In this rare Spinoff sealed section, Lucy Zee rounds up some of the most memorable sex scenes in local TV history. 

I hate sex scenes. They’re awkward, unnecessary and – the worst – they’re grossly unrealistic. But New Zealand can’t seem to get enough of a steamy romp and a glimpse of a muscled male arse on their local telly. These are some New Zealand shows that feature a sex scene in their first few episodes: 

• Outrageous Fortune
• Street Legal
• Filthy Rich
• Shortland Street
• Westside
• Almighty Johnsons
• Step Dave
• The Strip
• The Blue Rose
• Rude Awakenings
• Go Girls

Unfortunately, I have a life outside of watching television but, I promise you, the list goes on. As much as I don’t like a sex scene, I do understand that a lot of people love it. There’s nothing more erotic than watching two professionals covered in makeup and sprayed on abs, simulating a physical attraction necessary to drive a storyline forward.

So, just for you perverted heathens, here are a few of the most memorable sex scenes in NZ TV history.

Shortland Street’s first sex scene

If the only version of Chris Warner you’ve seen is the ‘Please tell me that is not your penis’ version, you’ll be surprised to find out that 25 years ago Chris Warner was a young, taut, hot-blooded Kiwi male. He was a poster boy Kiwi stud, and the perfect man for your mum to fantasise over.

So it makes sense that, in the first ever episode of Shortland Street, Dr. Chris Warner walks into an exercise studio, makes sexy eye contact with the instructor and has a lil’ bang sesh in the locker room.

Yes, the show your grandma likes to watch after tea time was a raunchy, borderline softcore pornography show in 1992. The scene is short – just two fit bodies and a bit of sideboob – but, in classic Kiwi tradition, it’s not a successful TV series unless there’s a sex scene in the first 10 minutes.

Loretta loses her virginity on Outrageous Fortune

One of my favourite New Zealand actors is Antonia Prebble, who in Outrageous Fortune played a highly intelligent, angsty teen from West Auckland called Loretta West.

Loretta’s super pretty, sexually active sister Pascalle taunts her, calling her “oldest virgin in West Auckland” and Loretta ends up having sex with her dad’s security guard Paul… Who ends up becoming Shortland Street’s own TK Samuels. I was just as shocked as you are to find out that Ben Mitchell hasn’t been a fake doctor his entire career.

In the episode they end up having sex all day, until Paul suddenly catches feelings (but Loretta isn’t having a bar of it).

Him: “Do you want to see me again?”
Her: “No offence, but no.”

Queen.

Gerald’s sex scene in Shortland Street

The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority get a lot of complaints. They received 174 formal complaints in 2016 which, considering that TV is a supposedly dying industry, is quite a big number. So that’s about three disgruntled grandmas and angry dads to deal with a week.

In 2008 on a mild April evening, Shortland Street aired an episode which involved two male characters, undressing and kissing, preparing for an intimate, physical act. Lewis Cross of Balclutha was shocked and appalled that “TVNZ is prepared to accept it is suitable family viewing to show a pair of men undressing, getting into bed and one disappearing under the blankets to obviously start oral sex with his mate”.

He also added:

“I have enough of a problem explaining to younger kids what might just be happening under the bed clothes if that had been a heterosexual couple.”

The complaint was upheld on the basis of breaching “Standard 1 Good Taste and Decency” and “Standard 9 Children’s Interests”. TVNZ defended this scene by saying that the same scene with a heterosexual couple would not have breached broadcasting standards.

I couldn’t find the video of the sex scene itself, but I drew a comic of how I think it went down from memory:

Cartoon sex in Bro’Town

During its run, Bro’Town really pushed the boundaries for New Zealand television. The show had sex jokes, poo jokes, a wry commentary on socioeconomics and even had more cameos than a Jono and Ben skit. A topic that was touched on quite often in the series was sex, naturally a very easy theme for a core cast of four teenage boys to riff jokes about.

