PICK OF THE WEEK

Kura

TVNZ OnDemand

Who among us hasn’t at some point in our lives dreamed about throwing a turd in our manager’s face, packing in our boring lives in New Zealand and buying a one way ticket to the Gold Coast? Take away the turd flinging, perhaps, and this is a life decision arrived at by thousands of New Zealanders every year, which makes Billy-John from new TVNZ OnDemand web series Kura an instantly relatable character.

Kura is the result of TVNZ’s 2018 New Blood Web Series competition, which saw young creators James Watson and Vince McMillan awarded $100,000 from TVNZ and NZ On Air to turn their promising pilot into a full series. It follows a pivotal week in Billy-John’s life, saying goodbye to all he knows in his home suburb of Papakura before boosting and joining the exodus to Oz

Since leaving high school he’s been up to “not much really” — living with his mum and Wayne (“he’s the weirdo rooting her”), working as a pool attendant at the local aquatic centre with his girlfriend Trinity (“pretty much the meanest chick I know”) and getting stoned with his best mate Hotene, who has a car and a matching stick-and-poke tattoo of the iconic ‘S’ everybody learned how to draw at school (you know the one).

The series and its oddball cast of characters feels instantly familiar and true to life. It’s the web series you could imagine a young Taika Waititi might have made had he grown up in South Auckland instead of Wellington — effortlessly and naturally funny, but with a vast well of pathos just beneath the surface, evident in the performances from Dahnu Graham and Lionel Wellington (Billy-John and Hotene) in particular.

Give it a watch, and try and think of a better $100,000 TVNZ or NZ On Air has ever spent.