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Where were you when you found out who the Ferndale Strangler was?
Where were you when you found out who the Ferndale Strangler was?

Pop CultureJanuary 13, 2020

You keep us hanging on: Celebrating the best-ever Shortland Street cliffhangers

Where were you when you found out who the Ferndale Strangler was?
Where were you when you found out who the Ferndale Strangler was?

Tara Ward pays tribute to the one true constant in New Zealand television: The Shortland Street Christmas cliffhanger.  

If you’re going to watch one episode of Shortland Street, make it the annual cliffhanger. Each year our beloved New Zealand soap makes sure we step into summer with a big bang, bigger than Waverley’s hair in the ‘90s, bigger than Dawn’s power spew over Ali at the 2018 social club do. Nothing is off limits in the cliffhanger. Daring plane crashes? You got it. Mega explosions? No problem. Discovering your husband is a sex addict? Consider it done. 

Shortland Street’s Christmas episodes have given us births and deaths, destruction and desire, stripteases and social club dramas, and let’s never forget the time Leanne’s Santa beard gave her a nasty rash. That one cut deep. The show’s most memorable festive episode was when a truck drove through hospital reception in 1995. Shortland Street screened through the summer that year, so when Carmen died on Christmas Day we sobbed into our wedges of ham and wondered what the point of anything was any more. Christmas hasn’t been the same since, no matter how many wedges of ham I eat.

Since then, Shortland Street has embraced a mid-December finale with a cliffhanger that gets bigger and better each year. The show builds up to this explosive night for weeks, weaving storylines together to climax in one spectacular episode stuffed full of surprise and suspense. It’s guaranteed to pull on our heartstrings and leave us dangling on a precipice of emotion, so that in January we’ll come running back to the Shortland Street altar quicker than Chris Warner getting hitched to a fresh wife. I do, Shortland Street, I really do. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and with Shortland Street returning to our screens this week, let’s revisit five of the most memorable Christmas cliffs in Shortland Street history.

1994: Stuart Neilson crashes Lionel and Kirsty’s wedding


“It was the blessed union of the most iconic couple Shortland Street has ever produced, until Stuart with the Good Hair stood up and spoiled the party,” we wrote back in 2017. Kirsty and Lionel’s wedding was Shortland Street’s inaugural cliffhanger, with the show taking a Christmas break for the first time. This episode ended with some sultry saxophone music and Chris Warner garbling something about nectarines, and we had to wait two whole weeks to find out which man Kirsty would choose. Simpler times, friends.

1997: Donna and Rangi discover they are lovers from another mother

1997 served up a big bowl of cliffhanger controversy when it revealed ambulance officers Donna and Rangi were not only lovers, but siblings. They could look forward to an especially awkward Christmas lunch, but spare a thought for Caroline, who was found guilty of murdering her best friend, and for Kirsty and Lionel, whose plane was about to crash. What use is a cheese and onion muffin when you’re plummeting uncontrollably towards the ground? No use at all, Lionel Skeggins. No use at all.

 2007: the Ferndale Strangler is revealed

Guy Warner was a sweaty mess and a terrible driver. He may have endangered the entire Warner family in this cliffhanger car crash (rude? I’ll show you rude), but this year’s finale was all about the Ferndale Strangler. After six months of a gripping whodunnit serial murder storyline, 2007’s cliffhanger revealed the culprit as geeky nurse Joey, who pulled an IV line out of his pocket to strangle Tania Jeffries. The nation collectively recoiled in shock, making the Ferndale Strangler one of Shortland Street’s most memorable storylines ever. 

2013: Chris Warner sings ‘Anchor Me’ as a bomb explodes under his deck

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. One minute Chris Warner was serenading the nation at his seaside bach, the next a bomb planted by nurse Josh exploded and threatened the lives of everyone Dr Love held dear. The biggest tragedy? Chris Warner hasn’t picked up a guitar since.

2015: Gareth Hutchins unleashes hell and Drew is shot by a blue-gloved meanie

This 90-minute extravaganza of tension and terror began on Harper and Boyd’s wedding day, and ended as lone gunman Gareth Hutchins took everyone at the Christmas party hostage. Poor old Len carked it, Wendy and Murray tried to save the day, and a mystery shooter attacked Drew. The worst bit was when Gareth shot a chocolate cake into smithereens, a terrible vision that has stayed with me since.  

