Back for more Subject: Dad
What do broad beans, cats, top secret fishing techniques and a home made sauna all have in common?
Well for one, they’re all topics covered in some of Pareora man David Thomson’s daily emails to his family members.
They’re also now the subject of a popular online comedy series.
Comedian and actor Josh Thomson, David’s son and email recipient, was back in his home town Timaru recently to film more episodes of his series Subject: Dad.
Subject: Dad features Thomson reading one of the emails aloud to one of his friends.
They discuss it, while clips of David carrying out some of the activities mentioned in the email are played.
New Zealand On Air announced in May the series, which The Down Low Concept is putting together, would get funding for another 10 episodes, following the popularity of episode one which went up online in October 2016.
David had been sending emails ‘‘essentially every single day’’ to his family members for quite a while, Thomson said.
‘‘He’s been doing it for a few years now.’’
While it was lovely receiving a daily email from his dad, they were generally quite weird, he said.
‘‘Everyone’s weird.’’
Thomson said he selected a few emails that stuck out to him to feature in the new episodes, such as David’s adventures with his home made sauna, a ‘‘possibly quite dangerous invention’’.
‘‘It’s just full-on stuff,’’ Thom- parents are son said.
During episode one, titled Cats & Beans with Urzila Carlson, Thomson discussed the email with comedian Urzila Carlson. She will feature again in one of the new episodes, as will fellow comedians Dai Henwood and Guy Montgomery, Thomson said.
While Thomson was unsure how many times episode one had been viewed (29,000) he said he got ‘‘quite a lot of positive feed back’’ for it.
A number of people said it had a ‘‘very nostalgic value’’ to it, Thomson said.
Filming for the four new episodes took place all over Timaru and Pareora last weekend, and Thomson’s wife Liz, brother Tevita and sister-in-law Denise came along to help out. Thomson will be back in Timaru in about a month’s time to film another four episodes.
‘‘It’s really fun, my dad really likes it. That’s why I’m doing it. He gets a real kick out of it.’’
The Down Low Concept producer Matt McPhail said the organisation received $72,000 from New Zealand On Air. Each episode for the online series would be about five minutes long, and they budgeted about $7000 per episode.
The new episodes were going to be available online at TV3’s threenow.co.nz from early 2018, he said.
The episodes were also going to be amalgamated into two halfhour long segments, which would ‘‘hopefully’’ screen on TV3 early 2018 after an episode of 7 Days, McPhail said.