Duncan Greive
Through winter, for some time now, some of the most expensive television we fund has aired. On TVNZ2 and Three, this tends to be opulent hour-long serialised dramas, the current iterations being Filthy Rich and Westside. On TVNZ1, it’s an even pricier collection, at least on a per minute basis: movie-length Sunday Theatre productions, which in recent years have dramatised some of New Zealand’s most notorious true crimes.
Of course, it’s less the cost than what’s done with it — whether what is made passes the test of holding “a mirror up to New Zealand and our people”. Westside is a funhouse mirror: recognisable, exaggerated, entertaining while you’re looking at it. Filthy Rich’s a dated hotel reflection, all over-stuffed cushions and oppressively dictatorial mood lighting.
That of Resolve, which airs tonight on TVNZ1, is a mirror you’d find in any of our homes: unadorned, naturally lit, a fair reflection of what we are and have been. It tells the story of Chris Crean, played with heart and churchy soul by Pana Hema-Taylor, a New Plymouth born-again who agreed to testify against Black Power members running amok in his community.
For his troubles he received a rifle blast to the gut in October of 1996, dying the following day. Resolve tells the story of the months leading up to his death, along with what came after — a law change which ultimately made it easier for witnesses like him to come forward against difficult defendants.
Two worlds collide, each portrayed with a pleasingly unadorned style. Crean’s blissful domesticity, his three kids with another on the way, his washing machine repair and lawnmowning, his evangical Sundays. Nearby, the Black Power headquarters, a slightly too-clean squalor but with both the fear and fury which governs their existence entirely palpable.
We get just enough of each that neither ends up overpowering. Unlike the twodimensional characters we’re used to seeing in serial drama, Crean is both impressively dedicated and fatally flawed in a way that would end up scarring his family to this day. The gang members, meanwhile, are possessed of their own code — ruthless, but also scared out of their mind.
Diana Wichtel wrote memorably and accurately in her review of Filthy Rich and Westside last week that “no one in New Zealand drama is ever in danger of having to figure anything out for themselves”, and that holds true here.
The cop heading the investigation asks his lawyer “why can’t people give their testimony in private?” The reply comes, groaningly, “There’s no provision for that in the law.”
Yet such moments are far less frequent in Resolve. Instead we’re faced with a New Zealand that feels remarkably recognisable, from the two-storey weatherboard state houses to the leather vests and mustard button-down shirts familiar for those who lived through the mid-90s. This expertly rendered environment — along with Karl Stevens’ brooding score — give the eruptions of violence their visceral power.
The attack to which Crean agrees to testify is short, sharp and shocking. It stains the memory, lingering long after it’s passed on screen, and the helplessness it engenders over all who had proximity to it is wellcommunicated — a natural motivator for Crean, leading him onward toward the grisly fate we all know is coming. Crean’s death occurs after 70 minutes or so, and in truth Resolve feels slightly over-long. This case, while heart-rending, might have been shrunk into a TV hour.
What I’d have preferred is the same team being given six hours to really pore over the case. To give us backstories to the gang, to understand how they were made as well as we do Crean. To allow the law-change its own arc, and the trial a greater scale and tension. To allow the team at Screentime, which have now made a number of these productions to an international standard, the opportunity to find the right case and stretch it out.
If that were to happen, then perhaps we’ll finally have a true sequel to Outrageous Fortune, a locally made and funded dramatic serial that grips the nation and tells us more about ourselves than we might be comfortable knowing.
We can only hope it comes soon — it’s debatable how much longer NZ on Air can justify funding these productions, as brilliant as this production often is, in this era of rapidly evolving and splintering audiences.
But if there’s room for another round, it should go to the team behind Resolve.