Shortland Street screens on TVNZ2 every weeknight at 7pm, and is available on TVNZ OnDemand.

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

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Look at these blasts from the past! Here’s what we were watching in 2000.
Look at these blasts from the past! Here’s what we were watching in 2000.

Pop CultureJanuary 10, 2020

What TV looked like in the year 2000

Look at these blasts from the past! Here’s what we were watching in 2000.
Look at these blasts from the past! Here’s what we were watching in 2000.

In the year 2000 there was no Netflix or Amazon Prime or On Demand; the ‘too much TV’ era was still years in the future. So what did we watch instead?

Beverly Hills 90210 came to an end

The end of the 90s also signalled the end of Beverly Hills 90210, one of the defining dramas of that decade. It closed out its season with a viewing audience of over 25 million people in the US. To put that into context: The final episode of Game of Thrones was watched by just over 19 million people. This show was huge, guys.

US TV’s first gay male kiss – thanks to Dawson’s Creek

That’s not just any kiss! That’s TV’s first gay kiss.

It wasn’t just the year that we were all obsessed with Dawson’s Creek star couple Pacey and Joey. It was the year that the same show gave us primetime television’s first gay male kiss between Jack McPhee and Ethan Brody, two names that couldn’t be more Dawson’s Creek if they tried. This was a groundbreaking moment, coming a full nine years after the first lesbian kiss on US network television, and a full three years after Ellen’s televised coming out, and deserves to be remembered as such. 

The Sopranos, and the start of broadcast television’s decline

This was the year of The Sopranos, the show that taught us all to love terrible people so long as they were on a TV screen – and also the year that HBO truly started to dominate prestige TV. HBO had already started to chip away at broadcast television’s dominance with Oz and Sex and the City (give me that crossover), but it was with The Sopranos that the channel hit big. Though The Sopranos debuted in 1998, 2000 was the year that it really began to dominate, with James Gandolfini becoming the first actor on a cable show to win an Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama series. It remains one of the most acclaimed and scrutinised shows ever produced, which is remarkable considering it’s more than two decades old. The West Wing, that year’s Emmy winner for Best Drama, looks positively dusty now.

Cut to now and the tables are reversed: You’re lucky to find any award-winning drama on broadcast television, let alone on cable. It’s streaming or nothing now. In 20 short years, we’ve gone from Patricia Heaton winning an award for rolling her eyes at Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond, to Phoebe Waller-Bridge winning the very same award for Fleabag, a show your coolest friends can’t/won’t shut up about. (It really is very good, though.)

Only wanna be with TV2

Before TVNZ2, there was Two. And we only wanna be with Two. It’s too bad that ‘TVNZ2’ doesn’t rhyme with anything.

The Mole

A cracker idea for a reality show, based on a Belgian format: A team works together on challenges both mental and physical to build up a large cash prize for the eventual winner. BUT, there’s a double agent in the team who is actively working against them. The team has to work out who is working against them, and eliminate them accordingly. Only one season of the show aired here, helmed by perennial host Mark Ferguson, and while you can watch the first episode on NZ on Screen, the rest of it is lost to time. Release the tapes someone!!!

Dark Angel

A positively pre-natal Jessica Alba in Dark Angel.

This is one you won’t remember, I guarantee. James Cameron’s first, and only, foray into fictional TV was a cyberpunk action-driven series that introduced Jessica Alba to the world. Alba played a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier who escaped from a military facility and then tried to live a normal life in… Seattle, of all places. 

The show lasted two seasons before being unceremoniously cancelled, with Alba emerging more or less unscathed to become one of the more famous actresses of that decade despite not being in anything else of note. Except Honey. Which rocks.

James Cameron went on to make Avatar, and allegedly some sequels that may or may not ever come out.

Boston Public

Before Big Little Lies, but after Ally McBeal, Picket Fences, and during The Practice: There was… Boston Public. It was the black sheep of uber-showrunner David E. Kelley’s television empire, which reached its peak at around this time – with Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope, and The Practice dominating our screens. It was also, by a significant margin, the worst of his shows. Kelley’s sub-Sorkin dialogue worked wonders in the confines of a professional environment, but when put into the mouths of teenagers at a fictional Boston high school it came off false and strange. 

