Our national treasure
Kylie Klein-Nixon is pretty impressed with Shorty St
I’d like to petition for Shortland Street to be given national treasure status... wait, hear me out. I have to own up to not watching the show very often. My appointment-viewing muscles have atrophied, thanks to streaming, but after last week’s season finale I might need to whip them into shape so I can keep up with it.
Reviewing the finale, I was blown away by Kylie Brown’s storyline (Brown played with incendiary zeal and power by Kerry-Lee Dewing).
Like something from a Greek tragedy, she was driven beyond frustration until she became the embodiment of female rage, striking down two male abusers without pity or compunction. The episode (well, her bit, anyway) was more than just gripping, it was disturbing, shocking even. Pretty full-on stuff for a five-times-a-week melodrama.
I don’t know why I was so surprised. For better or worse, Shortland Street does that kind of thing all the time. If it’s not dishing up zeitgeist-defining insta-classics like poor Dawn’s spewy proposal response and poor Drew’s Poo-nami nightmare, it’s tackling deeply disturbing issues such as rape, suicide, violent crime and domestic violence head on, without hesitation or fear.
My colleague Bridget Jones nailed it in July when she wrote Shortland Street ‘‘has been at the forefront of progressive New Zealand television for longer than some of its stars have been walking the Earth’’.
‘‘We don’t often crow about how impressive it is,’’ wrote Jones, but man, we should.
Made, I imagine, on the smell of an oily rag, at breakneck speed, responding to real-world issues on the fly with humour, compassion and agility, the fact Shorty is merely a little rough around the edges sometimes is a Kiwi TV miracle.
Whatever you think of the show, the story of Shortland Street is the story of Kiwi ingenuity and damn-it-all ability.
Its beautifully diverse cast has been a proving ground for some of our hottest international stars.
One of its alumni has ‘‘boldly gone where no one has gone before’’ in three blockbusters to date, another became a kick-ass Martian warrior, and another married A Christmas Prince. There was a former Shorty kid on Grey’s Anatomy, while another just beat a murder rap in Riverdale.
On Boxing Day, we’ll get to see one of the Street’s most famous sons father the King of Atlantis. Shortland Street stars are powerful Kiwi ambassadors in Hollywood.
I can picture it now... a couple of rangy, hardboiled Kiwi TV execs sitting in the ruins of the Peppermint Twist set, the heady days of Close To Home and Gloss fresh in their minds as they sneered at Neighbours and Home and Away thinking, we can do better than that.
And then they did it. Despite funding for homegrown TV drying up as the appetite for reality TV twaddle grew, Kiwis made this show happen and have kept it going for almost 30 years. If that doesn’t make you proud, then you might be Australian, mate.
Yet feedback on your average Shortland Street article are a deluge of out-and-out cultural cringe – ‘‘stop wasting my tax dollars on this terrible show!’’, ‘‘do people seriously still watch this rubbish?’’, ‘‘TVNZ should apologise for airing this nonsense’’.
That cringe is woefully out of step with a solid hunk of the country. According to Nielsen figures, Shorty averages 336,300 viewers a night.
The season finale on Monday attracted more than 440,000 Kiwi bottoms on sofas. Folks who missed the 7pm airing caught up later, TVNZ claims, stating the episode was its OnDemand service’s most streamed show that night too.
Producer Maxine Fleming reckons that popularity is down to the way ‘‘the stories reflect New Zealanders’ lives back at them’’.
‘‘The characters are all our own – love them, hate them or love to hate them – they’re ours, in all their rich and glorious diversity.’’
But don’t just take Fleming’s word for it, it’s her job to say nice things about the show.
Take it on the say-so of Deborah Sloan, an ordinary TV watcher, journalist and self-confessed Shorty addict who answered my call-out for fans of the show. A ‘‘65-year-old immigrant woman’’, she’s watched Shortland Street for 25 years and talks about the characters like they’re family – weird, dramatic, troubled family, to be sure, but family nonetheless.
‘‘I think one of the reasons we liked [the character] Kylie so much last [Monday] night is because she gave Dylan what he richly deserved,’’ Sloan told me.
‘‘I reckon we’ll see her sent to jail next year for it. Shortland Street hasn’t done a court case in a while. What will they do with Daniel, the good twin, is the question. That and will Chris take advantage of the grieving widow, given their history.’’
Of Dr Chris Warner’s eternal – sometimes puzzling – charms (played by our answer to George Clooney, Michael Galvin), she says: ‘‘He’s sympathetic. He treats men and women equally, as real, rounded people. He’s a romantic. He’s funny. The money doesn’t hurt, either.’’
Sloan says she wouldn’t change a thing about our national soap opera, ‘‘except, perhaps, to give Curtis more screen time’’.
‘‘Clearly, I’m a happy customer,’’ she says. Clearly, she’s a New Zealander.
Shortland Street returns to TVNZ2 on January 14.