Growing up with the Street
Office assistant and Shortland Street superfan Jess Freeth, 21, has watched nearly every episode of, interned for, and appeared as an extra on a show that was already nearly 10 years old when she was born.
‘Ilike how it represents Aotearoa. I started watching around 2011. I watch it religiously as it goes to air, except on Friday because I usually go out. I record that episode and watch it on Monday just before the new episode goes to air. I watched all the episodes from about 1995 to the early 2000s on the Heartland channel before they took it down.
When I was younger, I was pretty involved with the cast on social media. I followed the
Shortland Street Twitter page and they eventually followed me back. It’s been awesome to have that connection. I would make little posters and tweet those to them and sometimes they were shared around the cast and crew.
I thought I should try to see if I could get a little bit of work experience, and Raegen g Houldridge, the publicist, st, was kind enough to let me do o an internship for a few weeks eks three years ago. I learnt a lot. I would watch the episodes es for a week then try to make social media commentaries about out them. I assisted on photo o shoots with new characters, ters, standing outside and handnding them water or getting ng an umbrella on a hot day. y.
It was just awesome.
I’ve got a lot of memorabilia. Throughout my teens, Mum would find stuff on Trade Me for birthdays and Christmas. I’ve got the trading cards from the 90s, magazine articles, the
Shortland Street mag. I still have clippings of interviews, old uniforms that the nurses used to wear, signed T-shirts. Also, all the Chris and Rachel wedding merchandise: a mug, a keychain, a script on a tea towel, a signed poster. I’ve got a perfume they put out a few years ago called Love Hurts, that was to do with the 2014 cliff hanger. Only a few people got it, but I was lucky enough to be given it by Angela Bloomfield, who played Rachel McKenna. That is something.
I’ve met people through the show’s social media who are now friends in real life. We love talking about the characters together.
I don’t look at the comments: most of the time there is a lot of negativity in them, which is unnecessary at the moment. Instead of using time and energy to comment negative things, g use y your energy gy productively.”
“It looked as if the model of the private health clinic that
Shortland Street was based on would become a thing of the past,” says Bennett, “so Shortland Street Accident and Emergency Centre was turned into a public hospital with a broader range of medical stories and local stories than you would get in a private clinic.”
Early audience favourites Robyn Malcolm and Peter Elliott had left not long before. “Robyn’s character and that family had been very much at the heart of the show, so it did require quite a concentrated, focused reinvention to keep the audience engaged,” says Bennett.
“The Crombie family came on board to replace the Croziers, and that worked.
“When a much-loved character leaves, rather than making a huge deal of it, unless you are going to kill them off you try to have something exciting happening somewhere else in the show to distract audiences.”
That revamp was not witwithout its challenges. “It was reareally brutal. Seven or eight of the cast departed of their own volivolition. It did really affect momorale in a bad way, understanstandably, and also the scale of the exodus was very obvious to thet audience.
“It had gone tonally from beingbe quite a stylised, glamorous,or unrealistic world to somethingso trying to be a bit moremo akin to social realism. RatingsRat took a hit. At the time, it didd shake the show up. But overove the next two or three yyears, it rebuilt itself.”
Shortland Street has taken fullfu and frequent advantageta of the soap format’s adaptability, which can extend even to the personalities of the characters, as Lang instances: “Tandi Wright’s character, Caroline Buxton, had come in as a ditzy receptionist. And we had handily said that she had a background as a nurse. So we gave her a story where her friend came to visit with a terminal illness and wanted Tandi’s character to kill her. Over the process of that story, we turned the ditzy receptionist into a female lead nurse.”
In the sprawling warren that is its Henderson headquarters, the work of ensuring Shortland Street will last for another 30 years goes on every day. Paradoxically, says Driver, our small population base and talent pool help. “Some of our best and brightest aren’t working on other, massive shows, because they’re not made here to the extent they would be if we were in Hollywood, or even Australia. Nick Malmholt wouldn’t be here, and Jess Joy Wood and Laura Hill [head writers and formerly actors on the show] wouldn’t be here, and neither would some of our directors.
“We have a really high talent base in our cast, our writers, our storyliners and our producers. [Director] Curtis Vowell has just been asked to do a film in Hollywood, but he’ll come back. And in the two years that it takes him to get that film through post-production, he’ll be working for us.
“If I was making something really high end, I would still assemble the people I’m working with today to do it.”
For the off-screen team, the show can be all-consuming.
“The scale of the exodus was very obvious to the audience. Ratings took a hit.”
“By the time I watch an episode on air, I’ve interacted with that particular episode probably 12 to 15 times,” says Driver. “The hardest thing is that you have multiple timelines going on. I’m editing something you know people are about to watch. I’ve done the big cuts of next week. I’ve got location shooting for one week’s storyline, I’ve got studio shooting for another week’s storyline. They’re rehearsing another week. There is script checking and maybe a weak storyline needs work. You might have nine storylines in your head. And you’ll be constantly asked questions about every single one.”
The team may face problems, but motivation is not one of them. “We’re all doing what we love, which is telling stories,” says Malmholt.
“The responsibility is that we’ve got this primetime slot on a big channel with a still-massive audience. We are telling stories that are inspired by our own experience of living in New Zealand and our own lives and loves and losses and families. And if you’re doing that, honestly, the rest should follow.”
Malmholt, who has worked on soaps, including Coronation Street, from Finland to Australia, says ours has qualities others don’t. “New Zealanders have a default to a slightly kinder, gentler way of dealing with each other in crises. But we are not in crisis constantly. So, there is a sense of the absurdity of life. We don’t like it when anybody is moaning and groaning and taking things too seriously, unless there are really high stakes. Our characters are able to laugh at themselves, but also laugh at each other. We brought a kind of a Coronation Street sensibility to a Grundy storytelling machine.”
If anyone should know why Shortland Street has made it to 30, it’s the person who has lasted as long as the show. Actor Michael Galvin has a few theories. “It would seem that the desire to keep it current, to keep it a true reflection of whatever is happening in New Zealand, is part of it,” he says.
“There always seems to be a real desire, that starts with the writers and goes through to the actors and directors, to make it as good as it can be. We all want to it to be great. If there is a funny scene, we want it to be really funny. We love it, and hopefully that is infectious.” ▮
Shortland Street 30th anniversary week, TVNZ 2, 7.00pm, May 23-27