Even worse, Kelley seemed to have no understanding of the school system, which is demonstrated nowhere better than the series finale, in which the school announces it is cutting all sports in favour of arts programmes. In what world?

A bunch of one-and-done shows you don’t remember

Shasta McNasty. Normal, Ohio. Bette. Brutally Normal. God, the Devil and Bob. Wonderland. Falcone. Battery Park. The Beat. D.C. Talk to Me. Then Came You. MYOB. Higher Ground. Secret Agent Man. Young Americans. Baby Blues. The War Next Door. Titans. City of Angels. The Michael Richards Show. Madigan Men. The $treet. Dot Comedy. The Fearing Mind. The Trouble with Normal. Daddio. Tucker.

If you remember these shows, you’re either a savant or a Russian sleeper agent who I’ve just accidentally activated. Good luck on your mission, comrade!

Elle Macpherson on Friends

Elle Macpherson and Matt LeBlanc in, yup, Friends.

Friends had a run of great guest stars, and didn’t often miss the mark with its casting. The one time it did, notably and at length, was with the multiple episode long arc featuring Elle Macpherson as Joey’s roommate and romantic interest. She was… not very good.

Also on this season of Friends were Reese Witherspoon as Rachel’s sister (sure!) and Bruce Willis as Rachel’s boyfriend, whose daughter was dating Ross. This is your reminder that the only thing about Friends that has aged well is Lisa Kudrow.

Survivor

It’s not the first reality show, not even close, but this is the one that changed everything. Reality shows were no longer just a curio, they were a part of mainstream culture. If you weren’t watching Survivor, you didn’t have anything to talk about around the watercooler, back when we had watercoolers.

Ryan Murphy’s first show crashes and burns

Not Popular enough for you to remember it!

Now it seems Ryan Murphy can’t go a month without having a hit, but that wasn’t the case two decades ago with his first show: Popular, a show that couldn’t decide whether it was an earnest teen drama or a satire of a teen drama, and never found a real personality as a result. After a poorly rated second season, it ended on a cliffhanger – someone was hit by a car, someone else was pregnant, nobody was happy – and Murphy moved onto the cosmetic surgical pastures of Nip/Tuck. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube, but I truly cannot recommend it as anything other than a curio.

Street Legal

Before Outrageous Fortune, before Westside, there was Street Legal. Over four seasons, then an incredible feat for any local show, the nation followed Samoan lawyer Silesi (Jay Laga’aia) and his on-again, off-again girlfriend Joni (Katherine Kennard) as they made their way through dubious cases and situations in Ponsonby. You can watch the first episode on NZ on Screen, and find it holds up surprisingly well for a show from way back then.

The Weakest Link

Anne Robinson, the one-time Queen of Mean.

The lasting legacy of this show is your least funny family member saying “You are the weakest link, goodbye” right through to 2005, whereupon they died or you stopped hanging out with them.

The Anne Robinson quiz show lasted for 1674 episodes, and is maybe the first instance of an audience falling in love with someone being mean to real life people, a trend which seemed to continue right up until Natalia Kills tried to cash in on it

Bob the Builder

Can he fix it? Yes he can. Also, the lyric is ‘can we fix it’. Can he spawn a number one hit single up against Westlife? Yes, he also can, and yes he did. The show started in 1998, but 2000 was when the show exploded, along with that inexplicable hit single. (Bob also did the world the disservice of covering Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5’, and if I have to retain that information in my brain, then so do you. Enjoy.)

Da Ali G Show

It’s the show that brought Sacha Baron Cohen mugging and screaming into the public eye. Your mileage may vary on whether that’s a good thing or not. Donald Trump was, as you can see from the above video, on it one time.

Chris Warner returns to Shortland Street

It might sound like an urban myth, but there truly was a time when you couldn’t see Chris Warner on your television screen at 7pm. Galvin departed the show in 1996, which left New Zealand with four bleak Dr. Love-less years of television. Our drought ended with the 2000 Christmas cliffhanger, when Warner returned to announce to CEO Sofia Martinez that he was the new head of the hospital. And he’s never left our screens since.

But wait there's more!