Nick Ward has written for Wellington Paranormal and Outrageous Fortune, but his next TV series is a feelgood kids show encompassing his two big loves: comedy and birds.
Nick Ward loves birds. He watches them, he makes clocks for them, and now, he’s writing television shows about them. Ward is the writer of Birds Eye View, a new animated children’s series about a flock of native birds who ponder the deep mysteries of human behaviour. If you think birds are strange, Bird’s Eye View is about to flip things around to reveal the true weirdos of the animal kingdom: us.
Bird’s Eye View is a charming, cheery tonic to the world around us, and each short episode is filled with bold colours and dry, observational humour. It was an easy decision for Ward when directors Pete Circutt and Jared Kahi approached him with the idea. “Comedy, birds, I’m in. That’s what I’m all about,” Ward says. “It also had that other element to it which we all love, which while it is about birds, it’s all about looking at humans.”
We watch the birds in Birds Eye View, but really, they’re watching us, trying to make sense of the strange things we do every day. Why are we ruled by a ringing phone? Why do we go to work for eight hours straight? Why do we pick up dog poo? These are the types of questions young children ask to make sense of the world around them, and like us grown-ups, these birds don’t always get the answers right.
“The birds become an avatar for the kids that are watching,” Ward says, adding that the birds’ slightly “skew-whiff” observations gives the show a tone that he hopes will appeal to all ages. It also helps that it’s voiced by well-known Kiwi talent like Stan Walker and Millen Baird. “I like to think there’s something here for the kids, and there’s something here for the parents watching as well. The answers that are the wrong answers are so much more fun.”
Bird’s Eye View is about delighting in the little things, and that’s exactly why Ward loves birdwatching. “Birds are a magical thing,” he says. “Birds do something magic that we can’t do, which is they can fly unaided, they can take to the sky. They tend to become a bit of white noise, a bird flying in the sky – it’s just a bird. But just stop for a minute and think about the mechanics of that, and the magic of that, and what it must be like to be a bird.”
Ward’s affection for finding joy in the everyday shines through in our Zoom call. I tell him about the kereru in our garden who entertains us by getting boozed on berries. “Bird of the year? Drunk of the year, more like!” he says. He feels an affinity with the tui (“when they spread their wings, and they go from being this dark bird to multi-coloured, I’m going to say the word again: magic”) and has channelled his love for the cuckoo by making over 40 cuckoo clocks, giving each one a progressively more weird and wonderful way of announcing the time.
Surely this avid bird lover has an opinion on a bat being named bird of the year? “You know what? Rules are made to be broken,” Ward says. “If we didn’t think a little bit outside of the box, people wouldn’t be making stories about talking birds. And that’s the thing I love about Bird’s Eye View. It’s such a surreal story concept, and we seem to get away with it more in our kids’ storytelling and less so in our mainstream stories that we tell here in New Zealand.”
From Outrageous Fortune to Wellington Paranormal, Fresh Eggs to Under the Vines, Barefoot Bandits to Quimbo’s Quest, it’s hard to find a recent New Zealand television series that Ward hasn’t been involved with. Given his extensive experience in the industry, how does he think New Zealand television is positioned in a world of endless Netflix binge-watches and consumable quick picks?
“I think we can always be braver. Everyone’s going to say that, even the commissioners will say that. Then the question is: can the audiences be braver? You know, what are they ready for?” he says. “We are a slightly more conservative crowd here in New Zealand, but you know, we push it. I’ve had such a great time working on Wellington Paranormal. That’s a show that doesn’t just push the boundaries, it explodes them.”
Ward’s currently working on a new HBO science fiction drama, a “crazy-as show” set in South Korea but with scripts by New Zealand writers. Many of his projects are based overseas, which makes working on Birds Eye View even more special. It seems there isn’t a better time for an unashamedly Kiwi show that wants to push the boundaries about talking birds, or a short and sweet television series that celebrates how unique we are.
Birds Eye View is a little bit of magic, just when we need it most. “It doesn’t ask you to question your mortality or take you on some huge journey of the soul. It’s a kid’s show,” Ward says. “But what it should be most of all is something you can love and be entertained by and enjoy. You know what? It’s the Ted Lasso of the bird world, that’s what it is.”
The full season of Bird’s Eye View is available on TVNZ OnDemand now.