Trials, trolling and tribulation
After a year that saw tragic tweets, naked dating shows and indignant dinosaurs, Diana Wichtel names her television Best & Worst.
After a year that saw tragic tweets, naked dating shows and indignant dinosaurs, Diana Wichtel names her television Best & Worst.
As a great philosopher once said, “We’re all just evolved gorillas that are trying to hide our leftover body hair.” Actually, that was Nina from The Bachelor New Zealand. Never mind.
It’s as good an explanation as anything for 2017, a year when the Aussies finally got their heads around same-sex marriage and some powerful sexual predators finally got called out. It was also a year of alternative facts, fake news, ill-advised Trump tweets and white supremacists marching in the streets of America.
Thanks to the America’s Cup and, well, Lorde, we made our mark on the world. On the other hand, our reputation as a barking small nation was enhanced when Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver got wind of then Prime Minister Bill English’s wretched spaghettiand-pineapple pizza. The alleged confusion by US President Donald Trump over the exact nature of Jacinda Ardern’s relationship with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau threatened to cause an international incident. Jimmy Kimmel and Alec Baldwin re-enacted for bemused viewers of Jimmy Kimmel Live! the Shortland Street cliffhanger featuring this indelible line of Kiwi dialogue: “Please tell me this is not your penis.” Dear oh dear.
It was a year of some workmanlike local drama: Jean, Dear Murderer, The Brokenwood Mysteries … As its habitat is progressively destroyed, the near-extinct species that is television current affairs clings on in such shows as TVNZ 1’s Q+A, Three’s The Nation and Maori TV’s Native Affairs and Hui. Quietly enjoyable local programmes such as Grand Designs NZ, Heritage Rescue (museum makeovers) and Lost and Found (reuniting family since ages ago) showed that reality television isn’t required to be complete crap.
It was left to new
platforms such as Netflix, with provocations like 13 Reasons Why, tackling teen suicide and rape culture, to show that television can still shock, disrupt, shout fire in a crowded theatre or, in the case of Sky SoHo’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, shout fatwa at a crowded Jewish funeral to get our attention.
2017: channel surfing one day, you could come across footage of a burning tower block in one of the world’s great cities in which men, women and children were trapped and about which seemingly almost nothing could be done. It often seemed like no one was in charge.
It was a year of trials, trolling and tribulation. Women – Hilary Barry on Breakfast, Kanoa Lloyd on The Project
– stopped being the sidekick. The courage under fire of some broadcasters ensured Māori language found a place on mainstream television and radio. Despite the indignant roaring of dinosaurs, we were becoming more ourselves. There will be no going back.
So, here’s the annual slightly pained, ever-hopeful, highly subjective trawl through the best and worst we’ve seen. Happy Holidays.