And they said Shorty St wouldn’t last
Kiwis often like to have a pop at homegrown TV shows, but there’s a good reason our favourite soap is now 25 years old.
992 was an interesting year in New Zealand. We had emerged from the troublesome 80s and, two years earlier, celebrated 150 years as a country – but it felt like we were still searching for a national sense of identity.
By then we knew we weren’t England, but were struggling to decide whether to be more like America or Australia.
Our population was 3,553,000. Jim Bolger was the Prime Minister and there had to be a byelection in Tamaki after the resignation of former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. He would pass away three months later.
In a referendum on the voting system, a vast majority voted to drop First Past the Post and instead chose MMP. There was an electricity crisis after drought conditions resulted in low South Island hydro lake levels. The Exponents ruled the airwaves with Why Does Love Do This To Me, and Push Push won the best group award at the music awards.
And then, in May, hopes were high for a new TV drama that had been given $10 million for 230 episodes and that was due to screen five days a week.
The cast and crew watched that first episode in the Brown’s Bay studio where it had been shot and the actors I’ve spoken to recall they thought it was great – only to have their smiles wiped off their faces when they received jeers and abuse when they hit the town afterwards.
The reaction was such that TVNZ would have cancelled the show if they hadn’t already ordered a season’s worth of episodes in advance. But it survived and now, this week, Shortland Street celebrates its 25th birthday.
One of the show’s most important parents was its first producer, the late, great and legendary Caterina De Nave. It was De Nave who noticed that shows like Neighbours and Home and Away had a generally straightforward Australian cast and wanted this new Kiwi show to have strong female characters and be as culturally diverse as New Zealand.
The night before that first episode De Nave explained what she intended. ‘‘It is based on the idea that New Zealanders like dramas about relationships and are interested in social issues… The social issues are important parts of it and I think it will be controversial at times.’’
And her words have remained true ever since: while the show has evolved through various swings and roundabouts, those values remain. It has been a cultural giant that has put paid to any notion that we’re like America or Australia.
It has trained a lot actors and technicians, helped build the country’s TV industry, made stars who’ve gone on to bigger things, and pumped money into our local economy.
Young actors, who previously could hope to earn big money only from scoring a TV commercial, suddenly had a big local show they could aim for.
I can still remember the excitement I felt in 1999 when then producer Simon Bennett rang to offer me a trial as a storyliner. I got the job and for two years received a daily course in storytelling by working with people who would become giants of New Zealand screen-writing, including its current awesome producer Maxine Fleming.
This year I amback for another stint as a story-liner where I amjust one of the many cogs in the South Pacific Pictures village that produces five episodes a week. The 25th anniversary 90-minute special this Thursday (which we story-lined last year, the week before Christmas) is a real doozie.
For the first 25 years the show’s classic line was nurse Carrie Burton’s ‘‘you’re not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata’’. For the next 25 it could well be Chris Warner’s ‘‘please tell me that is not your penis’’.
It was a surreal moment earlier this year, to watch Jimmy Kimmel and Alec Baldwin reenact that scene on Kimmel’s US talk show. And they said it wouldn’t last. Of course ‘‘they’’ as in – most people – say that about many New Zealand television shows. Sometimes it’s because they’re genuinely mud. But sometimes it’s because Kiwis tend to say that about shows that dare to look and sound like they’re from here.
Thank goodness they were wrong about Shortland Street.
Shortland Street has been a cultural giant that has put paid to any notion that we’re like America or Australia.