Darker, edgier
The return of Terry Teo
Terry Teo is a true-blue 80s New Zealand icon. For those thinking ‘Terry who?’ right now, a quick catchup.
Way back in 1982, writer Stephen Ballantyne and artist Bob Kerr produced Terry And The Gunrunners, a classically Kiwiana comic book starring the soon to be iconic Terry Teo.
Terry was a skateboarding young teen who, with help from his mechanic brother Ted and karate-kicking sister Polly, eventually foiled the plots and schemes of several dastardly nogood types – and the 1985 TV series that followed it, The Adventures Of Terry Teo, was in much the same vein.
Now Terry Teo is back as a new TV series – although by the sounds of it, his adventures and escapades have definitely been kicked up a notch or two.
This is, in fact, why the show is only available at TVNZ OnDemand – it ended up being aimed at a more mature audience than TVNZ were expecting and now they are apparently ‘‘looking at options’’ before they finalise its TV timeslot.
That’s not to say the new show isn’t ‘‘awesome’’, as 20-year-old Kahn West – aka the new Terry Teo – describes it.
‘‘It’s a complete, total revamp of the original,’’ he says. ‘‘This version of Terry Teo, there’s more depth to his character. He’s from the wrong side of the tracks, kind of grows up as a bit of a bad boy, prospecting for gangs and that – but then when his father dies, a police sergeant, it forces him to kind of change as a person and use these criminal skills to fight crime.’’
Comedian Josh Thomson, who plays new character Detective McMurray, a police detective who ‘‘sort of’’ partners up with Terry, agrees. ‘‘I can’t really remember what happened in the original, but it has the same spirit,’’ he says. ‘‘He goes on adventures and solves mysteries basically. With the help of the police. Sometimes. But he’s kind of riding on the edge of the law, so he solves mysteries in not necessarily the most legal way possible.
‘‘It’s kind of like Beverly Hills Cop, but set in New Zealand with a Samoan teenager playing Eddie Murphy.’’
West and Thomson clearly make a great action-comedy buddy duo – the rapport they share is readily apparent, as they bounce ideas back and forth and jokingly insult each other at will.
And when asked to share some of their own childhood adventures, their answers make it plain these two are definitely the right men to be bringing Terry Teo into the new millenium.
‘It’s kind of like Beverly Hills Cop, but set in New Zealand with a Samoan teenager playing Eddie Murphy.’ Josh Thomson
‘‘I made a film when I was 13 and convinced my friends to be in it,’’ remembers Thomson. ‘‘It was a documentary about ninjas.’’
‘‘We made awesome costumes and weapons. I was the ninja who was going to swim across a river without making ripples. I was going to use trick photography – jump in one side, cut to a river with no one in it, and then emerge from the other side.’’
‘‘Unknowingly I picked a river that had recently suffered from a ruptured sewage outlet. I dived in, stood up and immediately vomited.’’
‘‘Even worse, I was wearing a balaclava. The vomit caught on the balaclava, and when I tried to suck in air, I just sucked in more vomit. I apparently just stood there for a while spew-gagging while vomit poured out the bottom of the mask down my neck. I eventually figured out I could just take the balaclava off.’’
Not to be outdone by Thomson’s spew story, West offers up the time he and a cousin faced a genuine life-or-death experience.
‘‘We were at an uncle’s place up north who owned a junkyard full of cars. We wandered off out of the junkyard and down a bank to where an old river was, and my cousin ended up falling in and started drowning fast so I had to put my quick thinking cap on and reach in and try to save him.’’
‘‘It was crazy – I felt like a bit of a superhero that day. I never let him live it down either and he hates it.’’
And with real-life adventures like that to draw on, the new-look Terry Teo is surely in good hands – whatever audience it might be aimed at.
Terry Teo is on TVNZ OnDemand.