In one episode, Sione, prone to the occasional surprise bone, seduces his pillow and gets caught by his mother dry humping it with his pants down. This might have been the first animated sex scene on a New Zealand TV show.

You might be thinking “a pillow isn’t a person, it doesn’t count as sex.” but unlike some people I’m not here to kink shame a cartoon character. People are free to love who they want and whatever they want.

Sam Brooks watches Search Party, the indie-inspired comedy that contains as many mysteries as it does 90s stars. 

If you were to make a webseries in the 90s, somehow having the same crazy technology as of today, you would probably make Search Party. You’d also immediately burned for being a witch, because that’s what they did back in the 90s. 

The TBS series, now on Lightbox, stars Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Rose Matafeo-lookalike fame playing a character called Dory. She’s a disaffected twenty-something, like almost every protagonist in a web series, but her life is thrown into self-destructive disarray where she finds a missing poster for a girl she knew in college: Chantal.

What Search Party proves itself to be, quite quickly, is a mixture of mystery and satire. The series, created by Sarah Violet-Bliss and Charles Roger (on their first show) and Michael Showalter (The State alumni, decidedly not on his first show) savagely skewers the millennial desire to make everything about ourselves, to find meaning in the world to give ourselves a purpose, and to find pathos in the simple act of being disaffected.

Stylistically, it’s more similar to the ’90s indie films of Hal Hartley (Surviving Desire, Henry Fool) than it is to anything out now. The comedy is offbeat and weird, and it doesn’t seem to really care if you like it. It’s aiming at more than just laughs, it wants to be about something. This ’90s-ness also rests on much of the supporting and guest cast. Look at this list of ’90s stars: Rosie Perez, Judy Gold, Parker Posey (the Hal Hartley queen herself), Christine Taylor, Ron Livingston, Christine Ebersole. As much as it’s a delight to see them have fun, it gives the show a certain feeling of being out of time.

When Search Party gets stuck in, the thematic ambition really pays off. The episode that revolves around a cult is rife with tension; the whole thing is fantastic. You get the feeling that this isn’t a show made about millennials by boomers who hate them, but a show made about millennials who genuinely understand the experience and want to honour it – as much as skewer it.

But when the ambition doesn’t work, it can fall flat. Largely this is to do with the style of the show. Search Party doesn’t look any different to other contemporary shows made in this style. If you played it next to an episode of Broad City, for example, you could be forgiven for mistaking one for the other. This gives the whole show a feeling of sameness that it shouldn’t have, not when the content is as smart as Search Party’s.

Where the show does shine is in its supporting cast. As the lead, Shawkat is great, often having to hold the weightier moments and providing a necessary anchor for the show. While that’s not always the most fun to watch, what is fun are the supporting characters of Elliot (John Early, star of the fantastic Vimeo webseries 555) and Portia (Meredith Hagener, who I’ve never seen before but who is excellent).

Elliot and Portia are the worst people you’ve ever met. Elliot is the egotistical gay guy lying to everybody around him; Early has enough charisma to stop it feeling like nails on a chalkboard. His sense of comedy, standing outside the character while also totally embodying him, works beautifully for Elliot and the style of Search Party.

Similarly, Portia is a proto-Jenna Maroney, and Hagener goes all in on the character. She’s the one who gets most of the big comedic moments in the show, and Hagener’s performance is smart enough that Portia never feels like the butt of the jokes. She’s just as real and fleshed out as Dory.

While Search Party isn’t perfect – the plot feels very much spread out over it’s ten episodes when it could’ve been wrapped up in five – there’s something fascinating in the blend of satire and murder-mystery that it’s aiming for.

Search Party been just been renewed for a second season and, based on how this one ended, I’m not sure what the hell they’re going to do with it. Still, I’m keen to see some millennials get gently skewered for the sake of some laughs and some awkward feelings.

Click below to watch the complete first season of Search Party, available exclusively on Lightbox:

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