to learn but to understand.  

Looking back on the trilogy now, I can absolutely see why it got past the gatekeeping eye of my mother. It’s not just a beautifully inventive series, it’s intellectually and philosophically complex in a way that other novels aimed at children don’t aspire to be. This wasn’t a simplistic Harry Potter vs. Dark Wizards conflict, this was a character against an entire establishment, slowly figuring out how that establishment works and where she stands in relation to it. Like the rest of the books my mother loaded on me, His Dark Materials was a way to educate me about the way the world worked and where I stood in it.

Dafne Keen as Lyra in the HBO His Dark Materials series.

As someone who grew up a part of the Catholic Church (an educated Christian, one baptised so he could go to a Catholic school), the depiction of the Magisterium made sense of something that was very real and present in my life. An inexplicable system with rigid rules tied to rituals and an arbitrary sense of morals? Yeah, I’d heard of it.

Then there’s the daemons – constantly shifting creatures that settle on an identity once a child reaches adulthood, a manifestation of that person’s true personality, whether it be a snake, a snow leopard, or a villainous monkey. I was a clearly gay kid, one who could recite the scripts to Absolutely Fabulous as easily as others could recite nursery rhymes, so the visualisation of children figuring out who they were also made sense on a very visceral level to me.

I’ve no doubt that my mother had clocked this part of it. In her mind, there were books that were worth reading because they helped you understand the world, and there were books that were worth reading because they helped you understand yourself. This fulfilled both purposes, excellently. More than enough to get past the gatekeeper.

These days, when we’re reminded on a daily basis that the systems we live under are corrupt and worth rising up against, I’m thankful I had this introduction to the series at that age. It wasn’t just a step in my development, it was a core part of it. His Dark Materials was a gentle guide through a few of life’s more incomprehensible structures and even when it didn’t provide definitive answers, it taught me that it was important to keep asking questions.

It’s also why I’m genuinely excited about this adaptation.

Twenty years ago, my imagination did the work. But now, my inner child has grown up, my daemon has settled into a form (some kind of drunk swan, probably) and I’m ready to see a whole new generation of people engage with what is, to me, the most essential young adult series.

The second season of His Dark Materials drops weekly on Tuesday nights on NEON.

This content was created in paid partnership with NEON. Learn more about our partnerships here

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