Breaking down barriers:
A new bilingual serial drama on M ori TV is aiming to give Shortland Street a run for its money. Kerry Harvey reports.
The Maori TV series
that is taking on Shortland Street.
It looks like M ori Television may have found its answer to Shortland Street with Ahik roa.
The ground-breaking bilingual serial drama – following the lives of best friends and flatmates Smooch (Te Ahorangi Winitana), Hemi (Nepia Takuira-Mita) and Geo (Turia Schmidt-Peke) – tackles issues facing young urban M ori in a way never before seen on TV.
Producer Quinton Hita has been staggered by the hugely positive reaction to the series so far.
“We released the first on-line episodes last year and it’s grown slowly but the response from the audience has been so impassioned it has that really viral feel about it,” says the man who became a household name 14 years ago playing Shortland Street ambulance driver Nelson Copeland.
“I’ve been in the industry for 20 years now and I have never seen this sort of a reaction to any of the M ori projects I’ve been involved in.”
The five-minute webisodes are being bundled into a half-hour show to screen twice-weekly on M ori TV.
Ahik roa’s characters are fiercely loyal to each other and have a slick code of honour. They drive fast cars, slam tequila and owe money for drug debts – and slip easily between te reo and English.
Hita has high hopes that the series will eventually screen five nights a week and will not just entertain but also help increase the use of te reo among its target audience, the under-25s who make up 50 per cent of the M ori population.
“I think it’s absolutely pivotal that we have an ongoing serial drama for this particular audience,” Hita says.
“I’m also interested to see how it’s picked up by the wider mainstream as well because, if a drama works, it crosses cultural barriers and I think this might be a local example of that.
“We’ve deliberately included some risque and sexy use of language as one of the goals for the series was to try to generate interest in the language and motivate people to explore the language further.”